31 for 21: Internet Woes

Here is the conclusion of the documentary My Favorite Child. It is very powerful - a beautiful family's story of love. Looking at this, one can think how far we have come. That is true to an extent. Institutions in the USA are not the norm anymore. We have early intervention. We even have a Down Syndrome Awareness Month, Buddy and Awareness Walks, and 31 for 21 blogging challenges. Karen Gaffney makes the news for great accomplishments (more about that later). But I can't help but to think how far we have to go. Sorry, maybe it is because of my fears and worries for my daughter. It is all about perspective - I am new to this journey, so I am more about this side of things maybe.

As you know, for this month I am trying to include a clip with every post to give an additional voice to DS Awareness. I know I am obsessed with these things. Well to do this, I have been searching on the internet daily for any new or old clips out there. This in and of itself is an intense experience. For every awesome clip or stories related to DS you find, there are tons of truly disturbing, insensitive clips. And then don't even get me started on the comment sections. Most of the time you can tell from the title of the clip how it is going to go, but not always..... You open it up. And then it hits you like a slap in the face.

The My Favorite Child documentary talks about the importance of looking at an individual with DS as a person - sure the institutions are not as common anymore and we made progress there - but sometimes I wonder if we have really made progress in looking at individuals with developmental disabilities and truly seeing the person there. We may not have the obvious things anymore - the huge looming buildings, but we sure do have a lot of subtle things. So many people turn their head and don't even look at the problems out there. This is why hearing our story and experience is so very important.



-Karyn