DS-the next generation.

Several different articles and writings had got me thinking about how people with DS have changed from those early "institution" days through to now.

I think it's safe to say that anyone who may be say, 25 or older, has a cetain image of what DS means in their minds. I know the image very well, it's the image I saw as I held my minutes old son. I looked into his eyes and saw DS. I never had to be told "officially". I knew when I first saw him. Of course I hoped against hope that I was wrong, but the "talk" with the doctor a few hours later came as no surprise.

Anyway, that image I mentioned. Is it the same as your image? Overweight person, protruding tongue, drool, bad haircut, hunched over looking downward? Is that who you imagine when you think DS? I think about those people now and then. Think about the way they had to live. They were each an expression of someone else's ignorance, not their own. They had no investments made in them. No investments of time, education, not even the investment of a proper visit to the damned barber. We weighed them down with pre conceived notions. We weighed them down with the words we used to describe them. We squashed out the joy and the self esteem and molded them into what our limited minds imagined. We heaped indignities upon them and then laughed at how they all turned out.

Then somewhere, a parent looked at their baby and said no. Said no to what was standard procedure and said yes to their child. That is when things started changing for kids with DS. That's when a few brave people started to see the possibilities and not the frailties. That's when parents before me started to refuse the fate that had fallen on too many children already.

So many things are different now. So much progress made by educators, medical treatments, parents and by the kids themselves. What discoveries we have made in the process, so many wonderful surprises.

Yet time seems to stand still in so many medical offices. Those "institution" children still remain and dwell in the medical community. Yes, in offices filled with the cutting edge of technology, filled with machines and labs and medicines, those kids from the 1960's still hang in the air.

Ironic isn't it? A doctor leaves one room holding 2006 test results, then enters another room to expound 1960's wisdom. It's too bad that our medical community can't be updated as sleekly as our technology. I don't know if doctors choose not to know or are really so naive, but within their minds sit that old image, stubbornly stuck, still hunched over with sad and outdated expectations.

The good news is that parents of kids with DS all know better now. Know that doctor is a fool. The sad news is, newly diagnosed parents drag home an image that is wrong, and suffer for it. They can't imagine the good doctor being wrong. They saw his downcast eyes, they heard the "I'm sorry" and for them, and their child, it's all over. What a sad story that doesn't have to be that way.

I wish for every parent finding out their child has DS, either pre-natally or after birth, hope. I wish them a shred of hope for their son or daughter. That hope may drive them to the truth, to find out more, to learn the realities. To see their family as complete, to picture their lives full. They should see the happiness, the successes, the normalacy, the love. What they get after is even more, but you can't show love in a tangible way, it can only be felt, received and returned in a way that changes your life.

Hope.