No family can hang a sign
"There are no problems"
In an age characterized by profound cultural change in which everyone confess publicly, exposing its past, the feelings, emotions I too have felt the need to disclose a witness of life lived with a son 'special'. I do so with the modesty of his father struck deep within an event that upset at seeing the birth of a creature considered 'not normal'.
Describe what it means to be a parent of a child down is not easy because often slips between pietism and exaltation that do not help to understand.
who these children know that we are talking about wonderful people, among them heterogeneous, who think with the heart and the heart, sometimes difficult to understand and manage , even why put dall'impulsività parenting. Who has long lived with them has experienced life experiences that enrich and which can no longer do without it, knows that when you speak to them a look, a word or a smile you return them magnified, you know they do not know the malice and wickedness. Nevertheless those who had contact with these guys, even short, they miss because it has been plagued by Love, the real one, the pure, what makes you feel the urge to bear witness to a feeling that is unfortunately becoming increasingly rare.
Recently you have written enough about the barriers associated with mental retardation, on how to address them and reduce . There is, however, is focused, if not marginally up as a parent, relative, live in this society worry about the context of emotional person with Down syndrome and how that person lives this discomfort. The low prevalence and sometimes inaccessible literature about imposing a kind of reasoning that goes to trial and error.
It 's always a failure to conceive a disabled person, a kind of provocation that causes a dull pain riaffiorante periodically in the mother for a sense of ineffectiveness, and father to a narcissistic wound. These feelings we find them well documented in carved and who can express them, as certain characters with more affected by this event that hosted children with disabilities, also suffering, as the philosopher Emmanuel Mounier and the writer Ennio Flaiano.
The coming of a disabled person's whole life to you, with you father and mother with the other changes you register, we reserve behave differently because they are a 'different', like your son, because they were considered people uncomfortable; because you are the touchstone of his certainties, watching you and consider you as one to watch, to be pitied, to be set aside "because ... closed in the safety of your being normal, you're blind to the precariousness of life, are you afraid to dive, the watch in a mirror that you select the images so as not to be troubled "- is the complaint that one day They base Giulia launched against the company when he adopted a handicapped person," Nicholas, adoption courageous "-. And 'you have to face an embarrassing situation by creating you a new social horizon, perhaps smaller, more concrete, however, different from common sense. Flaiano invokes the miracle to be able to love his Louise, ill with encephalitis shortly after birth, Mounier, consider the birth of his daughter Francesca is a gift sent from heaven to trace the way to heaven, some more until it closes in on itself to fray in neurosis: These births are always an event that grabs you by the hair and throws you into another world.
Being healthy, beautiful, toned, not fat or cellulite can be useful but not a mirror to a society increasingly lacking in truth and human warmth : feelings, the latter too often confused with the cult of the strong and intelligence and in which the 'different' in some contexts, it is condemned to social isolation. We have been accustomed to consider the people down is not normal, because we assume that what we want to be normal and the universal yardstick. A belief that forces these kids to be and remain as they are received in our imagination, expect them to do things down. Because they look, behavior and attitudes than those who live a life 'normal', and we adopt them pigeonholed against them stupid conventions of behavior that helps them grow, but more importantly, does not help us.
Let's start thinking that down is not very different, as anyone who has problems of existence and that the degree of mental retardation not always depend on the type of trisomy as the environment, the family atmosphere, by its activities and therefore the quality of his life, beginning even at the myth that he is a person happy because it shows confidence and joy. It is not always the case. When they become adults, it raises questions as any knowledgeable people, reflecting on his future but can not design it because it is naturally tributary to those nearby and that could remain at the mercy of those who will decide for him with his anxiety: he can not or decipher, not tubarci, the disguises. He will only accept or reject what he is proposing is for us to understand, bearing in mind that this figure is condensed in the fragility and resilience of the human being. It is therefore our duty to feel a moral obligation to reciprocate the love he offers us no claim to an advantage, because he needs us and will never bears a grudge, even if they receive the opposition. In this, perhaps only in this, are different from us.
from "The Hidden Mirror" (in radical reworking)
