Educational Priorities for Individuals with Angelman Syndrome: A Study of Parents’ Perspectives

The priorities of parents of children with intellectual disability should be considered when selecting educational goals. To this end, 77 parents of children with Angelman syndrome (AS) completed a questionnaire that involved rating their child’s abilities and prioritizing educational goals across a range of adaptive and maladaptive domains. A factor analysis was used to determine if parents prioritized the training of skills in which their child showed a major, moderate or minor deficit. Results suggest that skills related to communication, recreation, self-care, motor and academic domains are high priorities. Further, parents of children under the age of 18 indicated that communication skills were a high priority, whereas parents of adults also prioritized daytime activity skills (e.g., swimming and cycling). Training for communication, recreational and ingestion skills was prioritized when children showed emerging skills; training for motor skills was prioritized when children were highly dependent; and training for self-care skills was prioritized when children were more independent in the self-care domain. In terms of behavioral problems, sleep and eating problems were prioritized.