"My New Friend" - Introducing Your 22q Child To Their Classmates
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My daughter Molly just started kindergarten! She has limited speech due to apraxia of speech & VPI. She struggled to make friends because she couldn’t talk to them. Her teacher invited me to come talk to her class, so I reached out to a friend whose 1st grader, Noah, has Down syndrome. She wrote a book about Noah for his kindergarten class & encouraged me to do the same. I used Noah’s book as a template, and the results were amazing! Once her classmates understood her differences & their similarities, they realized Molly was just a regular kid like them!
You can meet Molly Here: www.facebook.com/
You can meet Noah here: www.facebook.com/
When I talked to Molly’s class I read her book, a second book (if I had known about “Just Jen” at the time I would have read that!) & we played 2 games. The first game was to find out things they had in common by asking questions (i.e. Who has blonde hair? Who likes dogs?). For the second game, I had them try to speak to each other while keeping their mouths closed so they could understand Molly’s frustration with apraxia. At the end, Molly & I did a Q & A (Molly's idea!), but instead of asking about her differences, their questions were all about what her favorite things were! That day & every day since, she is never alone on the playground <3
-Suzi Beall Shaw, Vice President, 22q Texas