Teaching Reading to Children With Down Syndrome Is a Sight to Behold

Phonics is the ONLY way to teach reading.
Or so I thought.
When I began my life as a homeschool mom, I KNEW phonics was the best way to teach reading.
It made the best sense. Letters have sounds, which combine to make words. If you know the sounds, you can decode and read words.
Besides, after having grown up through the "Dick and Jane" look-say era, I knew the whole-language approach was lacking. Although I was a good student, I didn't enjoy reading as much as I could have. And I was only an above average speller.
When my firstborn was reaching school age, I found the very best phonics program I could find. He learned to read phonetically, as did his younger siblings. We changed programs over the years, but still focused on phonics, because phonics was the ONLY way.
But then my eighth student arrived.
With Down syndrome.
Faced with a child who could not talk well, whom the therapists had written off as "only getting more delayed," I wondered how I would help her succeed.
But then I found the solution: Sight reading!
Although it went against my homeschool grain, on the advice of my daughter's neurodevelopmentalist, I began teaching her to read with flashcards when she was 3.
I will never forget the night we started. She was sitting in her high chair after supper, and I flashed about 10 words to her. I went through the card stack three or four times in a minute.
Then I put three words in front of her, and asked her to show me a particular word.
Without hesitation, she pointed to the correct word! I asked her to show me three or four words, and she identified them all!
In just a minute, my non-verbal toddler with Down syndrome was reading!
Sight reading is the most efficient way to teach a child who is non-verbal to read. In fact, it's the primary way to teach babies and toddlers to read. (If you've ever seen videos of babies reading, chances are their parents used a flash cards and signs.)
Sight reading is especially good to teach reading to children with Down syndrome because these children tend to learn visually.
The process is easy. All you need are index cards, a black marker, and a word list. Some sight-reading programs use the Dolch word list, others use words that they consider more meaningful to little children. The Dolch list is available all over the internet. To these words be sure to add words that you know are meaningful to your child, including the names of siblings and pets.
The size of the index cards will vary with the age of your child. Toddlers do better with larger cards and larger letters. By school age, normal 3" x 5" cards with moderately large type (30 to 42 pt.) will work well.
Write a pile of cards in one sitting. This way your handwriting will be consistent, and you'll have the flash cards finished. Use lowercase letters unless the word requires a capital.
Begin teaching with 10 cards. If you turn the cards toward you with the words upside down, you can flash them faster. (I struggled for months until I figured this out.) As you read the word, pick the card up and put it down in front so the child sees it. Don't linger--the eyes and the brain go faster than your hand and mouth. If you can flash the cards one per second, that's a good speed. If you can go faster, do.
Go through the stack quickly. Reshuffle, and do it again. You should be able to go through 10 cards four or five times in a minute.
After a minute, you can offer your child a choice of three cards and ask him to point to the word you give him.
If he doesn't get the right response immediately, don't worry. Some children don't pick up on this the first time for many reasons. For example, if a child is not hearing or seeing well, more repetition may be required. If after several weeks your child isn't responding well, you may want to have the eyes, ears and visual processing assessed.
For many children, sight reading is a quick and dirty way to read.
For my daughter with Down syndrome it was much more than that. Sight reading gave her success in an academic area and earned her the esteem of her peers. At three, she couldn't walk and she didn't talk much, but she could demonstrate that she could read. With sight reading, she was reading larger words than her typical peers.
Eventually, phonics will be added to my daughter's reading curriculum. And when it is, she'll understand it better, because she'll be able to see how the sounds fit together.

How to Ensure A Good Education for Your Deaf Child

Having a child with disabilities isn't easy. If you're the parent of a deaf child, then you know this as well as anyone. Whether it's a physical, mental, emotional or psychological disability, the fact is that the world isn't really built for people who are different, so chances are you've already ruled out the notion of keeping your child in the public school system and you're looking at deaf school options or possibly home schooling.
Home Schooling for Deaf Children
There are a lot of arguments for and against home schooling for deaf children. The fact is that your child may well wind up learning more through staying home and being taught by people he or she loves and trusts than by going to a special school to learn. The downside is that this can have an adverse effect on a child's developing social skills. By simply staying home, within their comfort zone, they may not learn how to deal with others until their early adulthood.
On the other hand, you may well be able to find a home schooling community for hearing impaired children, but i you don't live in a big city, this may be much easier said than done.
Deaf School Options
At a school for the hearing impaired, children may have some difficulty adjusting, at first, to being surrounded by new people. However, over time, the benefits do seem to outweigh this. A child who goes to a school for the deaf will, first and foremost, realize that perhaps they're not so different after all. By being surrounded by those who understand hearing impairment and those who suffer from hearing impairment themselves, a deaf child may feel much more comfortable and be much more willing to simply learn and stay focused in a more comfortable environment than that which public schooling provides.
Another benefit is that you're likely to meet other parents of deaf children through the school, other parents who know how difficult it can be and who understand that behind the disability is a unique individual. At a school for the deaf, and within the surrounding community, your child isn't a "deaf kid", but a person who may be exceptionally intelligent or creative, who may be athletic or have a great sense of humor. In being around other deaf people and those who see your child as a person, not as a disability, your child may really bloom as an individual and learn to take pride in who he or she is.
Financing Education
As you're probably looking into private schools, if you haven't already, you should look into charitable organizations and grants specifically for the families of deaf or disabled children, as well as government programs like SSI designed to help finance the extra costs associated with the disabled.
In any event, there's no shame in accepting a little help in paying for private schooling for a deaf child. In time, as your child grows into adulthood and comes to fully understand the responsibilities therein, they should grow to appreciate that you gave them the best education that you possibly could.