Babies Perfect and Imperfect
by Amy Julia Becker
Copyright (c) 2008 First Things (November 2008).

Our daughter was born at 5:22 p.m. on December 30, 2005. Two hours later, a nurse called my husband out of the room. When he returned, he took my hand and said, “They think Penny has Down syndrome.” As this news began to make its way into my consciousness, we heard shouts from the room next door. Another child had been born. “She’s perfect!” someone exclaimed about that other baby. “She’s perfect!” ….Read More

Patrick Nicholson has Down Syndrome, but that hasn’t stopped him from making a difference as assistant coach for his high school football team.

CBS Evening News

And from Fox News Chicago

I’ve used that quote as an email tag line for several months. I don’t even remember where I found it but it really resonated with me. We all have differences in our looks, speech, personal habits, beliefs, likes/dislikes. But despite those differences we are all more alike than we are different. We learn to appreciate those differences in each other and it fosters compassion and tolerance.

Today I discovered the National Down Syndrome Congress (NDSC) has kicked off the “More Alike” campaign so I wanted share the information here on my blog. The theme of this awareness campaign, “We’re More Alike Than Different”, is aimed to bring a message to doctors, teachers, employers and your neighbors that people with Down syndrome are more like everybody else than they are different. People with Down syndrome love to socialize, dance, bowl, and hold down jobs. The NDSC has prepared paid advertising, literature, promotion materials and public service announcements (PSAs) that can be placed with local media outlets. There are videos and print materials available for download at the web site. I have read the materials and watched the videos and I think it is quite well done … and according to their web site there are more materials to come. Consider supporting this campaign by contacting local media outlets, your organizations and employers newsletters or use your own web site.

There is a special section of their web site dedicated to this campaign where you can learn more about supporting the organization, promote this campaign and download materials. If you are a parent, family member, professional or you care about someone with Down syndrome think about how you could use these freely available materials to help raise public awareness and support a great organization with their efforts. You can contact local media outlets, run print ad PSA’s in your own organizations newsletter or put the videos and ads up on your web site.
http://www.ndsccenter.org/morealike/

I had a huge grin the entire time I watched this video. It turns out this young man has a website/blog and is making a documentary with his brother. As I read through some of the information on Dan’s web site it turns out he must be local to us because he attended a valentines dance at my son’s school. Small world!

You can check out Dan’s blog site here http://dandrinker.blogspot.com/ or head straight to the videos here http://youtube.com/view_play_list?p=C77F474F643BC22D