Alessio - A Success Story

Alessio was born in Italy and his father immediately learned that his son had the characteristics of Down syndrome. When Alessio was three months old, the diagnosis of Down syndrome was confirmed by chromosomal studies. He was small in size and had difficulty feeding and gaining weight.

In the first years, Alessio grew and developed but very slowly. He crawled when he was almost a year old, and he walked just before he was two years old. His language and manual skills were far below those of his peers.

His parents investigated local developmental centers, but opted to stimulate Alessio at home. Following their natural instincts, they designed their own program for Alessio, despite the poor prognosis from their physicians.

One months before Alessio's third birthday, the family came to The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential in Philadelphia for an evaluation and solution to Alessio's problems. The evaluation of the three-year-old boy revealed the following: he could not run; he spoke at the eighteen-month-old level, in couplets, not in conversational sentences; he had hand function at the one-year-old level; and he understood far less than his peers.

Alessio's parents were worried about his future education. The staff taught them an Intensive Treatment Program to be accomplished at home in order to speed Alessio's neurological development. After three months of achieving this rigorous program, seven days a week, twelve hours a day, Alessio was reading.

For almost three years the parents continue to work every day with Alessio on his intensive home program, which included masking, patterning, reading, and encyclopedic information, in addition to a physical program of crawling, creeping, walking, and running.

When Alessio was five years old, he was reading library books independently. His comprehension, judgement, and independence were at the six-year-old level, and his spoken vocabulary was above age level. He could run 6.4 kilometers nonstop and was beginning to write. His parents decided that he was ready to enter first grade in a regular classroom with his peers. Alessio entered the first grade with average and above-average abilities. He was advanced in reading, memorization, and speaking vocabulary. His writing by dictation was better than that of his classmates. Alessio's mathematics, class participation, and behavior were equal to that of his peers, and he had made many friends.

His teacher wrote: "He is a good student, affectionate with friends and his teacher. He participates voluntarily with class work and other activities. He has notable memorization. In oral expression he demonstrates a mastery in language and richness in vocabulary... he is secure in both reading and writing."

He graduated from first grade and entered regular second grade. A few months later the staff of The Institutes acknowledged the family's years of extraordinary accomplishment and Alessio's social, physical, and intellectual excellence. Alessio graduated from The Institutes Intensive Treatment Program, his life forever changed thanks to his parents' intervention and his own hard work.