Helping Your Child Cope With Their Angelman Syndrome: What You Should Know
When you have a young child that is diagnosed with a genetic and neurological condition known as Angelman syndrome, you may find yourself wondering what you can do going forward. After all, the neurology symptoms along with the developmental and other health issues that can come along with it will likely require treatments and support in order for your child to continue to grow and thrive throughout their life. Get to know a few of the ways that you can help your child cope with their Angelman syndrome so that you can be sure you are doing everything in your power to support and care for your child now and into the future.
Physical and Occupational Therapy
As your young child grows and gets to the age where they should be walking and moving around on their own, you may find that they struggle with such tasks. This stems from physical developmental issues as well as problems with balance caused by their Angelman syndrome.
A physical and occupational therapist can help your child to continue to grow and develop and get up and walking sooner rather than later. They will work with your child on strength building exercises and guided and assisted practice at walking and the associated movements. As your child develops, these therapists can also help your child develop coping strategies to deal with problems with their balance and any other struggles they may have with basic tasks of daily living.
Developing Coping Strategies For Communication Problems
In addition to possible physical developmental issues, there is also a significant chance that your child with Angelman syndrome could have communication troubles as well. Some children with Angelman syndrome tend to babble, making them difficult to understand even if they are attempting to communicate what they want or need to you.
Devices such as iPads or other tablet devices, flash cards, and even hand signals or rudimentary sign language can be used to cope with these issues and help you child with basic phrases, requests, and statements that they may need to make in everyday life. You can work with speech therapists to help you develop communication strategies with your child or work as a family to come up with these strategies. However, for a child with Angelman who babbles or has other communication struggles, visual cues are usually the easiest options.
Now that you know a few of the ways that you can help your child cope with their Angelman syndrome and some of the associated symptoms, you can be sure that you are doing everything you can to help your child continue to grow and thrive as much as possible in spite of their genetic condition.