Your Student, Michael, Is a 16-Year-Old Boy with Down Syndrome

Multiple Choice

Your student, Michael, is a 16-year-old boy with Down syndrome. You have been seeing him for occupational therapy (OT) since he was 3 years old. His mother would like him to be independent with dressing in the morning. But she says she still has to help him zip his coat and get his shoes on. Sometimes she even has to help him snap his jeans after using the bathroom. What do you tell her?

A) "Michael and I will work harder on fine motor skills. I will ask OT to revise his goals."
B) "Michael still has a hard time with fine motor skills, even though we've been working on them for a long time. We might want to consider adapting those tasks for him, so he can be independent."
C) "Michael is lazy. He is a teenage boy, and he does not want to work on OT anymore. All he wants to do is talk about are trucks and girls."
D) "You shouldn't help Michael so much. Let him struggle with these tasks, so he will learn that he has to do them himself."