Alia

At the tender age of seven (7), Alia is already an achiever. She has continually reached significant milestones and is able to accomplish the incredible task of keeping up with her typical friends, despite her Down Syndrome diagnoses. She is a pure light, who brings happiness and constant laughter to those around her.
Alia is quite a jokester, when she was 2-year-old and she was already messing with us. When we were playing with shapes wooden blocks, and she was at the point of getting the shapes in the right spots every time. One day, Alia would purposely put the shapes over the incorrect shape just to hear us say “ohhhhh,” then she would put it over the right one to hear us clap, then again she would put it over the wrong shape just to get us to say “ohhhhh” again and react, like she was playing an orchestra.
As we know, it takes a village to raise a child and we have been extremely lucky to be surrounded by great support. Alia had early intervention (HOPE) in San Diego and she attended pre-school with Ms. Lupita and her loving family who taught her treated her as one of their own.
When we moved to Henderson, we were lucky to be able to get Alia into the UNLV pre-school program (the school that provides training to other schools regarding inclusion) with Ms. Yamila. At the beginning of the pandemic, we knew we had to get into an in-person school and we were fortunate when we found LMCA. With the love and determination of Mrs. Matherly, in Kindergarten, Alia was the able to learn and gained a solid foundation of reading, writing, math and the love of God.
Currently, Alia is attending Pinecrest Academy, and we are incredibly thankful for the ongoing support of the teachers, staff and special education department. We are blessed for the support of Principal, Ms. Wendy Shirey, Alia’s amazing teachers, Ms. Wallace and Ms. Hoffman.
Alia loves swimming and attends Water Wings Swim School weekly. Additionally, she is exploring her love for music with the weekly lessons of piano, guitar, and drums at Sports Social. Taking after her father, Alia loves to sing karaoke and her father wrote the song just for her, “I see you!”, to see a clip of Alia dancing and having fun in the video, click here.