My little brother has Down Syndrome. Maybe you think you know him. I bet you don't. I'm not sure any of us really do. I know the common beliefs about people with DS....."Oh they are so sweet," you say. "They just love EVERYONE," you say. "They are just so social..."....uh huh. That makes me giggle a little.
Is my brother Landon sweet? Oh yeah. he has the kindest of hearts without any real malice toward anyone but the band Sugarland. For some reason, he HATES Sugarland. So sweet...until you piss him off. And he isn't going to let you know that you have pissed him off until later when he writes you a strongly worded memo. I'M NOT KIDDING. Or when he was really little, he might sneak up behind you with a bat...just ask my dad. And he has no use for your stinking apology. So save it. And if he does something wrong, he will NOT apologize for it if he thinks what he did was justified....no matter WHAT you do to him. If it is his turn to use the computer and you don't get up, he MIGHT push you outta the chair...I'm just sayin'.
My brother LOVES Michael Jackson. He even used to have a red satin jacket with a white glove on the back. When the allegations of child molestation first came out, he was just a wreck about it. At one point, my parents were awakened by the police banging on the door at 5 in the morning because Landon had called 911 so the police could go to California to help MJ. Totally sweet (and totally freaking hilarious). My parents were NOT impressed. But can you REALLY be mad? Nope.
My brother can be Mister Sunshine until you interrupt his routine. He comes downstairs every night at 10 pm to tell my mom she needs to go upstairs....it is her bedtime and HIS time to roam. He has always been a nighttime roamer. It was so bad when he was really little that my parents had to resort to desperate measures to keep him in his room. My brother was terrified of the vacuum cleaner so they had to put the vacuum outside his bedroom door....he was incapable of walking past it. That eventually evolved into using the model T-Rex my dad made for Treye but inadvertently made it so scary that they couldn't put it in the boys' room. Dude, it had REALLY scary fiery eyes. I don't know what the crap Dad was thinking.
Landon is very social too. He loves people and talking. He is very curious about things he doesn't understand. He wants to be in the thick of things until you start an activity with which he is uncomfortable or that he doesn't know how to do. Those things will cause him to stalk off to his bedroom and hide. He is also Mr. Jealousy if people pay too much attention to my brother Treye's kids and not enough to him. And he DOESN'T like everyone. I have found that he is a spot-on judge of character. If he doesn't like someone and actively tries to avoid that person, I do too. And he will not tolerate someone he doesn't like in order to be polite.
Why am I telling you all this stuff? Because I want people to understand that people with DS are NOT all the same. They are as different as we so-called normal people are. They have the same range of emotions; they are NOT always happy. I wish I had a dollar for every time I have heard that. My brother feels happy, angry, sad (although he NEVER cries for any reason...), jealous, bored, and even quite often embarrassed. He is a whole person. He has a whole inner self, just like the rest of us....it is just that, no matter how much you might want to know what's going on in there, he ISN'T going to tell you. But make no mistake, he has all his own thoughts, desires, dreams, and ideas. He sets goals for himself. He continues to try to educate himself about the world. But he is NOT a cookie-cutter style person with DS. There is no such thing.
So when you meet someone with DS, please don't assume you know what that person is all about. Take time to find out.
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