MOSAIC MOMENTS

Yesterday I told you that although Tim has a high IQ, his social skills are lacking. That is actually an understatement in so many ways!

This is actually the main reason why I co-founded International Mosaic Down Syndrome Association. I was on a search for answers. Tim had real trouble understanding how to interact with others and at 14 yrs old, the old mantra “He’ll mature in time” was beginning to not be believable.

For those who know Tim, they don’t realize the problem he has. Because if he knows a person well, then he doesn’t have trouble conversing with them. Family, especially, never realizes that this is a real problem, unless they see him in public and witness this transformation. In fact, I never fully understood the problem because I was never in school with him to see what happens to him when he is around those he doesn’t know well.

Until one day when I actually witnessed this painful transformation with my own eyes….

We had just bought a piece of land and were clearing it to make room for our new house. The work was very tedious and horribly back breaking as we dug up each tiny sapling covering the lot and then leveled out the ground where the sapling had been. A friend of mine was helping Tim and I as our smaller children played among the trees. Although the work was hard, Tim never stopped digging. Then, a friend from church came over with his two boys who are a few years younger than Tim. We were fairly new to this church, so Tim didn’t know the boys very well. The moment Tim saw the boys, he dropped the shovel and sat on the ground where he was standing. He immediately put his finger in his mouth and started chewing. (this has always been something Tim does when he is nervous or upset) The boys and their father, helped us with some big trees and no matter what I said to Tim he wouldn’t respond to me at all.

The big trees were moved and my friend and his sons left. The moment the truck was out of site, Tim stood up and began digging trees like nothing had happened! My friend and I looked at each other in disbelief!

WHAT WAS THAT ALL ABOUT??

I asked Tim. He said… “I got nervous.”

Over the years, I asked parents throughout the world if this was an issue with mosaic Down syndrome or Down syndrome. Was this something EVERYONE dealt with? If so, then maybe they would have an answer to my problem.

What I discovered was that not everyone dealt with these issues. That most people with Down syndrome and mosaic Down syndrome were social butterflies! They loved people and they knew how to approach people! They could walk up to one of their peers, even if they weren’t close friends, and carry on an appropriate conversation with them!

So…. why couldn’t my son do that? I knew this was way more than his ADHD. I knew something was going on and it broke my heart to not know what to do about it!

Tomorrow, I will continue this journey of how I found answers and what, if anything, I was able to do to help it.

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