Address details


Down Syndrome NSW
Level 6/410 Church St, North Parramatta
9am-5pm Monday - Thursday
T: 9841 444


Friday 3 January 2014

Weekend reading and viewing: 4th - 5th January 2014


After Leukemia, New Year’s Lipstick-Marked Beginnings
Cristina Nehring, Parenting - Motherlode (New York Times blog), 1st January 2014
... Why should I be sad that my girl did not sit up at so-and-so many months, or walk at a year and a half, or talk soon after? Dice listens, she laughs, she caresses; she seems extremely happy. All around us parents mutter about their kids growing up too fast. That is one problem we don’t have. We are taking our bloody good time ...

"Cheers to an awesome Mom"
Margaret Bender, The Ordinary Life of an Extraordinary Girl, 20th December 2013
After three days of decompression, Alex the college student has finally realized something I have been trying to tell her for 20 years…I am an awesome Mom!

Alternative therapies for kids with Down syndrome
Maureen Wallace, She Knows - Parenting, 20th December 2013
Medical experts and parents share tips for spotting potential vs. propaganda. Parents of kids with Down syndrome are a ripe audience for marketing ploys, and of course we'd do anything for our kids if we thought it would help.

A year to remember for Bath's face of Marks and Spencer Seb White
The Bath Chronicle, 24th December 2013
... Seb is now in Year 1 at St John’s RC Primary School, in Oldfield Park, and to his classmates he is different – not because he has Down’s Syndrome, but because he is famous ...

Oh Come, Oh Come
Dave Hingsburger, Rolling Around in My Head, 23rd December 2013
Yesterday afternoon we went to a small Christmas event in our neighbourhood ... This year, like last year, I saw a man with Down Syndrome attending the event along with his mother. She has aged a lot in the last year and is now using a manual chair, which he pushed with great care ... I heard an elderly woman say to her husband, "I don't know why she would bring him to something like this, it takes away from the spirit of the event." ... I silently screamed inside ... I rolled up and said, "I'm not going to make a scene, but I'm going to tell you that I think you are a bigot and a bully ...  if I hear you say that kind of thing one more time, there will be a scene."

What I think ... what I can say
Mohammed Ghonemi, Augmentative Communication Program at Boston Children's Hospital, 27th December 2013
So many families who come to the Augmentative Communication Program at Boston Children's Hospital from the Down Syndrome Program at Boston Children's Hospital know this scenario all too well but we thought the graphic could be a great reminder for extended family at holiday time to assume competence, even if it is not readily evident.

Parents of Children with Down Syndrome Share Their Hopes for 2014
Eliana Tardio, Living and Loving with Down Syndrome, 27th December 2013
... There are hundreds of thousands of families with children with special needs who decide to live with less in response to the lack of options for keeping up with a regular job. So I asked some of these parents what they hoped for in the new year ...

Wow, He Said
Dave Hingsburger, Rolling Around in My Head, 31st December 2013
... I was just in conversation with a man with Down Syndrome who was talking with me, struggling with the fact that he was attracted to, and had kissed, another man. He thought he was in love. He was aching with pain, it was all wrong, he was dirty and sinful ... I couldn't bear remembering the pain of feeling shamed for feeling loved ... So, I said, "You know I'm gay, right?"... We then chatted a bit and he learned that I lived a regular life, in a regular apartment and did regular things. I just did them with another man. He asked not a single question about sex, he just wanted to know about the pattern of our lives ...


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