So this is a subject that kinda host close to home for my family. My cousin has Down syndrome when she was born the dr said she wouldn’t live past 13 but she’s now coming up on her 42nd birthday. The dr said she would never be able to live on her own, and while that’s sort of the case, she still defying all odds. She works a regular job (Trader Joe’s), she volunteers regularly both for church and this group place the community has for special needs adults, plays sports (she’s not good at it but she loves it 🤷🏻‍♀️🤣) she’s basically just, “normal”.

Well growing up we were taught not to treat her any different than any of our other cousins. She gets roasted like the rest of us, she got in trouble like the rest of us, she was never treated like she has special needs and that’s gotten our family into a lot of heated arguments before.

People assume that we’re just not patient or were outcasting her from the family when it’s simply not the case. Over the years she’s just grown more and more independent and makes her own decisions. She loves being around us and has made it clear that she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Fast forward to my baby cousin being born. He was born with dwarfism. His mom (my cousin) doesn’t treat him any different than the rest of her kids. And like my other cousin he’s actually doing freaking fantastic. He’s a little fighter and super spunky hell the damn kid runs the freaking show like a little Napoleon 🤣 but again my cousin gets slack for not catering to him because of his “disability”

My family talks about this all the time and the general consensus with my family is that Vals (the cousin with downs) incredible accomplishments can be attributed to the fact that we never treated her any different. Other families we know with special needs kids have felt the same. So it’s mind blowing to me when I hear people get upset over the we treat them.

Which brings me to the topic question, should people with special needs be treated any different than anyone else?

Example: I had a art class with a kid with autism. We would be doing super cool projects like painting self portraits, air brushing, sculpting. But he would be given a cartoon coloring book and crayons. One day he got super pissed off that he couldn’t paint his self portrait like the rest of the class and flung the coloring book across the room. The teacher got upset and eventually the whole class was yelling at the teacher to just let him freaking paint like the rest of us. The teacher basically was making it out like he couldn’t paint because he would make a big mess. (Which he didn’t plus the kids at his table were helping him.