Guest Posted October 12, 2015 Posted October 12, 2015 We have a 2 year old little boy attending our session that has recently been diagnosed with William's syndrome. He has been with us since 6 months old and we indicated fairly early on that there were development problems but a diagnosis has taken this long to be found I've no experience of this particular syndrome but I have his therapist coming out to the setting tomorrow to see us and talk in more detail about his needs I just wondered whether anybody else has experience of supporting a little one with WS in a setting and had any tips on what we can do/provide to best support his needs and development?
korkycat Posted October 12, 2015 Posted October 12, 2015 We had twins with this condition. They were mainly globally developmentally delayed and when they started were just beginning to walk. They were lovely little boys and a real pleasure to look after.Eventually went to a specialist nursery - Mum wanted them to stay some sessions with us but at that time funding wasn't shared! We had no real problems looking after them - just had to provide more support in activities. Lots of information on the internet - there is a uk society. korkycat
Guest Posted October 12, 2015 Posted October 12, 2015 Thank you for your reply! He is such a little charmer and completely melts your heart. We've been really supporting him with walking and he has just finally mastered it, although still a bit wobbly, and it's great to see him up and moving around now My biggest concern is he's due to move up to our 2-3 year room soon and its up a flight of stairs so we are going to need to address this for him as he's nowhere near steady enough in his movements to manage them. The staff are doing really well with supporting him but we just wanted some information on what to expect in the long run. I will have a look on some websites and see what information I can collate for them. Thanks again!
finleysmaid Posted October 12, 2015 Posted October 12, 2015 We had a little girl with Williams some years ago and i'm still very much in touch with the family. She does not appear to have the same level of difficulty as you have both experienced .....she very much displayed the 'pixie' type face with tiny features but spoke fluently at around 15 months. Which seemed a bit incongruous . This young lady is now in mainstream and doing really well. She is very organised and bright but finds some things socially tricky. She stayed in reception for 2 years as she wasn't quite ready to move up , Her main issues were with understanding and thought processing. She would often engage adults with 'cocktail chatter' which was repeated often and masked the fact that she was having issues. so for instance when asked what a giraffe was she would say elephant as she knew it came from the category 'animal' but couldn't connect the word to the item. She would though sometimes get it right and you'd think aha we've got it ...only to be asked again later and say monkey! Quite tricky to teach ...lots of repetition and lots of physical and careful checking that she had learnt something not just 'guessed' (or overheard!!!) Fine motor skills took a while to solidify
blondie Posted October 14, 2015 Posted October 14, 2015 we had a little boy a few years ago who had partial williams (think he is only one in country as went to london lots for specialists to look at/monitor his development). his problems mainly were he was delayed in speech etc., - he walked as normal but was unsteady on his feet when running, he had the pixie type features but whereas children are usually quite short he had the advantage of both parents being 6ft so took those genes and was on a par with his peers when he left. the one thing we did find is that he had very,very sensitive hearing so didn't like loud noises - we were careful not to sing loud songs on days he attended.
Guest Posted October 15, 2015 Posted October 15, 2015 Yes our little one also has very sensitive ears so music and movement classes can be very hard on him. Sometimes he joins in and doesn't appear bothered and others he gets upset so we take him to a quiet space instead His early support worker came to see us on Tuesday and she is very happy with how we're meeting his needs so just a case of monitoring and dealing with any issues if they arise along the way
Guest Posted October 16, 2015 Posted October 16, 2015 Information below, including details of the support group. http://www.cafamily.org.uk/medical-information/conditions/w/williams-syndrome/?f=W
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