“You don’t have to be perfect.”
This insightful and profound statement is coming from this soon-to-be eighteen-year-old lovely, trilingual, beautiful and wonderful young lady who just happens to have Trisomy 21 (Down syndrome)—Arianna Dinwoodie-Palmes.
Arianna lives in Barcelona, Spain. She reads and speaks fluent Catalan, Spanish and English. She attends a school where classes are taught in Catalan and Spanish. She learned English from her dad, who is from the United States. She takes a theater class once a week with “typical” kids, personally takes care of enrolling in the course every three months and pays for all her classes. She also does gymnastics with kids who have some learning challenges. She lives in an inclusive world. She navigates the very big, chaotic city of Barcelona on her own, taking public transportation to and from school while meeting with friends for movies, lunch and other social events. She loves Zumba, singing and doing research projects on the Internet and is very concerned about ecology and pollution. She is finishing high school this year and is looking forward to trade school next year, focusing on administration, sales and customer service. She is a happy, caring, typical teenager, who also happens to have Trisomy 21 (Down syndrome).
The video (see above) was Arianna’s idea and she wrote her own scripts. These are her unedited thoughts and words—in three languages! Arianna’s level of function makes her normal. Arianna’s insight, personality, smile and overall goodness make her exceptional—exceptionally wonderful!
“You don’t have to be perfect.”
Such a simple, obvious, but profound statement, particularly when viewed in light of the still staggering numbers of fetuses identified as having Down syndrome that are aborted. Recent research states that in the U.S. there is a termination rate of 67% of fetuses following a prenatal diagnosis of DS. None of us are, none us will ever be and none of us need to be perfect.
Somehow our enlightened, educated and politically-correct society has created and perpetuated the myth that some of us are not miracles of creation, that we do not have limitless potential and thus are condemned by myopic prejudice to be deprived of the right to live; or are often condemned by perceptions of limited potential and given limited “appropriate” opportunities that are commensurate with the perceptions.
Arianna is one of our NACD kids. She has been on one of our TDI Targeted Neurodevelopmental Intervention Programs since she was a year old. She and thousands of other NACD kids are reflections of what can be, given the opportunity. Defining opportunity as having dedicated proactive parents who, when given the tools and the vision, can truly provide their child with an opportunity. We all need to be perceived as having unlimited potential and giving the opportunity to achieve, but we also need to realize that, “You don’t need to be perfect.”
After all, isn’t being less than perfect what defines us as being human?
—Bob
Not really. I’m sitting in a very hot, very humid, very closed Charles de Gaulle airport. It has been one of those very wonderful travel days. (Up at 3 a.m. to get to the airport in Bucharest, get on a flight to Paris, sit on the very hot, very humid plane for three hours before they decide it’s broken and they can’t fix it, wait around until after 8 p.m. to catch another flight. My connection left many hours ago. Eventually I will get on a plane to Salt Lake City, which I think is about another 12 hours or something. Oh, the joys of international travel. And let’s not talk about the endless lines, or if there is not a narrow corridor, generally masses of people converging on a target location.