- Intellectual Disability: The majority of Individuals have some degree of intellectual disability
- Most have mild to moderate intellectual impairment
- When learning, may learn more slowly and have difficulties with complex reasoning and judgment
- Delayed developmental milestones (i.e. walking and talking)
- Reach goals on their own pace
- They are often much stronger visual learners with strong visual memory, visual discrimination, and visual reasoning compared to their overall intellectual ability and their auditory processing.
- Children with DS do better with simultaneous processing than with sequential processing tasks. They can get the 'whole idea' but may have difficulty understanding a time sequence. In fact, time is a challenge for many.
- Children who have DS not only use self-talk to help themselves learn, but many seem almost incapable of silent thought.
- Those who are readers may have difficulty reading silently and need to do so out loud.
- Also, self-talk often involves the externalization of fantasy life. This can lead to embarrassing moments, and at worst, mistaken impressions that a child or youth is delusional or hallucinating as they audibly act out fantasy dialogues.
- They may be very distractible.
- Visual problems
- Poor muscle tone
- Mild to moderate hearing loss
- Possible cardiovascular irregularities
- Neck instability (AAI or atlantoaxial instability)
- This is a condition where there is increased mobility between the first and second cervical vertebra, allowing the vertebrae to slip out of alignment easily. This can cause damage to spinal cord.
- Language acquisition may be slow compared to age matched peers.
- Most children who have DS have an expressive language disability that is more significant than their receptive language or overall intellectual challenges.
- Low muscle tone can impact articulation and speech clarity. The child’s message may be distorted due to distortion (altering) and omission (leaving out) of speech sounds.
- Children with Down Syndrome often have difficulty with structure and organizing the order of words within a sentence. Constructing a sentence of increased length or complexity may be a challenge. Children may need guidance to recognize that sentences are grammatically correct.