We recently bought this book: “Understanding Williams Syndrome: Behavioral Patterns and Interventions” by Eleanor Semel and Sue R. Rosner as the title and description on Amazon made it sound like just what we wanted to read – an expert text on Williams Syndrome but also pitched at parents and carers.
It also promised to both describe the problems and appropriate interventions so this sounded just to good to be true, like having an expert in your living room!
I couldn’t wait for it to be delivered so I ordered the Kindle version and downloaded it directly to my iPad, brilliant! I can’t recommend this technology highly enough… if you’ve never tried using an iPad, you might want to think about it… but that’s a separate post!
So, back to the book. Simply browsing the Table of Contents you could see it was a weighty tome. There were introductory chapters before we really got to the core content. Different chapters were headed: Language Skills and Problems. Intervention Approaches for Language Problems. Perceptual and Motor Performance. Specific Aptitudes. Maladaptive Behaviors. Intervention Approaches for Maladaptive Behaviors before the final Summary and Conclusions… This was looking really promising.
I’ve certainly devoured the Introduction and Foreword. It is a fascinating summary, describing the syndrome but with a sensitivity to the fact that there are real people involved here.
On getting into the book I see each chapter is divided into many subsections, the headings don’t always make for easy reading – “It’s English, Jim, but not as we know it!” comes to mind – but, I approached this with the attitude that there’s nothing wrong with expanding your comfort zone or learning new things. Mind you, it’s also true that I’m highly motivated (I’m living with Linda remember) and also have a background in research.
It certainly is written by the experts in their fields and this bit will take a little longer to digest….
So far I can say that I’m very happy with this purchase but I don’t know if it would suit everyone.
I’ll get busy reading and let you know what I think!