Raising children with Down syndrome can be a little challenging. But, with a little bit more patience, understanding, support and love, you can be a parent your children can rely on. A child with Down syndrome can suffer from different symptoms and developmental delays. These conditions can be related to their physical ability or cognitive skills. But, these problems may affect their everyday life more than we can imagine. So, being a parent of children with Down syndrome, you have to first learn to identify the challenging behaviour of your child and understand how you can mitigate and manage these practices in the right and effective way.
Before we jump into the main part, let’s first explain what Down syndrome is and how it can affect your child. Down syndrome is a genetic condition that can severely affect the intellectual and physical abilities of individuals.
Children with Down syndrome may show a wide range of challenging behaviours that can cause a drop in their confidence, social skills and education. These behaviours include difficulties in communication, attention and focus, impulsiveness, and anxiety. These common natures that parents can find in children with Down syndrome can be quite challenging for parents as well as caregivers. The worst part is it can significantly affect the quality of life of a child, their relationships with others and also their overall physical and mental development.
Now let’s learn the challenging behaviours briefly to easily identify them:
Communication Difficulties
Communication skills make children confident and help them to interact with others more easily. But, in the case of children with Down syndrome, it is noticeable that they commonly have this challenging behaviour as most of them suffer from difficulty with communication. Children with Down syndrome can find it hard to express their feelings, what they want, or their thoughts clearly and that can result in frustration and behaviour issues. If they also have problems understanding others, then it can make the problem more complicated for parents.
Attention and Focus Difficulties
Your child may love to read or go to school just like other children. But, if they are dealing with Down syndrome, they may have difficulty with attention and focus. This condition makes it hard for them to stay focused while performing a task or following instructions from their parents or teachers. And, these all can lead to behaviour issues.
Impulsiveness
Another challenging behaviour you can find is impulsiveness. Many children with Down syndrome started to act without thinking and do things impulsively at a certain time. This action makes social interactions harder for them and results in behaviour issues.
Anxiety
Anxiety is a common challenging behaviour for children with Down syndrome. When your children with Down syndrome are not able to express what they feel or communicate with others like other children of the same age, it is expected that they may experience anxiety. They may start to behave rudely or awkwardly if they can’t understand the world around them and make others understand their thoughts.
How Can Parents Help Their Children Manage Challenging Behaviour?
It is not so difficult to manage the challenging behaviours of a child and help them to get back to normal life. You as a parent need to stay strong and provide them the mental support and therapy that can help them act more properly and interact with others more easily.
The first thing a parent needs to do is to show their support and acceptance and make others do the same. When a child gets nice treatment from family, friends, and the community like neighbours, teachers, other children and their parents, they can behave more properly and work on improving their condition. The world surrounding them can play the most vital role in the development of children with Down syndrome.
To help them to improve the quality of life of children with Down syndrome, parents can consider different supportive services, including speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and behavioural interventions. This therapy will help parents address specific developmental delays and needs while helping them improve communication skills, enhance motor abilities, and promote independence.
You can consult with a paediatric therapist for ABA or Applied Behavior Analysis therapy in Dubai to see how it can help your child in learning new skills, boosting communication skills, increasing social interactions, and developing self-care abilities.
Conclusion
Now parents may understand how they can identify and manage the challenging behaviours in children with Down syndrome. If you are looking for the best rehabilitation center for ABA therapy for children with Down syndrome, contact Hope AMC in Dubai which has been helping children with different developmental disorders. They develop a therapeutic strategy based on every child’s development needs. Their ABA therapy is backed by extensive evidence and scientific reasons and has helped many children with the same condition.
Contact us to discuss your child’s concerns and get the best help and support from our ABA-certified therapists, doctors, and support staff to give your child the best treatment. Reach out to our staff to schedule an appointment today.
