I’ve kind of missed the boat recently on some of the controversies swirling around in the media relating to Down syndrome. There has been no shortage of blogger fodder for me to sink my teeth into but we have been away on holidays and I haven’t been in the right frame of mind to weigh in heavily on the issues. I tried writing bits and pieces here and there but between intermittent wifi and holiday distractions I couldn’t get going. I did read the hoopla surrounding the comments made by Richard Dawkins and managed to fire off this tweet….
……but as I was trying to craft an intelligent and witty rebuttal to one of the biggest clangers a man of his intelligence could make, it dawned on me…. I was waaaay too busy having fun hanging out in New Zealand as a family, catching up with relatives, going on road trips, kayaking, sight seeing and sledding in the snow. You know….doing all the things that apparently shouldn’t be possible if we let ourselves be swayed by the opinions of people who have no idea what they are talking about. (In fact, according to Dawkins, I should have spared myself the “suffering” of this wonderful holiday and would have been much happier if I hadn’t been so “immoral” as to have given birth to Wade 2 and a half years ago. Gah!)
There have been so many things I wanted to expand on about these kinds of attitudes but the one concept I keep returning to is that of low expectations. The idea being that the biggest hurdle facing people with Down syndrome is the low expectations society has about them. Continue reading
Embracing Wade 