Hi, Mark!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:   
      
   MH>  Actually, he would use sit in an open indian style and   
   MH>  use his legs to skoot. It was a combination of a hop and   
   MH>  skoot using legs (sideways on the ground) and hopping on   
   MH>  his butt.   
      
      
              Nora still enjoys sitting cross-legged... in her own inimitable   
   way, of course!  Years ago it drove her physios crazy because they were afraid   
   she'd dislocate her hip.  She hasn't yet.  I'm also told it is a very stable   
   position which helps enable kids to avoid toppling over & maintain good   
   posture....  :-)   
      
      
      
   MH>  I had read that the crease tends to be a straight line on   
   MH>  kids with DS, but that isn't always the case.  There are   
   MH>  cases of people without DS that have the same straight line   
   MH>  crease, but they are rare.   
      
      
              Yes, there's an example of a characteristic associated with DS   
   which also occurs... perhaps less often... among the general population.    
   Another has to do with the "epicanthic fold" at the corner of the eye adjacent   
   to the nose. For Orientals this is normal... for Caucasians it's normal in   
   babies & in about 10% of other folks who do not have DS.  Before chromosome   
   tests were available, Dr. Langdon Down identified numerous characteristics   
   which are still used today in making a tentative diagnosis.  I've seen enough   
   real-life examples to hazard a guess in many cases.  It's important to   
   realize, however, that what's unusual is a collection of features which might   
   otherwise be relatively rare & that not everybody with DS has exactly the same   
   features.  The dummified explanations of DS don't acknowledge that there's   
   more than one variety either.  By comparison, if I see an article about   
   leukemia in which the author says there are two kinds I may not learn much   
   from him or her because I can think of five at least.  ;-)   
      
      
      
   MH>  Getting the proper movement in the tounge seems to be the   
   MH>  trick with our son. When I work on words with him, I say   
   MH>  them slow and in sections.  Making a sound and then turning   
   MH>  it into a word.  Like "TTTTTTTTTTTTTRRRRRRRRR  uck".   
      
      
              As a former Learning Assistance teacher, I approve!  Exaggeration   
   is a great teaching tool, IMHO, along with doing these things in slow motion.    
   :-)   
      
      
      
   MH>  Once he masters a word, he likes saying it over and over.   
      
      
              IOW, he seems to have a good handle on his own learning style.    
   Nora was... and still is... like that too.  When she first discovered the   
   concept of parallel lines she drew grass in every one of the eight colours in   
   her felt pen box a day at a time, and then she went on to experimenting with   
   something else. Right now she's studying Alexander the Great with help from   
   Yours Truly because she understands far more than she can read by herself &   
   she's quite peeved that history was neglected in her Life Skills class.  I'm   
   enjoying the experience of reading this stuff with her because I did the same   
   at more or less the same age (despite my own inadequacy WRT politics or   
   memorizing names & dates of battles) & because I came under fire from a   
   certain high school librarian who criticized me for reading the Iliad, the   
   Odyssey, and the Aeneid one after the other.  Her stance was that my choice of   
   material lacked variety.  My stance... if kids had been allowed to express   
   personal opinions in those days... would have been that I'd go on to reading   
   other things when I'd finished with that particular topic. One historian says   
   Alexander used the same stallion until the day he died while another says he   
   retired the same horse a few years earlier.  If Nora & I hadn't read different   
   accounts we probably wouldn't know that.  I like her style.  :-)   
      
      
      
   MH>  He will say truck and bus all the time when he sees one   
   MH>  while we are driving around.   
      
      
              Ah... I gather he's interested in wheeled objects which enable   
   folks to get from Point A to Point B.  When Nora was about the same your son   
   is now & we were on our way to the local shopping area with her in the   
   stroller (because she couldn't walk that far yet) she pointed out & correctly   
   named a bus, a car, and a bicycle.  I was thinking to myself "Wow, she's   
   categorizing!"  I once had a student in grade five who couldn't do that.    
   Further on, at a street where we had to wait for traffic lights, she pointed   
   out & correctly named a wheelchair. The occupant of the wheelchair gave me a   
   disapproving look... I reckon her mind was stuck in the 1950's, when kids were   
   taught it's rude to notice such things. By then Nora & I had spent so much   
   time in hospital that to us a wheelchair was just one of many similar   
   conveyances.  If the woman had said anything to me I'd have pointed out that   
   we were using a stroller for the very same reason she was using a wheelchair.    
   IMHO this scenario epitomizes the inadequacy of "political correctness".  I   
   tend to forget about the chair when I focus on the human being sitting in it,   
   and we've found younger wheelchair users invariably co-operative when we   
   remark "I see you're using a Snazzy 350.  How's the turning circle...?"   
      
      
      
      
   --- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+   
    * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/716)