Regional Events
October 24, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. National Association for Down Syndrome (NADS) 1998 Conference on Down Syndrome, Focusing on the Possibilities. Fee: $35. The Congress Hotel, 520 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60605. Registration deadline: October 14. Contact: NADS; P.O. Box 454; Oak Brook, IL 60522; (630) 325-9112; http://www.nads.org.

One of the reasons I wanted to write this article is that thought some of you might be afraid of me because I am different from other people and have a disability. I hope now you will understand me better.

"I don't know what's gotten into her today!" Maddie's mother said, exasperated and embarrassed. Her normally confident 3-year-old was resisting all invitations to join the pre-school circle. Instead Maddie stood ill at case, thumb in mouth, gawking at a group of slightly different peers- children with "special needs."
How odd! her mother thought. Especially considering that one of the children was Maddie's 4-year-old brother. Jonathan had Down syndrome, and until recently he and Madeleine had been like twins. Even as she began to pass him by developmentally, they had remained best friends. That's why their mom had let Maddie tag along for Jonny's first field trip with his special ed class. Now she wondered if she had made a mistake.
"Kind of makes you wonder who has the disability," I said, turning to another parent. A remark I could get away with because Maddie is my daughter. And Jonny is my son.
I never wondered how it would feel to be a parent of whom more is required because I never thought I'd be one. Jonathan's birth sent me into a dimension I hardly knew existed. It's not that my heart had been hard toward differently-abled children-it's more that I had been oblivious.
I use the words "differently-abled" not because it's trendy or politically correct-parents of special kids don't pay much attention to those things. I choose it because it best describes the children I met when God-through my special son-unlocked a door few are privileged to find.
I opened that door when I took nine-month-old Jonathan to his first Easter Seals group. There we sat in a circle with other mother/infant pairs singing, clapping and playing with bells and bubbles and balls. Early Intervention they call it. Quite a blessing when you consider that not so long ago such children's lives were wasted in institutions. No one had yet figured out that with a little extra help and love they could become the special people God meant them to be.
But who was I to talk? I had never thought of the disabled as special. Maybe that's why my heart felt so full as I held my special boy, singing "The Wheels on the Bus" and gazing around our first circle.
Some of what I saw shocked me. There was Christopher, whose head was severely misshapen-twice the normal size, startlingly asymmetrical, with only one eye. Anna looked at one year old like a twelve pound, very wrinkled old woman.

A stunned quiet filled the delivery room. No one spoke, not even the nurse. "Let me see her," Lyndale Yazel said to her husband, Bill. Bill had Ellyn cradled in his arms and went to Lyndale's side so she could see her baby, who had upwardly slanted eyes. "Oh, look, we have a China doll," Lyndale said. It was 3 a.m., May 21, 1975. Later that morning, a pediatrician walked in, rigid as a robot, and stood at the end of her bed. "Do you know what Down's syndrome is?" he asked. "Yes," she said. "Do you have any questions?" Dumbfounded, Lyndale had none. The next day, the same doctor told Lyndale he did not believe Ellyn's large and small intestine were connected-a malady commonly found in Down's children. "Your child is failing," he said. "We think she's going to die. We'd like to withhold feeding and surgery based on the quality of life that we would be prolonging." It was his way of giving Lyndale an out-a chance to rid herself of the child. She wanted none of it. "I don't know about Down's syndrome, but I'll learn about it," she said. "And you better do everything possible to save my baby. "Do you hear me?" In the following days none of the doctors or nurses came near Lyndale. At night, in a ward with five other mothers, Lyndale sobbed quietly into her pillow, trying not to disturb the joyfulness in the other mothers, who had healthy babies. She prayed quietly. "Dear God, let me be good enough. Can I teach her to learn?" Institutionalize her. That's what the medical experts in the California hospital told Lyndale to do. They said to expect nothing from Ellyn. But Lyndale, who at 25 had just graduated from San Jose State University with a degree in education, was hellbent that she would do more than love this child. She would teach her. Her Ellyn would one day be able to hold a job and make a difference. What Lyndale never imagined was this: One day, Ellyn would become her

This workshop was presented by Laura Felzer, Los Angeles City Schools, Perez Special Education Center, (213) 269-0681, E-mail: apfelzer@csupomona.edu at the 26th Annual NDSC Convention, August 7-9, 1998 in Dallas, Texas and described a Signing Based Multisensory Reading and showed a video where six Hispanic children with Down syndrome are being taught as a group. A flash card with the word "horse" is shown and the children read the word and simultaneously sign the word "horse"; to reinforce, a play horse is shown. Another technique presented by the video is where 6 flash cards of the word "horse" and 6 flash cards of the word "A" are placed on the floor and each child takes turns matching, reading and signing the flash cards. This reading program has been successful to teach children with Down syndrome to read by using a multisensory approach: sight words, vocalization, sign language and objects. Daily reviews are essential, e.g., placing each flash card in order: I-see-a-horse, and matching identical sentences. Each child is tested individually by reading several sentences, as the read, they also signed each word. At the end of each sentence the child picked up the objects pertaining to the sentence, e.g., picking up the little red toy car when they read, "The car is red". After the children have learned several sight words and simple sentences, they are taught phonemic awareness, phonics, printing and spelling.
The main principles of the Multisensory Reading Program outlined in the booklet A Multisensory Reading Program That Really Works, are: a) Sight words and simple sentences are taught before