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I was talking to Billy's teacher the one who works on the computer with him and some how Billy brought up I taught him to tie his shoes. That reminded me of how I taught him.
For some reason this little twist was how he learned. The school teacher or OT did not teach him up through grade 6.
I taught him.
Since I was priniting this our for his teacher(LOL This is teacher I like) I thought I would post it here for you guys again.
I copied it from another group.
Here ya go..
Karol
DOWN SYNDROME NEWS VOL. 20 NO.9 PAGE 121
Steps to Shoe Tying Success By Meg Egan
Cheryl Beahn figured her 7-year-old son, Ryan, would wear Velcro
shoes for a
long time. Ryan has mental retardation, but since he had early
trouble with
motor skills, and for a time had difficulty just picking things up,
Beahn
never expected her son would arrive home from school knowing how to
tie his
shoes.
But one day he walked in grinning, plopped himself down on the floor,
stuck
one hand behind his back, and proceeded to tie his sneaker by
himself. Thanks
to a simple shoe-tying method developed by Kim Mickley, COTA, Ryan
has been
relishing this bit of independence ever since.
"Ryan-he gets so ecstatic. Tongue-tied," his mother said. "This is a
real
thrill. He's showing some independence... He's being just like his
brother
and sister. He's doing what they do. Little things that others can do
that he
can't-he notices." In the last year Mickley has taught 15 children
with
varying degrees of mental retardation and autism to tie their shoes.
Before
then, she averaged one or two students a year.
"In the past I would teach children the way I tie my shoes, telling
them to
take whatever lace was on top and pull in under-those sorts of
instructions,"
she said. "That's so hard for figure-ground perception." Mickley is
an
employee of Colonial Northampton Intermediate Unit Number 20 in
Easton, PA,
which provides special education services to 13 school districts in a
three-county area. Her task-oriented method breaks shoe-tying into
several
specific steps, each of which a child begins by using a dominant hand-
"the
hand you hold your pencil with," Mickley tells them.
She frequently works with students at a desk or on the floor, one
shoe off
and facing in the same direction as the bare foot, with the laces
hanging
down, one on either side of the shoe. Mickley first asks students to
raise
their dominant hands and place their non-dominant hands behind their
backs to
reinforce that these are the hands they ought to use to begin each
step. She
doesn't refer to hands as being "right" or "left," since many of her
students
don't understand the distinction. Students use the dominant hand to
pick up
the lace on the dominant side and cross it over the shoe. With the
same hand
they cross the lace on the opposite side over to make an "X". "The
emphasis
of this is that you learn each step and you don't go on to the next
one until
you learn that step," Mickley said. "We would practice this (and each
of the
subsequent steps) at least five times, until the child could do it
without me
talking them through it." With the non-dominant hand still behind
their
backs, students next slide the dominant side lace, put it under
the "X" and
grab with the dominant hand. They use the non-dominant hand to grab
the other
lace, and then pull both sides tight. Mickley again practices the
step at
least five times, then has the students use the dominant hand to make
a
medium-sized loop with the lace on the dominant side, and hold it
against the
shoe with the thumb and forefinger, tail hanging down.
After practicing making loops on the dominant side, students use the
non-dominant hand to pick up the other lace and wrap it around behind
the
loop toward themselves: clockwise. For the next step she has them
make a fist
with the non-dominant hand, and use that thumb to push the lace
through the
circle and away from their bodies, then hold it there. Once again,
both steps
require practice. Next, the dominant hand drops its loop and grabs
the lace
resting in the non-dominant thumb and forefinger. This, too, requires
practice. Finally, the non-dominant hand grabs the other loop with
its thumb
and forefinger, and students pull both loops sideways.
Mickley suggested practicing all the steps beginning at number three-
making
the first loop-several times with the shoe off the foot, resting on
the floor
or desk. Then students must practice tying with the shoe on the foot.
Mastering this may take additional practice since laces tend to
shorten once
students put their shoes on. As a final step, Mickley reviews how to
untie
the laces without knotting them: by pulling one of the tails, not the
loops.
Mickley often encounters students who have learned to tie their shoes
using
the "rabbit ear method," in which they make two loops, cross one over
and
under the other, then pull them into a bow. She said that although
they may
successfully tie their shoes this way, she always teaches these
students her
method.
"The rabbit ear method, obviously that's not appropriate for adults,"
she
said. "You don't see adults tie that way. So eventually they'll have
to
learn the other way." Mickley sees a lot of students with high-level
autism, many of whom have problems with motor planning. One, a 10-
year-old
whom she treated for five years, was one of the only kids in his
class who
couldn't tie his shoes-and until she developed her dominant-hand
method, she
didn't foresee him ever learning how.
"It was just, basically, impossible to teach him how (using other
methods),"
she said. "There was no way he could remember all the steps," Using
the new
method, the boy learned in two 45-minute sessions.
