Helping Families of Children with Williams Syndrome Cope with the Death of a Loved One

Karen Levine, Ph.D.; Terry Monkaba, MBA

Helping a typically developing child cope with the loss of a loved one poses enormous challenges. Helping a child with Williams Syndrome to cope with loss, and learning, as parents, how to deal with the complexities of WS in order to help both our children and ourselves can be especially difficult - for families, therapists, and teachers.

Prompt Hierarchy When Working with Children with WS

Our tendency when working with children is to use "Direct Verbal" prompts. For children with WS, this is very distracting to what they are doing because it starts a conversation/connection. Children with WS are "hard wired" for conversation/connection. Therefore, they stop what they are doing to engage in that conversation, and what they were working on previously is forgotten. 

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