I was walking home from my groceries-shopping trip when I noticed a chussen/kallah in their Sheva Brochos walking along the avenue. The old joke came to mind: how can you tell a chussen/kallah apart from other couples walking on the street? Answer: if they are a chassidishe couple, the young man will be wearing a shtreimel and if they are non-chassidish then just look out for the couple that’s acting giddy.
I watched as a group of school girls caught up with the couple and all the girls turned to glimpse at the newly-weds, then broke out in happy smiles. There is something about a newly-hatched duo that makes people smile.
This is the metaphor I have been using with new parents of children with Down syndrome who are offended at the stares they and their child are generating on the streets. It is the truest form of chizuk when those stares melt into smiles. To this very day, and especially when Moishey was much younger, I am proud to be seen in public with him. If the individual with Down syndrome is well groomed, clean and behaving (okay, so sometimes there is room for improvement there, especially when they are younger) then we are helping the world by showing them our children. I remember taking Moishey to the pizza shop when he was around five years old. His bracha on the pizza rocked the place; was I embarrassed about it? Not at all! I was the proudest Mom. While the other Mommies were coaxing their young ones to say that blessing before biting into the starchy goodness staring at them, Moishey inspired all the customers. The stares and smiles mirrored the admiration that the onlookers had for this child. The stares continued as Moishey cut his pizza with a knife and ate it in bits and pieces, the only person (including both children and adults) who used a knife to prepare his pizza for consumption.
Isn’t that rewarding? Isn’t that something to be proud of? I always tell parents, ‘Accept it that our children are different and society is curious about new and different occurrences. Just like the stares at a newlywed couple. But it is up to us, the parents, to try hard that those stares should turn into smiles. If we will hold our heads high and be proud of our children with special needs, present them positively in public and private, then those stares will be tremendous wellsprings of strength for us.
My most recent mechetenesta just shared with me that when she and her husband were inquiring about our son as a shidduch prospect for their daughter, one of the snippets of information they were told about Mr. Potential was that he shared a bedroom with Moishey. When they heard that, they decided that this was the boy they wanted their daughter to marry. I said to her, “Wow! You know that you are so 2020. Years ago, something like this was exactly what derailed shidduchim. People did not want to be meshadech with families that had children with special needs, for fear that it damaged the siblings in the home.”
Our community has come full circle regarding our children with special needs…or have we? Has everybody adopted that accepting, open-minded attitude?
Our principal at Yeshiva Bonim Lamokom, the one and only Rabbi Zev Horowitz, recently married off his oldest child. On the day of the wedding he showed up at the yeshiva at his usual arrival time of 8:00 a.m. To everybody’s surprise he said, “Look, I need to daven shachris this morning, right? What better minyan on such an auspicious day than right here with these special and lofty souls?” After davening, he asked each of the 70 students at the yeshiva to please recite five chapters of Tehillim on behalf of him and his family and the Simcha they were going into. He strongly believed that these tefillos will be the ones to carry the day and the mazel of the new young couple.
I risk being cliché’ but I’ll take that risk nonetheless: how 2020 of him. It is pristine 20/20 vision that enables one to see the truth.
The Yiddish Nachas spread within this magazine has taken a giant leap in the area of taking pride in our children publicly. Each picture will now have the child’s name spelled out. The feedback by the families of these children has been amazing. While I initially feared some backlash, there was none. Every single parent and/or family member was proud to have the child’s identity screaming from the picture page.
One morning my husband walked in as I was staring at a large beautiful picture of a little boy with Down syndrome that had transmitted just then. My eyes filled as I walked down memory lane with my husband. We had been asked to go visit the new parents and give them much-needed chizuk. We ourselves were in the midst of a close family Simcha and were limited in time, so it was established that we would make that visit after we attended a Sheva Brochos, which was the night of the baby’s vachnacht. We arrived to the home at 1:00 a.m., all the guests had already gone home by then, and we sat and spoke to the new parents. While they seemed to have a handle on the situation, they were distraught for their children. The mother teared up as she admitted that her children were not happy about their new sibling’s diagnosis of Down syndrome. They had already gathered a sackful of stories and anecdotes about this ‘unpleasant’ population. We tried to calm them down and offer positivity in the face of so many negative feelings.
I now looked at the picture on my computer screen of this gorgeous happy child and I wrote to the mother about the new DSAU policy regarding having the child’s name on the picture. She wrote back, “Of course! We are all so excited to see our little boy in your magazine! My kids can hardly wait!”
May we all continue to be blessed with 2020-20/20 even if it’s already 2021!
See you on July 7, 2021 iy’Hashem.
Sarah Sander