Went to karate last night and saw that one of our girls, Sarah, had been graded this past Sunday. She now has her orange belt and can start learning the advanced techniques with the rest of us! She comes every Friday night and takes on board any advice she is given, practices at home and comes back even better than before! Why is this so special? Because Sarah has Down's Syndrome - yet she is a dedicated young lady who always puts in 110%. Just goes to show that you shouldn't let a disability, intellectual or otherwise, keep you from achieving your dreams.
Well done to Sarah, that is lovely. And to your community for supporting that inclusive activity. The world is not so bad, is it.
Yep, she is doing well. We also have a blind woman taking part - she's a green belt. She has very low vision, and brings her adorable guide dog with her every lesson, but she studies hard as well.
For the most part, it seems that the only limits people with disabilities have, are the one other folks place on them. It's nice to read about stuff like this.
Thats really awesome! Just told my daughter your story,she's a red belt,she told me to tell your daughter that she's proud of her!
Absolutely! And this success can raise her self-esteem and make a huge difference in her willingness to try more new things. . .and succeed at many of these. I'm glad she has someone (and probably several people in your group) to recognize and praise her achievement.
So true!!! This is the reason why so many more people with Down's Syndrome are so much higher functioning at this time than they were 30 or 50 years ago. A short story: I was a social worker, case manager for an average of 82 (mostly adults) people with developmental disabilities (autism, down's syndrome, cerebral palsy, general mental retardation, etc). One of my sweetest client was a 52 year old woman with Down's syndrome (this is considered an already advanced age for people with that disabilities as they tend to die young). She lived at home with her mom, and worked in a sheltered workshop. She seemed to perform a LOT better at the workshop, where she was given the opportunity to learn new skills and to make a little money, and where she had even demonstrated some leadership among her peers, than at home, where she was basically silent, lonely, and totally dependent on her mother. As her case manager, I suspected that she was capable of a lot more independence in her own home, and I asked her if she would like to learn to do things to help her aging (85 year old) mother. She was enthusiastic about it and mentioned that she would love to bake a cake for her own birthday. When we talked to her mom about it, she was very negative and stated that my client could never learn to even make a sandwich, much less make a cake! So I asked her mom what her routine was when she baked a cake for her daughter and whether she had noticed that her daughter might have been interested in helping her in small ways. The mom immediately stated: "Absolutely not! She just stand there watching me, and all she can do is gather all the ingredients and set them on the table for me, then she just hands them to me one by one, as I need them! I could never trust her to make a cake!" It was immediately obvious that. . .the hardest part of making the cake was not to turn on the mixer to mix the ingredients, but to remember and measure all those ingredients and to put them together in proper order. . .which is exactly what my client was already doing. . .although she was not given permission to touch the mixer! So, we started slowly (a special teacher met with her every week) and within 3 months my client was making a full meal for her mom once a week (under her teacher's supervision), and within a year, she had taken over the kitchen! This allowed her to be ready to move into her own place (with a paid roommate to help her and assure her safety) two years later when her mom passed away. I just felt so bad that such a bright, happy woman had spent her whole life being thought of by those who loved her most as incapable of any independence!
I will say that I have had some negative experiences with Down's people in the past (notably a 50 something woman in the supermarket who decided it would be fun to ram her trolley into my ankles, causing them to bruise and bleed) but after having had a few classes with Sarah, I think most of them are actually fun loving, independent people. I used to go shopping and see a man in his 20's doing his shopping with his little basket, just gathering items from the shelf. They might be intellectually disabled but they seem to be responsible enough to remain somewhat independent, in the sense they can look after their own needs, pay their bills etc and turn up every week to a sport that will only benefit them, and provide them with much enjoyment. Here's to Sarah's green belt - and I wouldn't be surprised if she makes green before I do!
