Elementary School Graduation Project

Celia Huey2Celia Huey just graduated from elementary school. As part of their final year in elementary school, each student picks a topic to research over several weeks and present, called a “capstone” project. Celia presented on FTD, and answered some questions about her presentation below:

1. How did AFTD’s website materials help you?

That was my main source of information. I found a lot of good stuff on the website. It taught me about the language variant and behavioral variant. It taught me all of the basics. The website was really well-organized and I could easily find what I needed and it had a lot of excellent information. Also, if I found some information on FTD on another site, I could use the AFTD site to fact-check it.

I looked at the stories on the AFTD kids and teens pages and I thought that they were really sad.  But they helped give me a sense of what this illness is like for family members. I felt really bad for kids whose parents have FTD. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have a parent with FTD.

2. What was most interesting and surprising to you that you learned about FTD?

I think that you can get it as young as in your 30s. That’s really young! The ages in general were really surprising to me. It wouldn’t be as bad if you got something when you are old, but it’s different that you get it in your 50s when you still have young kids. That’s really terrible.

3. How did you feel learning about the illness?

I felt very bad for the people who have it and bad for their families. Before I knew much about the brain, I thought that dementia meant that you don’t have a good memory. I couldn’t imagine that something as important as your personality and behaviors could be taken away by dementia. I mean we think about our personalities as being who we are and that they can’t change. But then I learned that in FTD, your personality is also in your brain and when things go wrong in your brain, your personality can change.

4. How did people react to your presentation?

A lot of people were surprised that I would present on a topic that people didn’t know about. I thought no one would come because people didn’t know about the topic, but a lot of people came and were interested. A lot of people were surprised how much I knew about the topic since they hadn’t heard about it before and they didn’t know anything about it.

5. Would you recommend other students do presentations on FTD?

Yes. Because it is really interesting and it is really good to spread the word about FTD.

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