Karina has Down Syndrome - Cheryl Rogers, Gun Dolva > Reviews > Karina

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yes

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This is one of the books in the further reading section of 'A Career in Speech and Language Therapy' Jannet A Wright and Myra Kersner. I ordered ‘Karina has Down Syndrome’ from Amazon along with a few other books from the further reading section in ‘A Career in SALT’, as I wanted to learn more around the subject of Speech and Language Therapy.

~ The Authors ~
Gun Dolva met Cheryl Rogers while studying Zoology at the University of Western Australia. Gun is Karina’s mother and lives with her family in Australia.

~ The Book ~
This book is a personal account of the day-to-day family life of looking after a child with Down Syndrome.

'We mourn the death of the child we had assumed I had given birth to, yet dearly love the baby we have. We want our child, but don't want her to have Down Syndrome...'

This is the opening sentence of the book. I think this introduces you nicely to what the book is about. It also shows that people face difficult news everyday, but just because it wasn’t the news you were expecting, doesn’t mean it can’t be good.

I found the book was easy to read and I felt a bit emotionally attached to the family in the book, especially Karina. The book describes the first six years of Karina’s life. It is written in a very simple yet effective style, a lot of which is from Gun’s diary. The chapters are quite short which also add to the easy reading. I read this book in about 2 or 3 hours reading time in a few sittings. I would have read it in one sitting if I had had the time.

The book is written in first person (Gun, Karina’s mother) and I think this flows really well. Karina’s father also writes one of the chapter’s. I thought it was nice to read the opinion of Karina’s father as it made a bit of a change from the opinion of her mother.

I help out in the special needs department at my school and there are two students in my class with Down Syndrome so I already have some experience and knowledge about the condition. However, this experience is obviously in a professional setting so it was nice to read something about it in the informal situation of home life. Also the students I work with are 16 years old and this book is about a young child. I think this has helped me gain knowledge about a child with Down Syndrome that I hope will be useful when training and practising as a Speech and Language Therapist.

The book describes the developmental stages Karina reaches. As these are later than a typical child, I felt really pleased when she reached them. I felt as though someone was telling me about a child I knew, and I felt almost as emotional about it. There is also information about the professional help that Karina received in the early years of her life. I think this will be helpful to new parents of a child with special needs. There are contact details in the back of the book for various associations. These are British contact details despite the book being Australian ( I presume this has been changed to be helpful to British parents)

Karina has an older sister and a younger brother and I enjoyed reading about the family as a whole even though the book is focused mainly on Karina. It was nice to read how the family coped and I enjoyed reading about things they did together.

~ What did I think and would I recommend it? ~

I really enjoyed reading this book. It was nicely written and I was interested in learning about the development of this lovely little girl. I think this book is suitable for a wide range of readers. I think it is important that people understand more about conditions they have little experience with as if they ever meet someone with that condition they are a little bit more prepared about what to expect. A lot of people at school seem uncomfortable around the special needs students at school and I think this due to a lack of knowledge and understanding about the conditions.

I think this book will be of interest to anyone who:

• Has a child with special needs (to see how other parents cope)
• Intends to or works with special needs children
• Wants to read a heart warming true story about a lovely girl’s physical and intellectual development.

Jessica Kingsley Publishers

£9.95 new from Amazon – I think this is quite expensive as it is just a thin paperback but I was using a voucher I had earned from a survey site so it didn't bother me too much.

All in all a heart warming, enjoyable light read. Recommended.