The Perfect Gift Idea, Nutritional Guide for Infants, & Eliminating Cognitive Deficits in Down Syndrome

This is one of my favorite resources for struggling readers and for children who have difficulty connecting to books.

Put Me In The Story will personalize books for a child by adding their name and photo to the story. Genius!

This is my go-to recommendation when parents ask me for holiday or birthday gift ideas for their hard-to-buy-for children. No batteries required.

There’s A Monster At The End of This Book was my favorite book as a child, and I’m tempted to buy a personalized copy just for old times’ sake.

Here’s a free and useful guide to infant nutrition provided by the US Department of Health and Human Services.

This is an excellent overview for feeding therapists and new parents. Some highlights:

• An overview of caloric needs of infants up to 12 months of age
• A breakdown of vitamin macronutrient requirements, including sources
• Advice for meeting dietary requirements in formula-fed and breast-fed infants
• A good overview of the significance of major vitamins for child development

Researchers at UCSF and Baylor University have recently discovered that they can reverse the learning deficits in mice with Down Syndrome.

They were surprised to find that improving the production of a protein in the hippocampus made the learning deficits in affected mice disappear.

While this treatment has not been tested in humans, it opens the door for the development of drugs that could target similar pathways in people with Down Syndrome.

This is a very compelling study, and an area of research to keep an eye on.

If we could treat the core deficits of Down Syndrome with medical and therapeutic approaches, we could possibly eliminate the associated cognitive disabilities altogether.

You can read more about the research here and here.