FieryKnight said:
Parents of Down Syndrome children (who most people look at as severely disabled) often reveal, that their "special children" are the most loving children of all. These children bring an incredible joy to their parents, as these children are able to give unconditional love back to them. Who is to say that these parents don't treat society better, as they had to learn to look for the specialness in other people, they may improve their community by learning this ability. So you could say that even severely handicapped children can bring a benefit to society, as it is a better place for their effect on others. Children with mental problems were once called "idiots." But if you look at some of the "Idiot Savants" throughout history, they often have unexplainable abilities that could only cause people to wonder about who could create such a genius inside a often unpleasant looking body. Are you God, that you would take away this star out of the night sky, that you would take a color out of the pallet of an incredible sunrise or sunset? It is pretty simple - if you don't feel you have room in your heart for one of these children, there are plenty who do. Do you really want to take away a family from a children who is in need? Or a child from a family who can't have children? If your answer is no, then please step aside. If the foster care system upsets you, become a foster parent and provide a stable family, or better yet, adopt a child in need, or help their family work through their problems. There are lots of solutions, but be a part of the solution, or you are a part of the problem that seems to upset you. Give kids a chance you may not have had.
Absolutely. Nobody 'wants' that for their kids. It's the most human of urges.
But, when it comes to natural selection and evolution and so on, we're very good about all that randomly and whimsically("I like the way he/she looks"), but extremely poor about that intellectually/constructivistly. We no more 'know' how to build the 'perfect' society/species/human then we 'know' how to build the unsinkable Titanic or always safe landing Space Shuttle. We are
always subject to the law of unintended consequences.
Look; "it takes all kinds." But, bromides are bromides because they are plainly true.
IMO, if we were to selectively breed for the absolute highest IQs possible, before too long, the human race would be an unbearable mass of high strung twits, consumed by ego. With IQ comes...quirks. As well, guile, deceit, and cunning.
With rare exception.
From afar, 'special needs' children seem to only be a burden on society, a 'cost' that take more then they give. I'm here to tell you, absolutely, that is not the case, because I've seen what immersed 'special needs' kids do to entire classrooms of 'normal' children. To be blunt, they
teach normal children not to be complete little *******s. In fact, they bring the absolute best human qualities out of normal children, because they are examples of human beings totally without guile, without deceit, and without cunning. They live in a state of grace and joy and laughter whenever possible, they want only to love and be loved, and it is impossible to angst too much about your own personal little struggles when you see these kids carry their weights and struggles and sometimes succeed though often fail.
I have two opposite bookend sons, both with IEPs. One, the oldest, because he tested out with a very high IQ. The other, the youngest, because he has Williams Syndrome, a genetic deletion. I have seen with my own eyes what my youngest son has given my oldest son. My oldest scored well enough on the SATs...in 8th grade, to get into almost any college he wants. My youngest will not. My oldest has always been an athlete, he's now a HS QB, works at it all year round...when he's not helping out at Special Olympics. My youngest tries his damdest, and his absolute favorite part of the whole deal is shaking hands after the games. He makes friends and makes people smile wherever he goes, and always has, as he followed his older brother around the AAU BBall tournements. Whatever my 'golden boy' oldest son could have become in his pampered/shletered suburban lifestyle, he is
not another ******* waiting for this world, which has plenty already, and for that, we all owe his younger brother big time. They are inseperable. Although they nominally have seperate bedrooms, they would never think of sleeping apart. When my oldest heads off to college in a year and a half, it is going to be heart breaking for both of them, but once again, my youngest son is going to teach us all how to handle such things, the same way he has taught us how to handle all such heartbreaks; honestly, with love, without guile, without deceit, and without cunning.
So, I am trying to imagine my world without my youngest son. Would I, in a million years of thinking it through, have ever realized how crucially important my youngest son was going to be to the well being of my family?
No. I'm not nearly that smart, and neither is mankind as a whole. I almost screwed it up big time, by thinking I knew better than I really did.
Which is why I cringe at the idea of folks thinking that they can constructivistly build the perfect human, the perfect society, the perfect mankind.
Not the way it works; the Universe teaches its own lessons.
So, how does all that reconcile with the very human urge not to 'burden' your child with a handicap? Look, it's not like my youngest son was 'OK', and then a handicap came along and 'burdened' him. Not the way it works. Williams Syndrome is a nearly mechanical/genetic deletion that sometimes occurs randomly during the very first or second cell division. Some 50,000 DNA pairs out of a possible 500,000 pair local region at the physical 'tip' of the Elastin gene just don't 'zip up,' maybe because of the physical configuration of the gene. Depending on where the deletion occurs, Williams folks get a slightly different selection from the laundery list of things that make Williams a 'syndrome,' but the one unifying characteristic is their outstanding personalities. It is a 'natural' mutation that sometimes occurs in either 1:20000 or 1:40000 births, so it is entirely possible that you've never met anyone with Williams Syndrome. Because it is a deletion, it is dominant. They are best described as 'asymetric;' they might have absolutely no math logic circuitry at all(which may explain the almost total lack of guile, cunning, and deceit), but they often have outstanding memories and a love of words and music. You can meet a person with Williams and at first, be led to beleive that they are extremely intelligent, because they tend to use 'big words' and have very full expressive capabilites, but after a while, you will detect that there is some missing logic in what they are saying. They often have extremely acute hearing, hear things a mile away. They tend to
love words, and it is not uncommon in young children, when asked to name an animal, for them to name the animal with the most pleasing sound, not necessarily their favorite animal. So, whereas a 'normal' child might say 'cat,' at the same age a Williams kid might say 'duck billed platypus' because they like the way it sounds, and thus, surprise adults into thinking that they were actually overly intelligent little kids. Or, even, to speak in complete sentences as their first utterings. (Actual example, though not my son; kid playing in dr's office waiting room with desk lamp, turning switch on and off to see how it works. Receptionist gets a little tired of this, and secretly unplugs the lamp. Kid says, as his first uttered words, "Jesus Christ, this doesn't work!" [edit--
my memory ws a little foggy on this, from 1991 article.] Crude, but perfect. Apparently, he'd been listening to the world around him.) Because the wiring is different--some brain mass is actually missing--these folks perceive and adapt and deal with the world much differently then 'normal' folks, and because of this, they are often used as subjects in cognitive studies, to help us figure out exactly how 'normal' folks perceive the world. They help us understand.
They do more then that, and we're not near smart enough to predict all that, based on our concept of 'normal' and 'perfect.'
So, I'm thinking,
some of us should just take our chances, not pretend to be so smart about tthings we are not really smart about at all, and let some things, take your pick:
A] In God's hands.
B] In the Universe's hands.
C] In **** happens hands.
Not all of us. I agree, this isn't a OneSizeFitsAll decision. Maybe...and, I and my wife were an example...some folks are convinced that they just couldn't handle the 'burden,' and want to take what steps are available to avoid that burden if possible.
Well, OK. But ... I thank God everyday that I didn't get my way.
So, think about it. We're not as smart as we think we are about some things.
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