Having a child that is different
We have three children, my husband and I. Three absolutely perfect children indeed. The oldest was born in 2004 and came out after commissioning. He was strong and awake as far as we newly hatched parents could see. Seven years later, our youngest was born. As powerful and lively as the first, but perhaps a little louder. Our middle child, on the other hand, came quietly and prudently at midsummer 2008 and with her came a very special and new role for us parents that we had never imagined how it could be. Our little girl had the slightly crooked eyes, the low muscle tone, the clear four-finger groove in the hands and on the feet that are so typical of the people who have an extra chromosome on the 21st chromosome pair in all cells in their body. Our daughter was born with Down syndrome. I saw it right away but it was not completely obvious to the staff at The maternity ward. Maybe it's better to let the parents find out for themselves before talking about something different. That process is important. In any case, I could imagine that.
When faced with the fact that this will be a different journey, it is dizzying. You stand there with your newborn baby and see tangles all the way and then you worry about her life as a 50-year-old on her very first birthday. How weak and tired she was…. And we were with your working parents with everything that that would mean. Every now and then a sorrow washed over us. A grief over the child who was not the child we thought.
Somewhere we had to get through that year when all the holidays and seasons have to pass before you move on and look forward to coming to the conclusion that -Yes, this was exactly the child we would have. No other child. Of course! One realizes somewhere that it is possible to live like this too. It did not turn out as we thought but it turned out to be something else and I just want to say that it was not so stupid at all.
Now, many years later, I see the enormous advantage of her having a visible functional variation. Expectations of her abilities have been low from others and since you could immediately see that she was different, the "demands" from the environment also became on another level. In this I am very divided because today I feel that the unpretentious care will be an excuse for mis-prioritized money and resources. On the other hand, we who are lucky enough to be close by have never doubted her development potential. On the contrary! It is not our job to limit her without supporting development and ensuring that she is allowed to reach her full potential and the only thing that really stops her progress is the prejudices that exist. Prejudices that are believed to be well-meaning but that actually set up barriers for the future.
