In his relatively short life, nineteen-year-old David has impacted and had a very positive influence on the lives of his four siblings, as well as his nieces, nephews, and the hundreds of children he has worked and interacted with at the family’s childcare center. If not for David, none of his siblings would have had the NACD jumpstart on their lives, nor would their children. If not for David, they would not have had his mother’s model of hope, faith, and tenacity as she worked and continues to help David be all he can be, or David’s model of perseverance, compassion, and selfless hard work.

Today David works at the childcare center about 15 hours a week and is expanding his duties and hours. In addition, he still willingly and happily does his daily NACD program. David presently plays with and entertains the children and serves the toddlers their lunches and takes care of a variety of little jobs that are needed around the center. He has a large social community through his family, coworkers, and of course all the kids, and is also involved with Special Olympics.

One of David’s significant contributions is to the children at the center. Young children accept most everyone for who they are. They’re not just color blind, they are “different” blind, they just accept people as they are. David just being there, just another person, a person who plays with them, entertains them, and even feeds them, teaches them to value him for who he is. Hopefully these early lessons will have a positive impact on the rest of their lives. As David is demonstrating, you don’t need to be a super star to have value, to contribute, and make other lives fuller and better.

Click here to read more about David’s story and watch his video

Tragically many in the world have not learned the lessons the toddlers in the childcare center are learning and have not learned to value those with exceptionalities, including those with Down syndrome. Counties are starting to “proudly” announce their success in eliminating Down syndrome. Many countries now are making a concerted effort to eliminate Down syndrome. Prenatal screenings are encouraged, if not pushed, for the express purpose of identifying babies with Down syndrome so they can be aborted. Today in countries like Iceland and Denmark they are coming close to aborting 100% of Down syndrome fetuses. In the United States the rate is about 67%.

Some of my favorite people have Down syndrome. I see them as wonderful, valuable, contributing members of our families and communities. Our families around the world adore their children with Down syndrome and can’t imagine what their lives would be without their precious child. Most of those born with Down syndrome have the potential to live full, happy lives and contribute to their families and communities.

We at NACD have been working for decades with many thousands of families who have children and now adults with Down syndrome. It is tragic that babies are being aborted out of ignorance. It is also tragic that most individuals with Down syndrome are not really being given a real opportunity to become all that they could be because of perceived limitations. The baby born today with Down syndrome can become a happy, fulfilled, gainfully employed adult; can get a higher education; can drive a car; can live independently and live a full, rich, wonderful life—if given a real opportunity. But, as David demonstrates, even those who do not achieve such a level can be happy and help enrich and contribute to the lives of all the rest of us.

There is a place for us all. Don’t be afraid to move over a tad, offer a hand, and make room for a wonderful person who has an extra chromosome.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 34 No.7, 2021 ©NACD

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Today is marked as a day to raise international awareness of Down syndrome and to help advocate for the rights of people with Down syndrome.

Having worked with many thousands of individuals with Down syndrome from all over the world for over fifty years, NACD needs to begin a discussion of rights, with the right to be perceived as unique individuals with unlimited potential as a primary focus.

Perception of potential is used to define what constitutes an appropriate opportunity. If you do not have a vision of what can be, your limited vision will dictate what will be.

Individuals with Down syndrome can live a “normal” life, including being educated and going beyond high school to college, trade schools, and other specialized training. They can drive cars, live independently, have decent jobs, and good social lives. And they can fulfill dreams if given the opportunity. But the first requirement is the vision of what can be.

I’m writing this having just finished a Skype evaluation with a five-year-old little girl with Down syndrome, who has been on an NACD program since she was ten months old. Ioana, who lives in Romania, is reading and doing math on about a high second grade level and loving it. Her processing and short-term and working memory are above many of her typical peers. All of her functions are equivalent to her typical peers. But Ioana is not a miracle. Where she is today is the reflection of the vision that we all have for her and the opportunities that we have provided. Ioana is not alone. We have children all over the world doing this well because we, NACD and the families, have the vision of what can be and are providing the opportunities so it can be.

One of my all-time favorite NACD videos was one made by one of our children (who happens to have Down syndrome), Arianna, who lives in Barcelona. When she was 17 years old, she approached her mother and told her she wanted to make a video so that people could understand Down syndrome better and provide them with some insight into the life of a teen with Down syndrome. Arianna wrote her own script and filmed her presentation in English, Spanish and Catalan, the three languages that she speaks, reads and writes fluently. As you will see, she is a very intelligent child with a message that should actually resonate with everyone. You do not have to be perfect.

Today Arianna has a very full life and is in her 4th year of trade school in administration and customer service. She is presently doing her internship as a receptionist in a psychologist’s office. She is a very competent young lady. We are very proud of Arianna, as we are of our other children and families around the world.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 34 No.3 2021 ©NACD

Start with the vision!

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NACD has worked with Arianna, a teen with Trisomy 21 – Down syndrome, since she was two years old. Watch her self-produced video (above) where she comments in three languages!

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Arianna is 13 years old. She happened to have been born with one extra chromosome, a fact that is neither positive nor negative but certainly has been a challenge for her in many ways. As parents we learned that the medical term is designated Trisomy 21. We feel very strong about using that term. Verbalizing that our daughter had Down Syndrome made us feel that we were making a prophecy about her future that impeded her growing into the person she really was truly capable of becoming. Since day one Arianna has been given an empty book to write her own story (her own life). No prognosis, no predictions were made on her future. She has proved us right. Her potential keeps increasing.

We are a family that found NACD just after our daughter was born. She started the NACD program when she was 11 months old and continues to do program every single day.

Arianna started talking when she was 14 month old. The only difference with some other children is that within our family we speak three languages. So she absolutely had to speak, write and read in three languages: Catalan, Spanish and English. Fortunately she has never needed nor received speech therapy and functions quite well in the three different languages.

We are originally from Spain. The education system is based on social integration so she has attended a regular school since she was 3 years old. She had support with specific areas but she never had a para-teacher assigned to her. She mainly stayed with her classmates and was pulled out of the class to work in small groups when she required assistance in specific areas. In addition to her class work she always worked with me (her mother) doing NACD’s program within the school premises. During many years it was about 1 hour a day in school, and we would work with her more intensely during the weekends.

Two years ago we moved from Spain to the United States. For Arianna it was a stretch to go from a school where she had the same friends for many years that knew, loved and respected her to a new environment where everything was different. She was placed in a regular school. I worked with her every morning in the school for three hours to help her speed up her English and to administer NACD’s program. Last year she changed schools again because she was going to middle school.

So many changes have made her stronger and more able to find solutions to the daily challenges of a social system which struggles to encompass children with diverse learning needs. Some of those solutions have taken her to the principal’s office, while others have led to her finding new friends – none of them come easily but she always seems to find them. I keep telling her that school may not teach her much but it gives her the opportunity to prepare for her for the “real” world where situations will appear and she will have to know what to do. So we look at the school as the place she can practice her future situations; and sometimes she is right and sometimes she is not and she has to live with the consequences.

Our experience with the different school systems takes us to the same conclusion. No country, no school and almost no teacher seems to be prepared to have children that are outside of the norm. The school system thinks they are, because they just lower the expectation, make it easier, and let them “be.” “Let them be” means let them behave poorly and assign them a para-teacher that will do everything for them so they don’t have a chance to become more responsible. In all the schools Arianna has attended we (the parents) have ended up adapting the curriculum because the school doesn’t have one already made that will suit our daughter’s needs and, unfortunately, there appears to be no one trained to do so.

Arianna has managed to navigate well through all her 13 years of life. She faces program every day, or almost everyday, with a smile on her face. She believes she is very lucky because she has her mother to work with and her father to coach her in sports. Especially during the last two years Arianna keeps thanking us for what we do for her. She is very aware that program makes people clever. She is fiercely competitive when faced with a challenge. If she sees a child that is behaving strangely, she tells us that she thinks the child should do NACD. She also believes that she doesn’t have Trisomy 21 any more. She talks about the times in the past when she had Trisomy 21 and she feels proud of how she has worked to overcome many of the challenges that she faced. For her, it is something she believes she has overcome due to her effort and hard work.
Arianna has many hobbies. She has played piano since she was 5 years old, sings in the school choir, dances ballet, plays tennis, skis and enjoys horseback riding. At home she likes to do a few chores (though not as many as her parents would like) that make her feel that she contributes to the family and she is helping us with our stressful lives. She loves her sister Natalia and competes with her in a sisterly way on the soccer field – sisterly but quite competitively.

Emotionally she is very concerned about other people´s feelings. She reads our faces and if we look stressed she suggests that we should take a hug and do some breathing to feel better and relaxed.

Arianna is working hard in order to have a mobile phone once she turns 14. The only rule is that she needs to behave maturely and make good decisions. That is a real good objective for her, she has a year ahead and she is trying hard.

Future. We don’t know what the future holds for our daughter. We know it will not be easy, she faces challenges everyday, but we feel very confident that whatever she ends up doing it will be her choice, not the choice society would have made for her.

Thanks NACD, thanks Sara, without you Arianna would not be where she is.

Note from Sara….

I have had the wonderful opportunity to work with Arianna since she was an infant. It has been an amazing journey to visit with her parents through telephone and video, then Skype, while they lived in Spain. She was bilingual from an early age, as her father was American and her mom was from Spain. They created an environment rich in language from the start. They never signed with her, never looked at alternative methods for building language or anything else, other then what they did with NACD. In Spain they were required to start full day school at a very young age. Arianna did very well, and her mother continued to do program with her after school, as well as going into the school and working with her daily 1:1 program in a separate room for 1-2 hours.

They moved to the states in the summer of 2010. It was quite an adjustment for all of them. Arianna could speak English, but she still had to adjust to thinking in the language, rather than her native languages of Catalan and Spanish. It was wonderful finally to meet and see them on a regular basis, rather than having to do all through Skype. I am so impressed with how well she has done. Imagine how hard it would be to adjust to a completely new culture, being fully immersed into a language that you knew but didn’t know well. Despite this huge transition, Arianna has managed to come through academically and socially. Since moving to the states, her reading ability in English has come up 2-3 years. Her math skills have increased more than 2 years. She continues to read Spanish, but her level of understanding English is significantly better. Her auditory sequential processing, which they have worked on since she was a baby, is now at a 7 forward and 4-5 reverse. Arianna is very busy, not only with school, but with sports and piano, as well as playing with her sister Natalia. She is a vibrant healthy pre-teen with such a bright future.

I must say that working with Marta, Arianna’s mom, and her father and sister, has been such a rewarding experience. Marta and David work very hard to help each of their children excel. They have kept their level of expectations high. Marta has gone back to school in order to get the qualifications necessary to take what she has learned from NACD and apply it to other children. Their dedication to Arianna motivates me to be a better parent, a better advocate for my children, and an advocate for those children who don’t have a Marta or a David or a Natalia.

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