Down's Child, Ideas, & Music: Call Me Irresponsible

I listened to Cruella De Vil, thinking about my son this morning. Then "Call Me Irresponsible" came to mind.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlePsVrExPo.

At this house I went to last night, the guy opened the door and right there in the corner was the painting of The Girl With The Pearl Earring. Then I recognized a Monet or...I was thinking it's not Monet, but of the red haired girl in the blue dress.

One thing, about the Down's child, that little boy was so cute. He was the most endearing and sweet. The parent and grandparent referred to their other kids by name but not him and I wondered why. I didn't know if he was theirs or not, even though he looked like the other kids. And then I said the children had such pretty complexions, and they said the two did, yes, but I was thinking of the Downs child as well. He was waving, and happy, and paddled over to me and was inspecting what was in my bag and sort of hugging and then he gave high five and low five. I paid so much attention to him, because he was so sweet, I recognized to pay attention to the older girl too, so she didn't feel left out, and she was really cute too. After seeing this Downs boy though, who was 2, I thought maybe Downs isn't exactly mental disability or low IQ in the traditional sense, it's some other kind of disordering that then can affect certain processes, because he was able to sign a ton of things that a lot of kids are not able to sign or even speak at that age, and he was walking before most kids his age. You could tell he was Downs right away because of the facial features, but I thought, instead of being a burden, which maybe it is in some ways when they're older, they must be a blessing, because they bring so much joy and affection to others. To me, that little boy seemed pretty smart...he was getting into things and curious, and could sign and walk and interact, and it was just like there is some other thing, like autistic kids have sometimes, where maybe you can't do everything others do for some reason. I might look it up today.

Well I don't know. I looked up a little information and it says there is always mental retardation of some form, but I think maybe this is true in most cases, it might affect this, but after seeing what an IQ test is all about, I don't know that a standard IQ test is adequate for determining what someone's full abilities are. IQ tests measure some things but can't measure other things, and I'm sure a lot has to do with expectations of the parents and providers and the kind of instruction someone gets, as is true for "regular" people too. With some injuries, you hear about people being able to understand everything but unable to communicate what they know and understand, like those who have had strokes, and some of these disorders, if you have a learning ability it might make it more difficult to learn some standard things the same way as everyone else, but I don't think that means someone is inherently less intelligent. I met this little boy and changed my mind about Downs. To me, he acted like any normal 2 year old, except maybe had difficulty articulating speech, so the signs worked for him. Some of these disorders make me think that in some cases, it's more like something is just trapping the intelligence that is actually there, but finding it more difficult to express.

Probably, at least this child will be fully independent when he's older. I know that's not true for all Down's kids. But with anyone, even regular kids, if you have a high standard of expectations for them, I believe most often they rise to the challenge. A lot of kids get so dumbed down and the bar is set lower, and it's assumed they cannot do more.

The little girl was really smart and picked up on my name right away. She was very cute.