19 Feb 2020

It has been long time since last blog. During that time, Kareem has grown a lot and has continued with his “adventures”.

Some people classify kids with Down syndrome as “lovely peaceful angels” as if they were a special genus of human beings. I totally disagree. Every kid, with or without Down syndrome is a special kid with his own character, needs, talents, and capabilities. Yes, Kareem needs special attention in some areas that -for example- his brother doesn’t need. But Shadi also has different needs.

Personally, I am very keen that Kareem reaches his maximum potential in academic learning. I leave social and other learning to his parents! Talking of social development, there has been some improvement over the past few months since last blog regarding throwing things away.

Kareem still throws his glasses away when he is frustrated, but that has become an uncommon behaviour. He certainly wears his glasses by his own will for much much longer time. This is a great achievement given that he is supposed to wear his glasses all the time. We still cannot be sure that he will keep them on while he is in the street or on his bike from school, so he goes without them at those times. Personally, I am not sure that it is good for him. I’d rather he wears them, and I watch him despite losing the glasses in the street before.

At school his behaviour is naughty. Specialists say that it is his hormones as he is entering puberty time. Last week he threw things in the class and then told the teacher that she was stupid. The school tries a mixture of soft support and assertive “punishment”. Basically, they try to encourage and praise good behaviour and condemn bad behaviour till he recognises that behaving badly has consequences that he does not like, and good behaviour is rewarded. We try to do the same at home. This support requires a great deal of patience and open mindedness. It is also important to always remember not to compare him with any other kid whether he/she has Down syndrome or not. In general, I believe that comparing children is bad for psychological growth so I never do that with Kareem.

My daughter, who always has great positive influence on all the family kids, has special way of treating Kareem and he adores her. He rarely behaves badly with her and I am still learning from her attitude and actions with him.

Kareem's summer adventures in the house!

مغامرات كريم

"امبارح قفل علينا احنا التلاته الباب (أبوه وأمه وأخوه) هو جوه واحنا بره ومينفعش نفتح بالمفتاح من بره وقعد يلعب ف اوضة الجلوس وكأنه بيقول طب وانا أعملكم إيه! بعد مناورات من أخوه شادي وافق انه يفتح مكتب ابوه ويجيب مفتاح الباب اللي من وراه وطلعهولنا من فتحه الجوابات في الباب. بصراحة كذا فِعل بس قدر يعملهم وقلنا ماشي أهو بيتعلم".

"النهارده كارثه سبته يغسل وشه زي كل يوم ونزلت احط الغسيل شويه ولقيت سقف المطبخ بينقط. الباشا سد الحوض وساب الحنفيه مفتوحه وقفل الباب عشان منسمعش وقعد في اوضته. الكهربا فصلت وستنيين حد ييجي يصلح المأساة".

من كام يوم كان عندي بيلعب ف الجنينة وقَع شماعة من علي حبل الغسيل فهل يرجعها ع الحبل عادي؟ لأ طبعا لازم يخترع طريقة مسلية أكتر. بقي يطلع ع الكرسي وينط يرمي الشماعة ع الحبل وينزل يستناها تقع عشان يكرر القصة تاني! ا

Kareem’s adventures

Yesterday he shut his mum, dad and brother outside, and they could not enter the house. It took a lot of persuasion from his brother to convince Kareem to open his dad’s desk and get the house key and pass it through the letterbox.

Today, his mum left him to wash his face as he does every day. She went downstairs to use the washing machine. Then she noticed water dropping from the kitchen ceiling. She then discovered that Kareem plugged the sink and left the tap on and then shut the bathroom door so nobody can hear the sound. He innocently stayed in his room. Electricity was cut and now they are waiting for the engineer to fix the disasters!

Few days ago, he came to play in the garden. The coat hanger fell off the washing line. Would he return it in a normal way? No, he had to create a more amusing way. He got into the chair, jumped and threw the coat hanger to the line, then came down to wait for it to fell. Then he repeated the game again.

Tom, the best of best teachers

Tom Cosford is Kareem’s teacher at St. Nicholas state school in Oxford. Tom is simply amazing. He is highly professional, patient and understanding. However, you may assess a teacher, I am sure Tom will score the highest! He understands Kareem’s character and needs and knows how to deal with him in his best and worst modes and behaviours.

Tom knows how to include Kareem in the class learning and activities. Tom was instrumental in enabling Kareem to participate in the class trip staying for a whole week without his parents.

Tom and St Nicolas school are a great example of how to integrate children with special needs in school learning and activities so that they can achieve the maximum of their potential. I hope that other children are in schools with great staff like St. Nicolas: the headmistress, the teachers, the teaching assistants, and all the team.

Tom was on Oxford Radio news this morning. Kareem and his mum went to the BBC Studio and surprised him!  Here is the interview with Tom and Kareem’s mother- the first few seconds of the news.

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live:bbc_radio_oxford

And here is Kareem having fun at the BBC Oxford studio. 

Kareem scored 48% in year 3 maths! Perhaps this does not sound impressive for the reader especially if one realises that Kareem is actually in year 4. But this is a great achievement for Kareem.

In 2015, when he was 6 years old, Kareem was able to count up to 20 and started to write the numbers. Soon he was able to count till 100.

A year later, when he was 7, he started to learn to add simple sums.

Then Kareem started to challenge himself a bit more adding double numbers, then triple numbers:

I was concerned about how to explain to him how to add numbers such as 98+49. Coming back from travel in early 2019, I was happily surprised to find that he was actually doing just that. When I asked his mum how she managed, she said that it was the school and his wonderful teacher.

Now Kareem knows several timetables: 2,10,11,12 and almost timetable 3 by heart. His favourite number is 12x12. I thought that he might remember the results if the timetable was written in order. Yet today, I jumped around timetable 12-his favourite- and I was happily surprised that he actually knows it all!

Kareem is lucky to be included in a really good state school, which is well-run and has dedicated and excellent teachers. They include Kareem to a great extent in the class in all sorts of learning activities and they really help him to achieve his potential in learning. He has perseverance and self-motivation if he is dealt with appropriately.

Kareem has a very supportive and patient brother, Shadi who helps Kareem sometimes with his learning. Between these 2 boys, there is a great love and affection but that deserves separate blogs.

Well done Kareem on your fantastic progress in maths. I am so proud of you my love.

Watering the plants or watering me! Kareem the gardener

20^th June 2018

Kareen has such a strong mind and a great determination to do things his way. Today he insisted on watering the plants by himself so he switched the tap on and took the hose around the garden. I had great difficulties persuading him not to water the walls or the grass. The problem was that he suddenly decided that watering is much more fun if he directed the hose from watering the plants to watering me! I reacted angrily because I was afraid that the water damaged my hearing aids- never mind getting my clothes, hair and everything soaking wet.

A little while later, Kareem became bored of spraying plants, grass, walls, me and left the whole operation. Actually, he is not a bad gardener if nothing else, like his brother playing football, distracts him. He had already planted strawberries from a cutting and beetroot from seeds. Whenever he waters the garden, I remind him of his planting. 

Last year he planted and harvested Spinach.

In August this year, as the beans started to appear,  he started to harvests what he can reach. We are waiting for the tomatoes to turn red so that he can pick them up.

Kareem is such a great helper in the garden.

At a fundraising event for Down Syndrome charity

In june this year, a local Down Syndrome charity ran a fundraising day. It was based on walking in beautiful green fields bathing in sunshine. Teams were exhibiting various products for sale and doing different activities and having creative T shirts and signs with the team name.

  

I was proud of my extended family, including very close special friends, who did the walk in 5 countries in 3 continents. Every walker in the team had a sign on his/her T shirt saying “Dream Kareem”.

Kareem himself walked 3 laps in the field and then decided that it was enough and that it was time to play football. He usually plays games and sport like everybody else for a little, then he invents his own style of the game. On this occasion he decided that he would kick the ball with his foot towards me, but I had to bend down to get the ball and threw at him by hands for him to receive it and kick it again!

Afterwards, he decided that he should go with me to the team's tent and to lie down -it was nice to lie in the shade after playing in the hot sun outside. He had fun unzipping and zipping all the compartments in the tent and sliding from one room to the other.

Shadi, Kareem’s brother took the walk very seriously before he enjoyed playing football. He walked 20 lapses- while I was able to only manage 11 lapses.

It was a lovely day and Kareem was, as usual, our joy and treasure with his wonderful caring brother, Shadi. The day was also successful as the charity was able to raise over £36,000. Dream Kareem team managed to contribute just over £500.

I can spell more than a 100 words

“I can spell 100 words”, said Kareem proudly. Spelling has become his latest game. Thankfully we passed the stage of persuading Kareem to spell “is”, “and” when he would rather watch TV or play with iPad. Actually, he has been learning a lot through special TV programmes (the amazing Mr. Tumble) and the iPad but that is for another blog.

Kareem used to go to this sport of the kitchen floor and play games on his IPad

Of course, learning to spell has taken a lot of time and efforts from the school, the family and from Kareem himself. I remember in 2015, we used little coloured words to get him to visually recognise common words. I played the words with him almost every day for long time. We had a big jar of various words and we would put a limited number of common words in a smaller jar and use it day after day. Gradually we would add more words to the small jar until one day we were using all the words from the big jar.

 

  

Recently, Kareem’ mum invented a way of making writing and spelling visual. She would draw a little table for the letters of a particular word then he writes the letters in the squares. Afterwards, he would write it down the whole word. Somehow, he liked this way of learning. Clearly visual learning is his thing.

For example:

T	h	A	t
That

After days and days of doing few simple words -almost- every evening, he started to decide the words, make the table but not use it for writing! Instead he would write the word first then do a table but the cells did not correspond to the number of letters!

Of course, it was not easy to get him to sit down and do “homework”. We use different method like: what do you want to do first? Invariably it is “watch Pippa Pig”. Then the negotiation starts on which homework first-usually after one Pippa Pig.  He decides between English, maths, science, spelling. We do not name these subjects as he now knows them. He also decides whether the work is from books, sheets, computer.

With the writing, Kareem would spell and thus the game started. Almost every day he would verbally spell few words until he reached a hundred words.

Yesterday Kareem was proud to tell his aunt the words he was able to spell. He would say: “I can spell….” and then he spelt the word correctly. Then his aunt would ask him to spell other words. At last, she asked him to spell: “cat”. He said: ta, aa, c. We must have looked baffled. He looked at us and said: “spell back”. Then he liked the new game and started to spell backwards other words: dog, quarter, mummy, dad, Kareem.

Today with friends he spelt backwards lots of the words he knows: school, children, where, when, what, book,…

I cannot describe the happiness of all the family especially his mother with his spelling “forwards”. Now that with Kareem spelling so many words “backwards” we are in ecstasy!