Each child with Down Syndrome has wonderful, God-given potential. As a mom I want to help my child reach that potential. For my child’s sake I reach for the stars in her development. My child may not swing from the same star as another with Down Syndrome. Yours may swing higher and mine may swing lower, but surely both will swing higher than if we had never reached.
Articles in this section deal with Attitudes and Expectations for our children with Trisomy 21. Several of the articles speak of the surprising joy we find with the gift of this child.
Here is My Personal Long-Winded Story: I was 38 when I fianally decided i was mature and committed enough to have a child. My son was diagnosed with Trisomy 21 when he was a year old. And do you know what? I could not care less that he has had one blood test that people in the child development field need to use to categorize, stereotype, pre-judged and pidgeon-hole him into their concepts of what a child with his diagnosis has or is typically associated with. I am a University Graduate, Visual Artist, my husband is a Business College graduate. We are educated people. I studied up to third year child development psychology in University. My son plays amazing blues harmonica along with Muddy Waters, he plays drums and follows the beat with Led Zeppelin and anyone other music you put on for him to play to. He plays his own songs on piano. He comes from a very musical family. He is gifted musically. I do not know any other three year olds with one blood-test that says they have Trisomy 21 that can play whole songs of blues harmonica and bend notes on the blues harp as good as any seasoned blues harp player. What I have learned as a parent is that I will never listen to or take to heart the negative prognoses or totally negative diagnoses that come from some so-called educated child expert professionals that simply need parents to believe that they themselves cannot possibly help their child without “professional intervention”. They need parents to believe their child will never succeed or thrive without their so-called “professional” (what I like to call interference) intervention. All it boils down to is that they need to keep their jobs. They need to keep that government funding river flowing to them. Let me ask you this, if your child is highly functioning, is very bright, is meeting all the so-called “normal” child developmental marker time frames and people from various organizations that depend totally on government funding to keep their jobs pressure you to have them involved, do you actually listen or trust their opinions or do you do what I have done and worked and paid for a private speech therapist, paid for day-care myself and treated my son like he is any other child to watch him blossom and thrive into such a beautiful hilarious entertainer? Should I have condemned him to being involved with those government funded “professionals” and let them raise him in their “institutionalized environment where he would be categorized, and stereotyped and never allowed to challenge their idiotic “text-book” stereotypes and be a famous musician as I already know he will be????? I am smarter than they think I am and so is my beautiful son who is more intelligent at 3 years old than every single “expert” government worker supposedly educated in child development and in the supposed position to convince all parents of children with differences that they have to be involved. I’m here to say all they are doing is protecting their cushy government paycheques and jobs. The people we had “assigned ” to my son could not care less how funny, how musically talented, how highly funtioning he was. They wrote negative reports because he did not like the nasty old hag (who should have retired and did not even like kids who they assigned to him). Hell, I didn’t like her either. They wrote negative reports no matter how great he did with their silly “stereotype” testing and I was there to witness it. I can’t even imagine what they would say about a child without Trisomy 21 just to keep their government funding. That is why I will continue to work with and provide my son with whatever his issues or needs may be. Imagine that, a parent of a child with a blood test that says he’s “different” actually loving, supporting and totally enjoying being wih him. That must just be totally mystifying to government funded union workers out to protect their future government funded jobs.
Thanks for your encouraging words….I pray my beautiful Granddaughter, who lost her last child and today her son is born and the nurses have said he has Downs, but the results of the test isn’t back; I pray she has your guts and intelligence with raising her son regardless of the results of the test……..