How many times do you do a lesson for your child with down syndrome? Do you just do each lesson once like the program is designed or do you repeat several times?
I thought it was recommended to do it twice a day, but don’t quote me because I haven’t looked up that sort of info since we started over 3 years ago. I think I remember reading something about twice a day being an easier goal for working parents because they can do it before work, then again after arriving home in the evening.
We do Little Reader at least 2 times a day & often 3 or 4. We do it before or after breakfast or lunch &, if K insists, around dinner time. She is 4.5 now, so she has learned to use the program independently, so she will sometimes put it on herself. Originally when we were trying to get into a routine of doing a Doman program, I found that it was easiest for me to do certain activities (Math, physical, memory etc) at the same time as a regular routine activity like diaper changes & meal times. Now it is just habit to do it at that time of day.
I really recommend doing it at least twice a day. It is better to do shorter sessions more often than to do only 1 longer session. If your child loves it & asks for it often, there is no harm in doing 3 or 4 sessions in a day.
Hope this helps 
My daughter with down syndrome is 2 and a half and we use the program twice a day.
I guess my question is do you need to repeat each lesson more than once for our children. Do you need to spend two days or more twice a day for each lesson?
Yes, you should show it more than once, but not necessarily more than you would with a typical child. I do think it depends a bit on the child. If you were doing a true Doman style reading schedule, you would add some new words as well as removing some old words each day. I am not the most organized person & for me, that was just one more little thing to add to the already full day, so I chose not to do it that way. When K was very little & just learning words, I used to show the same words for a week - I can hardly remember now, but I think it was about 20 when she was young, up to about 60 or so at a time by age 3. At the end of the week, I would retire the whole bunch of words & start a whole new set. After the first thousand or so words, I noticed that K was getting bored much more quickly & often learned words after seeing the once or twice. We now do a new set every 3 or 4 days. I am certain that she knows the words much more quickly than that, but with all that we do in a day with her neurodevelopmental program, twice a week is as often as I am able to change her Little Reader playlist. It really doesn’t take long, but now that she is needing much more of a challenge, I have to customize most of the files which is the time consuming part.
Hope this helps, but feel free to ask away if you have any more questions :biggrin:
Kmum, Thank you! I am kinda lost. My son is mostly nonverbal so I am not sure what he is retaining and learning. You mentioned Doman. Who is he?
Glen Doman - from iahp.org He is the original creator of (ND) programs. We are doing our ND program through ICAN.
My dd was also nonverbal when we started at around 6 months of age - it is better just to provide lots of input & not worry about testing. Yiu want reading to be an enjoyable experience so the less you test the better. if you must test, be sneaky. Use words like wave, sit, walk & other actions & see if he responds. Body parts work well for this too.
How old is your son?
He is 8 yo. Do you know if Glen Doman is related to Bob Doman of NACD?
At age 8, does be have to show his reading knowledge because he is school aged? If so I would still require as little feedback as possible. keep sessions very short, but frequent & fun.
Yes, they are related. Bob’s father was Robert Doman Sr. He & Glenn were brothers. Robert started NACD quite a few years ago. It is not common knowledge as to why they chose to operate seperately.
I home school him. We had not started any reading yet because of this lack of speech. But I have decided to try and see what happens. He will not use sign. It is very frustrating to him because of motor skills. He is the most self sufficient kid I have ever seen, which is good.
Hi My daughter is three and although not very verbal the words that she does pronounce correctly are those who she recognises from story time which has prompt us to look into this program.
My daughter is 19 months, is she disadvantaged if we were to start now?
No, I don’t think so. Anytime you start and can be consistent is a good time to start. 
I have a three and a half year old and a nine month old, both with Down syndrome. We just got the reading program and our oldest loves it. He is signing away and I have just noticed he is forming some of the words with his mouth, but not pushing air through. Maybe he will talk eventually. Little miss baby is very verbal and not so interested in looking at the computer. What an adventure this is. We do the computer program twice a day.
My daughter is 22 months and we do the program 2-3 times a day. She would do it 2-3 hours a day if I let her!
We are using the Little Reader iPad app once a day and Olivia loves it! :biggrin:
My daughter is 5 and she is very verbal but on her IEP fount out that her vocabulary is too short about 28 words is Brillkids program would help me with that??
Hi Myrna!
Do you agree with her IEP? Does she only speak 28 words?
BrillKids, as well as flashcards & other sight word activities we did made a huge difference in my dd’s. Vocabulary. most kids understand more words than they physically are able to say when they are learning to speak, but the more words they understand, the sooner they will be able to speak them once their language starts taking off.
This post may be helpful to you if you want to purchase Little Reader.
http://downsyndromeupupupandaway.blogspot.ca/2011/03/exciting-announcement-from-brillkids.html?m=0
If you start a seperate thread, you will probably get more responses to your question.
If you check out my blog you will find lots of posts on reading & speech. The link is in my siggy.
I’m a little late, but to reply to the original question…
We’re on day 55 or so now, and after trying several things, what is working well for us is doing it twice a day, 6 days a week, moving forward every day. My son is 4.5 (with DS), so he already knows what nearly all of the words mean. So I skip Picture Flash and give him the second Word Flash each time. So in the morning he gets the morning Word Flash and Multisensory sections, plus the afternoon Word Flash. So he gets each word flashed at him 4 times a day - twice in the a.m. (once in Word Flash and once in Multisensory), and the same in the afternoon.
Starting about day 30 or so, reviews are built in. They are preset to capitalize the words. At the beginning of each day, I click on Customize your Lessons, go to Playback Settings, and set Multisensory 2 (where the reviews are) to Original Case rather than Capitalize First Letter. That way when we review the words, he’s learning them the same as the first time. I think the review is essential for him to really learn them, and he needs the consistency. There are only a few words in English that start most sentences at the beginning reading level (A, An, The, This, That, Here, There) - I figure we can work later on recognizing capitalized words, right now I want him to recognize them in lower-case.
This seems to be working well. I don’t do a lot of testing, but I can tell there are some words he’s only been introduced to in Little Reader that he can recognize now (some he already knew from previous programs). In the beginning I was repeating days, figuring he would need more time to learn them. He just got bored looking at the same words and pictures for that long. I found that to keep his interest, I had to keep it moving forward. There may be a few words in a section that he hasn’t gotten by the time we’re done with it, but that’s OK for now.
On a side note, I always play it during his snack times - he pays attention better if he’s eating at the same time!
I have an 19 month old DS daughter. I am looking into getting these programs. We are doing the 2 week trial of Little Reader, Little Math, and Little Musician. I have been doing LR, LMath, and LMusician all one right after the other at breakfast and then the LR again at dinner. Do you think it is OK to do the all 3 programs right in a row like that…or should they be spread out for her? She seems to do OK as far as liking it and paying attention.
Also, I have a typical 4 year old and I was wondering if I should do all the programs with her as well, if she likes it. I was asking because of the best right brain learning up to about 3 1/2 years. But I am sure even if she doesn’t get as much out of it, if she likes it then it is worth it.