The excerpt below is from our webinar Challenging Behaviors of Children with DMD. Thank you to psychologist Dr. Natalie Truba of Nationwide Children’s Hospital for being our guest speaker. Click here to listen to the podcast episode.
The school setting can be incredibly overwhelming for kids with Duchenne. They’re just asked to do things that are really unrealistic at times…
There’s a lot of physical demands associated with completing schoolwork that become very hard for kids with Duchenne. Sometimes, teachers just don’t think about that.
For example, when it comes to writing, the kids need to know how to write, right? And if there’s an assignment that is specifically a writing assignment, then they need to show you that they know it. But – for example – do they need to learn cursive? Is it worth the battle of learning cursive? Do we really need to beat into them cursive?
Sometimes teachers are unwilling to modify writing demands for homework assignments. If it’s not a writing assignment, then they shouldn’t have to do their answers in written format – there are several other ways they can show that they know the material besides writing it. Really, the writing sometimes gets in the way of them doing their work.
Do they need to write? Yes. But can they do their work on the computer and instead of writing it by hand or writing it in cursive?
The same thing goes with other demands that inherently exhaust the student with Duchenne. They need accomodations and we just need to get creative.
