Challenges Children with Down Syndrome Face - Essay Example

"Challenges Children with Down Syndrome Face" is a remarkable example of a paper on genetics and birth defects.
All over the world, experts and stakeholders in the education sector strive to accommodate students with learning disabilities in ordinary classrooms. As a result, the world experiences a rise in the literature focusing on accommodating students with learning disabilities to ordinary classrooms. This literature provides useful information, which contains activities that improve the learning ability of people with disabilities. One of the major learning disabilities in the modern world is Down syndrome, which is the most common form of human chromosomal anomalies known by man. Down syndrome affects the learning process in an individual although there is evidence that art, especially dance, is important to people with Down syndrome.

According to Farrell and Elkins, people with Down syndrome, especially children suffering from the condition, exhibit characteristics related to “low muscle tone and muscle strength, and difficulty with gross and fine motor activities” (273). In this regard, these children will have difficulties in movement and the best way to cope with these challenges is through exercises that will help improve their muscle tone and strength in order to perform various activities. In this regard, dancing is an important activity that will help improve muscle tones, which is important for movement. In support of this argument, Fegudi noted, “The vast majority of our movement is acquired by learning, especially great effort is spent on movement skills such as dancing” (393)/

On the other hand, Farrell and Elkin pointed out that the difficulties in movement by people with Down syndrome affect specific academic skills such as handwriting. In addition, Farrell Elkin pointed, the difficulty “can also translate to major difficulty in general learning skills such as attention and visual/motor coordination” (273). In this case, it is important to develop activities that improved the coordination of these motor skills in people with Down syndrome. Hence, dancing will play this crucial role by developing a schema that involved “defining the relationships among the information involved in the production and evaluation of motor responses” (Figure 394).

In a social context, people with Down syndrome cannot keep up with their peers. In effect, this results in the exclusion from socialization with their peers. Hence, it is important to find an approach that people with Down syndrome can use for self-expression. Buckley noted, “Creative expression through the arts may be especially important for children and adults with Down syndrome” (77). An important aspect, which underlines the importance of creative arts, such as dancing, in people with Down syndrome is that they experience problems when expressing themselves through spoken language. Hence, through dancing, people with Down syndrome convey emotional expressions through dancing by relating and identifying with the music and the mood.

In conclusion, it is pertinent to point out that the arts are a crucial aspect in developing the life of an individual, especially people with Down syndrome. Case in point, dancing helps develop the necessary muscle tone and strength necessary for movement. In effect, developing muscle strength leads to the development of motor skills that improve the cognitive aspect of an individual, which is achievable through dancing. On the other hand, dancing helps people with Down syndrome to self-express since it is a challenge to self-express using spoken and written language.