To help my child, I must see him.

I am the parent and support person to my 10 year old son.
He is a non-traditional learner.

Having a Semantic-Pragmatic Language Disorder effects his social understanding of language.

What does that look like on a daily basis? The most complex part of the sensory system, auditory and visual perception receive information at a different rate. In order to "see" and "hear" for thinking in "language" these systems would need to work succinctly.

He learns by an individualized approach; the learning input needs organized to impact "his" learning system. That is different from most educational designs.
We (parents and educators) manually put pictures in for new learning and integrate what is heard to what is seen.

He is very conversational, has a very good memory and loves sharing his life and interests with others, he wants to learn what others like too.
SO what's the big deal? He has Down Syndrome, and the stigma associated with what is culturally expected from the diagnosis leads to a story of different personal meaning.
A story that assigns cultural meaning to his uniqueness, and takes his abilities away.

This practice makes it very difficult to See the Child, the person within.

When learning is organized in sequential ways that give meaning to the adults and how the system rewards them, there is no way for him to integrate the learning.
This means he cannot show what he knows, socially or academically.
Adult systems (and typical systems) would call this the inability to generalize or a memory deficits.
In our effort to develop the learner we insist he learn by the typical sequence. But not all people learn the same way.

It's very disturbing, do we really think we can change the way anyone is hardwired?

Disability is what happens when someone does not get what is needed from the environment. Educators and experts (adults) are granted the right to assign their meaning to my sons uniqueness and take away from his abilities, not only in the eyes of the adults but also in the eyes of his peer group. They say this is to inform us what he needs. I reject these assignments and ask "how can he"?

What if we believed that being a different minded learner meant one needed a different order, and not a program.

Input the learning in order to access the individuals learning bed.
Instead of being disordered, we would agree that the way to develop the individual, is to meet them where they are and develop the concepts needed for a quality of life expected by the opportunity for a Free and Appropriate Public Education.

Concepts that underlie the use of language (semantics)for reading, writing, thinking, viewing, listening, speaking and calculating. The same ways students without a label are educated.

I guess that's my opportunity to change our world, one bite at a time.

Stay tuned, new stories to come.

Behavioral expressions are almost always a symptom of a larger need not being met by the environment.

If we only see the persons distress as a problem, we will treat with behavioral techniques, while not addressing the underlying need.

Without meeting the individuals real need, we have found a solution that is "staff-centered" and not "person-centered", this ultimately does more harm than good.

What if all the testing protocols are prejudice of the individuals "different minded learnedness", and fails to interpret the real need. What problems might we see? Behaviors?

When we see a person in distress, our primary goal should be to try and find out what his or her "unfulfilled" needs are, and adjust the environment to meet them.

Behavior Intervention Plans are tricky for this reason. The individual may appear less disruptive, but are they truly calm, self directed and engaged with purpose and understanding? Have we replaced the behavior with rote compliance, and without meeting the individuals real need (are they robotic and without internal motivation)?

Dr. Ellyn Arwood, author of, Learning with a Visual Brain in an Auditory World, says "real behavior (self directed) requires conceptualization". "Conceptualization comes from understanding of language".

We need to at least identify alternative indicators of well-being regardless of age, cognition or functional limitations to maintain the dignity of our loved ones and be their defenders.

Some suggestions of alternate indicators of well-being are:
Identity: Have a life story that is well known to your peers and learning partners.
Autonomy: Have choices in many aspects of your day.

Let's talk about other possible indicators of well-being.

This is my new mission in life, can you tell?