After having a child who has learned everything so quickly, it was very strange to then have Trudy. I was used to having no worries about whether my child would meet his milestones. With Trudy, I am always worried about when she will get to the next one. I call them my Hare and my Tortoise, and I truly believe that slow and steady will win in the end.
Patrick learns things so fast and will work at something until he has mastered it, but then he moves onto the next thing. Trudy does not have that luxury – she needs time. I have never seen so much patience and perseverance in someone striving to get up a slide or master the stairs. She observes, she tries, then she tries again. Sometimes, her body can’t do it but she parks it until she is ready. The majority of us have the advantage of relying on our bodies to do what we want them to do. Trudy’s body always seems to be lagging behind. I wanted to get her a t-shirt that said, “doing the best with the body I have”. I think that would probably be true for a lot of us. So, it is remarkable when I hear stories of people with Down’s Syndrome swimming the English Channel (please look up Karen Gaffney) and competing in gymnastics in the Special Olympics (look up Scotland’s own Andrew MacIntyre), to name but a few. Karen Gaffney said that “life prepared her for her swim”, that the defeats she had experienced in her life gave her the strength to complete the race. Trudy was not learning how to get up a slide, but to keep on trying. She was learning resilience, she was working out how to do things in a different way – she was learning to problem solve. It is high time we started to focus on and celebrate these so-called ‘soft skills’.
We do so much, so fast, like we want life to pass us by. We are always in a hurry to get to work, to get to school, to get to the next appointment, when we need to spend more time in the moment. Our daughter has taught us that, not to worry about the future and her future, but to enjoy having her and her brother now, fit and healthy and happy. And, after all, that’s what counts.
Trudy 
Needed to read this today. Everything about this resonates a lot. I no longer worry so much about milestones per se, but I used to constantly, so I understand. We want our kids to keep up, not to struggle so much. We are acutely aware of how much harder they have to work, and it hurts. I hate to admit it, but sometimes it was hard for me to see my daughter advance so easily, when he couldn’t. These days I worry about maturity, sensory things, compliance, all sorts of things like that. I should celebrate how hard he has come, how hard things are for him and cut him some slack, and instead I get frustrated with him. It’s hard to celebrate the day, and set little goals, but every day I get to try to get closer to doing that. I am as much of a work in progress as he is.
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