When our daughter Sylvia was born with Down Syndrome, there were so many things we wondered and worried about for her future. After dealing with her heart surgery at 6 months of age, it was time to deal with her education. We remembered that Vicki Milliron, our Up With Downs president, had told us about a video tape/audio tape/book kit that teaches reading to children with Down Syndrome. Vicki gave us her kit and at 8 months of age Sylvia began her journey toward reading.

The kit is called Love and Learning and has been created by Joe and Susan Kotlinski of Dearborn, Michigan for their daughter who has Down Syndrome. Kit #1 includes a demonstration tape that shows Maria Kotlinski at age 5 reading words, paragraphs and answering reading comprehension questions. At age 5 she had scored in the 98th percentile for reading skills. Kit #1 also includes a 20 minute video tape that introduces the alphabet letters and sounds, and familiar words that begin with each letter. An audio tape can be used to reinforce the sounds. A book completes the set. The book has one word on each page and follows in the same order as the video tape. The book and the letter/word portions of the video tape are with black letters on a white background - very simple, very bold, sure to catch one’s attention.

Sylvia and her mama would view the video tape once each day EVERY DAY and recite each letter, sound and word. The key to the success of this approach is LONG TERM REPETITION. We did not use the audio tape or the books at this stage. This was a matter of personal choice. At 14 months of age we were curious as to whether Sylvia was learning anything from the video tape. So with the use of an alphabet puzzle we chose four random letters at a time and lined them up in front of Sylvia. We would name one of the letters in front of her and ask her to point to it. At this age Sylvia knew 8 letters of the alphabet. This encouraged us to continue with the video tape and to order more Love and Learning kits.

By 18 months old Sylvia knew all the letters of the alphabet. She could not talk at this age, but the sounds she was able to make she would make when she saw a letter (i.e. she would say "pa" when she saw the letter P).

By age 2, after using two video tapes a day EVERY DAY, we wondered if Sylvia could read the words she had been viewing. So for the first time we used the books that came with each kit. Sylvia could read 80% of the words. We could tell by her pronunciation or her pointing to the body part or object in the house that she could read the words. Once again, remember that daily REPETITION in small amounts of time is the key to this approach to reading. It should not be forced upon a child. If a child does not want to view the tape on a given day, then the child should not have to view it. Learning needs to be enjoyable.

Through the whole Love and Learning process we wondered if Sylvia was able to read things other than the words in the Love and Learning videos. We knew we wouldn’t really know for sure until Sylvia was able to talk.

Sylvia is now 3 ½ years old. All the speech therapy and oral motor exercises are finally enabling Sylvia to pronounce vowels and most consonant sounds, so the words she says sound clear to us. If Sylvia pronounces a word and leaves off the ending consonant, we show her the written word so she will know what sounds comprise the word. Then she is able to pronounce the word with all the proper sounds. In this way Love and Learning has helped Sylvia’s speech because she could read before she could talk.

In addition to 500 vocabulary words, some of the concepts taught on the Love and Learning videos are shapes, colors, days of the week, months of the year, seasons, counting, adding, telling time, counting money and conversational skills.

Now Sylvia is usually bored with the Love and Learning video tapes but her little sister, Gracie, just loves them. Sylvia loves to sit and read her Love and Learning books…AND Sylvia loves to sit and read other books too. She sounds out words and points to pictures in the book, thus demonstrating that she can read and comprehend words that were not part of the Love and Learning videos. It truly amazes us. And she really enjoys books. She has a long attention span for books and writing. Maybe this goes back to her infancy when she was so frail prior to her heart surgery that the only Early Intervention we could do was to read books to her.

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