For a good portion of the semester my group and I have been working on a family project. In this project each group in the class was assigned a family scenario based off of real life family stories. In each one or more of the children had special needs. One family had cleft lip as well as a hear condition. One child had ADD that was never officially diagnosed. Our family had two children diagnosed with Osteogenesis Imperfecta. This is more commonly known as Brittle Bones Disease.
Osteogenesis Imperfecta (and for the sake of my fingers will now be stated as OI) is rare genetic disorder. It's most common symptom is a fragile skeleton but, depending on the severity, affects bone strength, structure and other tissue as well. Their bones break and fracture very easily, so easily that one documentary I watched called them "Children of Glass." Here is one such video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-oor-pz1xo
I will write more about what we have learned about OI in another blog post. This week was finding resources for our family to use. Support groups, physical and occupational therapists, play groups that were safe for the children to interact with peers their age safely. At the beginning of the project we chose a city that our family to live in and our professor suggested that we pick a large one otherwise it would be difficult for us to find the adequate resources in our families area. It was a good thing she did too. We ended up choosing Houston, Texas. As we thought of concerns that the family would have and found resources to address those concerns, I kept thinking back to my home town. Though my job in an Early Learning Center really opened my eyes to the resources and programs in the valley for children and families I still doubt that there would be enough for a family raising two young children with OI.
One of the resources I found for our family was a therapy center that had various services available. I was very excited about it because it had much of what our family needed or could need as the children grow up. They had physical therapists to help the children strengthen their bones and muscles to help prevent injury. There are occupational therapists to help them gain their full physical potential and accomplish every day tasks. There are language therapists to help one of the children who had severe hearing loss because of his OI. Anyway, long story short it was an amazing facility that was family oriented. It is exactly the kind of place I would hope to be in my area should my children ever need such aid.
To say the least it has been quite the project. We all had our rolls and tasks and then would come and present them to each other before putting it into the project. I think we all learned something new and learned from each other. Sometimes it was a struggle to really understand OI and the need of the hypothetical family because we were scrambling to fulfill the requirements for the assignment. However, if we were truly people there to help the family we would need to learn all we could. In order to learn more I feel it would have been beneficial to interview an individual or individuals with OI. Or watch more documentaries on the matter. The recourse I felt was the most informative and beneficial would be The Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation (http://www.oif.org/site/PageServer). It had so much information from what OI is, the various levels, treatments, contact information for support groups, medical specialists, and so much more information. I wish there had been more time to read and explore the site.
One thing this taught me and has prepared me for is that to find good, quality resources, you have to be ready to dig deeper than simply the first results that pop up on a search engine. I have no doubt that at some point in my life I will be working with a child that has some disability. After this project I feel a little more prepared to do research to help me understand the children who will be under my care better as well as how I can best help them and their families.
Weekly quote:
"It takes a village to raise a child." ~ African Proverb
I mentioned this in one of my other posts but it kept coming to mind as we were going through the project because it indeed takes a group of people to help special children reach their full potential, regardless if they have a disability or not.
Higher-Wider-Deeper Project
For my higher wider deeper project on Dance and It's Affects on Children, I went back to a research paper I wrote when I was a sophomore in college about music and how it affects children's brains. I reread my research paper and from what it has told me that the area of the brain that develops with music overlaps with the area where language develops as well. So to develop one helps develop the other as well. Furthermore if one area is neglected, such as music, then the other area cannot fully develop. I reread a couple of the articles to confirm this and will be rereading the rest this week to see if there are any more areas on the topic that I feel I am lacking in.
Recourses:
Bannan,
N. (2008). Language out of Music: The Four Dimensions of Vocal
Learning. Australian Journal Of Anthropology, 19(3), 272-293.
Brandt, A., Gebrian, M., &
Slevc, L. R. (2012). Music and early language acquisition. Frontiers In Psychology,3doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00327
Have a great week everyone, keep smiling
Sapphire
