So you had a Baby you were over the moon, then in the following days they come back to you and the baby has downs syndrome or any one of a thousand other disabilities. On the way home from the doctors you want to buy a ton of cotton wool to wrap junior in.

When My son was born in 1989 he had immature lungs and spent 3 months in an artificial oxygen tent to fool them into finishing development, while he was in hospital they found 3 holes in his heart Hydrocephalus a Developmental delay and as he grew he was in the autism spectrum and had a specific speech learning disorder, phew just writing it all was exhausting living the first 5 years of his life was soul destroying.

Here’s my point folks I know you want to wrap the child in bubble wrap but if you do they grow up wanting protection always, and at 75 you still have your child living at home depending on you because you still iron their underwear and cut their veggies for them.

I come from bush folk, what my American friends would call ranchers we in Oz call them station folk or “cockies”. When my boy was born every time he farted we wanted to rush him to the ER my gran who was alive till my boy was 5 would sit there and say “oh be quiet he’ll only do it once” I thought she was terrible. One day after he came home from swimming class ,evidently his teacher had told him if you can’t swim you can get very sick in water so we were sitting have coffee in our kitchen by a large bay window when we heard a cat screeching, him yelling and saying “breathe Bella,stroke, bweathe you can do it I don’t want you bewwy sick” we wondered what was going on we looked out the kitchen window there was my intellectually disabled son who evidently that morning had mastered swimming under water trying to hold his beloved cat Bella under water to teach her to swim. My boy had scratches on his arm and he was wearing rubber boots walking through our fish pond, we in quick time saved the cat. Bella our cat was fine, drenched but fine she grew to be 30lb and lived 27 years my son was an individual, he helped me garden he played in dirt he rode bikes he climbed trees every now and then he got little pale he sat down he rested then he went at it all over again. He also had two types of Epilepsy occasionally he would seize when he would come to he would keep playing. Don’t get me wrong we watched him like a hawk,and when he went too far we reeled him in but we let him learn life. Because of the freedom to fail we gave him his epilepsy is cured, his heart got repaired and with a 23 year old head of hair no one notices the hydrocephalus . My son had a kindy friend, his parents thought we were terrible they never let their children do anything, their child who has mild intellectual disability is 23 can’t use a knife and fork he is still tucked in and can’t swim or ride a bike and he is not allowed to dress himself. there in their 60’s now and he will never leave, so when I think back to grandma I realised she was right “let them go they will only do it once”

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