Siblings – Trudy

This girl can

There are two magical moments that I did not capture with a photo this holiday that shows that this girl really can.

There are plenty of moments that we don’t capture, that people don’t see but which are part of family life with Trudy.

We were recently on holiday in Balmedie, north of Aberdeen. Fifteen miles of beach which the poodle loved, and Patrick and Trudy returned to their roots to explore the sea and the sand, having grown up by the beach. Trudy ran and didn’t stop running, splashing in the waves and squeezing the wet sand between her fingers whilst our baby squirmed at the alien feeling of sand in her toes.

I’ve never seen her run so well, with solid ankles that took so long to straighten and required special boots for support, with straight legs that have become stronger and less hypotonic. She was in her element, literally.

But the moment that trumped all moments and shows how far she has come is when she tobogganed down the dunes. Yes, I said toboggan. We came across some children who were having a party in the dunes. Alex spoke to one of the dads who explained why they all had toboggans, and incidentally why there was one outside our holiday cottage. They were heading to the dunes to slide down them.

My heart was in my mouth as she ran across to the steepest dune, a good 20 metres off the ground and with a 85% gradient down to a puddle in the basin. We all stopped the consider the height, the steepness with our brains which fear and calculate risk so efficiently but stop us from ever doing anything. Trudy, all impulse, launched herself at the bottom of the dune and began to scale the heights. She scrambled against the sand until she got to the top. Meanwhile, we all started thinking she wouldnt get there, that it was impossible for a 6 year old with Down’s Syndrome to manage that. But when she did, Patrick ran up after her, Alex in tow to help her. Did she need help? Not in the slightest. She stood at the top, she managed the risk, watched her brother have a go then slid down on her bottom. Squeals of delight echoed across the dunes. She had achieved so much right then and she didn’t even need us to praise it. She was just glad she’d done what everyone else was doing

This is why this girl can, why so many underestimated young people can despite the assumptions we make based on their perceived ability. The desire to be part of a group can be strong motivation indeed to overcome the greatest of challenges.

Apr 25, 2022Apr 25, 2022 by trudyscrumptious15 Categories: UncategorizedTags: Disability, Down Syndrome, Down's Syndrome, Equality, hypotonia, Inclusion, InclusionMatters, lowmuscletone, Parenting, Siblings, WouldntChangeAThing Leave a comment

A rare moment of sibling appreciation

There are few more precious moments than when a brother says openly and unreservedly how much he loves his sister. These statements don’t come easily so I’d better write this one down!

We have been on holiday this week and it has been a great opportunity for Patrick and Trudy to play together and discover each other again, along with their baby sister.

Playing with Trudy can be frustrating because she is hugely repetitive. She gets hold of an idea then clings to it like a limpet until it’s fully assimilated in her brain. This is much like most children but with Trudy, this process is longer. Trudy will repeat the same role-play with anything; cars, dolls, fruit, pebbles, you name it.

It goes something like this: “Hi, what’s your name?” “Car [or pebble depending on the object” “Play?” “Okay” “Park?”

It is pretty brief but, looking at this on paper, it seems to cover all the basic elements of a friendly interaction: greeting, question, invitation to play.

We all went slightly mad with Trudy’s monologue at the river which required some response from us. That went something like this: “Daddy, look!” “What’s that, Trudy?” “A potato. No, daddy, not a potato. A rock!” She must have said that at least 20 times when we were throwing stones in the river, or was she throwing potatoes? Who knows! It was funny the first time but the humour wore off as we had already heard the punch line!

For Patrick, he’s got to be patient, he’s got to be understanding, he’s got to care about the safety and well-being of his little sister ALL the time because we rarely take our eyes off her.

But there are those wonderful moments when Trudy transfers her play to the real world and asks every passer-by “what’s your name?”, and she will invariably get the reply “what’s yours?”.

We have met Steve and Rob who were walking to Ribbleshead, Mowgli the dog, whose owners have a narrow boat in Skipton, Glynn who was going up Buckden Pike the wrong way. I could go on.

Trudy inspires friendships and pushes interactions you might never have without her and there is a silent recognition from us all that we owe these to her.

So in one brief moment, Patrick, with his ability to get straight to the heart of the matter, stated quite plainly and unprompted that he likes his sister’s Down’s Syndrome, that Trudy wouldn’t be Trudy without it.

Her ‘condition’ was not something he wanted to take away, he wasn’t wishing for something else unattainable. He was grateful for it. I’d like to say that he was grateful for the confidence it brought her, for her eminent likeability because we were all benefitting from it.

So let me savour this moment, describe it, document it, relish it, because some days are tough and these precious moments of gratitude are hard won but worth every battle.

Jul 3, 2021Jul 3, 2021 by trudyscrumptious15 Categories: UncategorizedTags: ASN, Difference, Disability, Down Syndrome, Down's Syndrome, Parenting, Siblings Leave a comment

Expect the Unexpected

I have been deliberating over the content of these blog posts for a while as I knew I would have to start at the beginning. It is very hard not to comment on the difficult time that we had at the start of Trudy’s life. It wasn’t just about Down’s Syndrome when we had Trudy, it was about coping with the multiple medical issues that were associated with it. Life had become pretty rubbish at that point. People refer to this as “a grieving process” because you are mourning the child you expected to have. The crucial thing here is that nobody died. In fact, Trudy survived those first fragile weeks of her life. So, we just got a child with straight hair instead of curly hair like me, a shuffler instead of a crawler or quite simply a child we did not imagine we would have.

It is important for me to be able to take something from our experience which could teach people about a world we want our children to grow up in (because that’s the interesting bit). So, the beginning of our story becomes about expecting the unexpected, about coping with things when life throws us a curve-ball. In Dan Habib’s TED talk on ‘Disabling Segregation’, he talks about his child with Cerebral Palsy, about your grandma that might develop Alzheimer’s. Our instinct is to plan and to control but there are just some things that we can’t, and children are one of them. Children are always developing and learning, and there is nothing about Trudy which suggests that she will ever stop developing and learning. It will just take longer. I work with a diverse set of children all linked by some form of visual impairment, which, in itself, has such a range. They change from minute to minute, trying out behaviours to see if they fit. We can’t blame ourselves for this. It is how we react to this that counts, showing our children what it is to be understanding, letting them be who they need to be, letting them make their own mistakes and be their own little advocate.

This blog is about how Patrick has kept us grounded throughout the difficult times we have had with Trudy but how life has taken on a normality that might be hard to understand for some. Here are some of the remarkable photos that Jo has taken of our family to let you into a world where difference becomes the norm, to let you see what we see.