Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to R McConkey.
This case study provides an individual illustration of the work of the Parental Involvement Project. A key feature of the approach used was the structured play situation. Thus, the case study also serves to demonstrate the role of structured play, and its relation to free play, in the development of a young, mentally handicapped child.
The approach used was based around the concept of a videocourse. This consisted of five videotape programmes illustrating ways thereby parents can help their child's early language development, a handbook which summarized main points and a series of specific activities which parents were expected to carry out at home after viewing each programme. In all, 33 mothers and fathers have taken the course and their reactions are very favourable. More importantly though, the course did bring about significant changes in the way they talked to their children and marked improvements in most of the children's language usage. These were maintained some 4 months after the course had ended. It is argued that videocourses are easily disseminated to other services and thus seem to be a feasible way whereby all parents can have the opportunity to get specific and detailed information on helping their child's language development.
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Play with parents is recognized as an important learning medium for all children, yet there have been remarkably few studies of mothers' spontaneous actions with toys while playing with their children and none at all with Down's syndrome infants. This was a home-based study which commenced when the infants were 12 months old, and observations were made at approximately 6-weekly intervals until the infants were 24 months old. Significant differences were noted in mothers' play patterns with different toys and over the year there were marked changes in their actions. These seemed to result from developments in the children's play with toys. The findings reinforce the competency of most mothers as interactors with, and teachers of, their children. Possible implications for intervention strategies are discussed, especially the provision of more specific information about the sequences of development in children's play.
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