Ugh, so I haven't written a post in forever!!! I think, partly, because this time of year is SUPER crazy.  Isn't it?  My God, we hardly have ANY free time.  Also, I think since I'm not writing everyday, I'm not thinking about it constantly, therefore; I have no idea what to write!!!

However, today I got an email from an organization I've been following since Logan was born and I really wanted to share it with everyone.

First, let me give you some background on this organization.  About 4 years ago, Logan was almost 6 months old and while I was getting dinner together one night, he was sitting on the kitchen floor banging on pots and pans.  I had the TV on and was watching the Nightly News with Brian Williams.  Ann Curry came on with a story about institutions and orphanages in Eastern European countries.  I believe she was in Serbia.  Anyway, the basic jist of the story was that babies who were born with any sort of disability were put in these orphanages that were absolutely terrible!!!  Horrible, horrible places.  THEN, the camera panned to a little boy, about 6 months old, with Down syndrome TIED to his crib posts.  I nearly fell on the ground in shock.  I could NOT believe that people with disabilities were still treated like that.  (I say still because many people with disabilities in the United States were placed in institutions for years and years and years and, really, only recently, has that practice changed.  However, some people still do live in these institutions although they're called something else to make it seem not as bad.)

Anyway, back to the little boy.  I watched THAT little boy on TV and MY little boy on the kitchen floor making music and I wanted to just die.  It was the most heart wrenching site I had ever seen.  It touched me so deeply.  For months and months I would sneak into Logan's room to watch him sleep and imagine if he hadn't been born to us, if he hadn't been born in this country.  It was a sick thing to do, but I couldn't help it.  And, I couldn't get the images of these children out of my head. 

So, I contacted the organization that provided Ann Curry with the information on the orphanages to see what I could do to help.  I've been receiving emails from them ever since.   Sometimes they ask for letters to be written to our government officials, sometime to other countries, sometimes they just need money, or sometimes they just pass information along.  I'm still very much pained by these emails and all the tragic stuff that goes on in the world, but I'm not naive about it anymore.  I know it's happening and I try, very hard, to do the best I can to stop it.

Right now, with 3 kids 4 years old  and under, I don't have a ton of time to write letters and emails and make phone calls, but I can pass the information on and hope and pray that someone out there will help to fight for the rights of these poor people.

And, I don't want to sound preachy about this, but I also feel like there's a connection to be made between these institutions and the segregation of our kids at schools.  As I said earlier, for years and years and YEARS people with disabilities were literally taken from their mothers' wombs and put in institutions.  Some of these parents didn't even have a choice.  They were TOLD that it was the ONLY thing they could do for their baby.  It was heart-wrenching and painful and sometimes, sometimes, parents wouldn't accept that fate for their child.  They either refused to send them to the insitutions or they went and got them after several days, weeks or months.  This VERY slowly started to catch on and parents started refusing the send their babies away.

Now, it's more the norm to take your baby home with you and "just love" him or her.  That's what we did :) Thank GOD!!!

However, in our schools, kids are still seperated from their peers.  It's not as extreme as living in an insitution outside of society, but it's still segregation and it's still harming our kids!!

People are always saying to me how amazing Logan is, and, for a while I took the credit for that (lol) but then I started to realize that a) I'm not really doing anything for him that other people aren't doing for their kids and b) all the other kids I know who have DS are pretty much the same as Logan.  So, why is this?  After pondering it for a couple of years, I think it's NOT that they're so exceptional, it's just that they're able to live up to almost their full potential now because they're NOT treated AS poorly as they used to be.

Can you IMAGINE how well they would do, how exceptional they would be, if they really, truly were just treated like EVERYONE ELSE!!!!  If we really, truly didn't use their physical charateristics to pre-judge their abilities?  I can imagine.  They WOULD be like everyone else.

Oh Lord, I've really gone off on some tangents here.   But, here's the point, parents stopped sending their children to institutions to be separated from society and they've done exceptionally well.  Now, let's just take it one step farther and STOP separating them in the schools and watch and see all the amazing things they will do with that.  Let's see them reach their FULL potential.



Here are the links to Disability Rights International and some of their recent news stories:

http://www.disabilityrightsintl.org/


http://abcnews.go.com/Health/mexican-psychiatric-institution-hell/story?id=12267276&page=1


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/world/americas/01mexico.html?_r=1