For those of you with younger kids with DS, I just want to say a word about my daughter Dusty, who is about to turn 19, and is happily finishing her second week at College of Marin, just north of San Francisco. She went through the Santa Monica Schools in southern California. At every level, it was the other kids who were the strongest force. She's a mimic. What she needed the very most was good old average role models, plus strategies for her to monitor her own behavior.
Kids come through.
They problem solve, they help out, they empathize. I remember in the 3rd grade, there was one little guy who organized a posse which flung into action if anyone tried to tease Dusty, because she was a member of his class and he wasn't going to allow it. This guy eventually dropped out and joined a gang, but he was always good to Dusty. Well, the students at the community college are very nice to her today. She's not taking calculus and French.