There was a lot of information shared at the RTS Conference. Some morsels of knowledge were more significant than others...
A session with the thumb expert helped explain why Matt can only bend his thumb in one place, that is where his thumb joins his hand. The reason: Matt only has one joint in his thumb!
Speech can be facilitated through learning reading - the Speech Therapist has found this to be true of many of the RTS kids with whom she works. Will share more about this in a separate post.
Matt has only 30% vision in his eyes - apparently this is normal for his developmental age, but seems rather odd to me.
Many RTS kids develop behaviour issues later on in life - not a happy stat to learn about.
"Playing is the most important activity of a child" quote from Anneke Baselier, psychologist, who ran a fascinating workshop on play with special needs kids - learnt all about the stages of play and how to gently expand your child's play repetoire without moving to fast for him. Too much to share here, but very inspiring.
Saw first-hand how many of the RTS kids and teens are talented at music and singing - a very fun kareoke session was held on the Saturday night.
Not really helpful info, but fascinating: did you know that a prehistoric skeleton is thought to have RTS!? The skeleton was found in West-Central Illinois.
Advice from a fellow RTS parent - when you have asked your child a question, wait 60 seconds (not 10 or even 30 seconds, but 60) for her to reply before you fill in the answer. Give her time to process the question and to answer - you may be surprised at the response you get.
3 comments:
Thanks for this bit of information!
Some really interesting info there - and some applicable to ALL kids! Like the waiting 60 seconds. With Nellie, I've started doing story sums with her (just up to 5 for subtraction and up to 10 for addition), which she ADORES. However, I'm learning that when I ask her a question, I have to wait for up to 60s (or sometimes a bit longer) for her to process and calculate the answer. It's tough waiting - I want to just give her the answer - but she learns more if I give her the space to work it out for herself. I think that's a universal principle for kids and parents - we're too eager to show them, and not sufficiently prepared to step back a bit and let them figure it out for themselves.
"sight words" are words that kids must memorize wen learning to read, check out this site for more info: http://teachers.eusd.k12.ca.us/bbuchel/SightWords/sight_word_info.htm
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