January 23rd, 2007
I’m a Parent Not a Saint
The Times chief sports writer Simon Barnes writes about being a father of a child with Down syndrome… I’m a Parent Not a Saint.
The fact is that nothing to do with love seems so terribly difficult when you get down to it. Nothing seems an impossible demand on your time, your resources, your patience, your temper, your abilities: not because you connect with your inner saintliness but because you just find yourself getting on with it: muddling through. Most non-parents imagine that they could never change a nappy. Then parenthood happens and they do it. It was the same thing when it came to living with Eddie. Its just parenthood: everyone who has done it knows it.
…
I live in a nice house in the country, I keep five horses and as a family we are comfortably off. For all these things people envy me. But I have a child with Downs syndrome and for that, people pity me. And I am here to say: wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I am not to be pitied but to be envied.
It’s well worth reading.
Technorati Tags: down syndrome, parenting
