Reaching My Full Potential and How You Can TooSample

School and Sports 

Patty and I had high expectations for Chris in terms of what he would be able to learn and how independent he could one day become. Florida has an early prekindergarten program that begins at three years old, so we enrolled Chris. Patty created a flowchart of Chris’s daily activities. These included physical therapy, occupational therapy, music therapy, and behavioral therapy because Chris needed to learn how to behave if he was going to attend a school and be successful.

He needed a lot of help with behavioral therapy. Chris had a difficult time sitting still for more than a few seconds. After two years, we signed Chris up for kindergarten and attended some of the special education classes offered at the new school. We were initially turned down for admission but went to mediation and prevailed, so we anticipated a little rockiness initially. 

After issues at several schools with teachers and students, friends in the Down Syndrome Association told us about an international school where students spent two days a week in the classroom and two days homeschooling. This worked out well for Chris, who was able to focus on his phonetic language skills. I could tell Patty enjoyed working side by side with Chris and witnessing the light bulbs going off when he grasped a subject.

On the days he was in the classroom, it was good for Chris to be with other students and figure out how to model himself after them, observing how they interacted with one another and their teachers. While Chris was still enrolled in this school, a friend of Patty’s, who had a daughter five years older than Chris, told her about the Avalon School in Orlando, which has been around since 1986 and is run by a lovely family. We enrolled Chris there starting in fifth grade.

Avalon’s philosophy is that all minds can learn and succeed and that we all learn differently. Children with Down syndrome are typically very visual learners and do much better when they receive visual aids. Classes include ten or twelve students, all with special needs. Chris was the least capable of the students, but they all had difficulty in a standard school system and found far more success with the individual attention in the smaller classrooms.

Chris spent eight years at Avalon. We can never say enough about the wonderful people at Avalon. 

While Patty took charge of Chris’s overall care and education, I was involved in developing his interests and abilities in sports. I was like many dads and moms who played sports themselves and couldn’t imagine raising a child without introducing lots of opportunities to be physically active. Physical exercise is important for everyone, especially somebody like Chris, who began life with physical and intellectual disabilities. Patty and I looked for every opportunity we could to build athletics into Chris’s life.

When you have a child with Down syndrome, you must think differently. We saw Special Olympics as a means for Chris to play as other kids did—kids who ran around the playgrounds or gyms or ball fields. If he had shown up where other kids played, he would not have been included. Special Olympics filled an important gap. In addition, some small local basketball and soccer leagues were designed for kids who were not advanced enough to play in the other youth sports programs. Chris played in these leagues as well. Because he loved basketball, we always tried to place him in camps that would accommodate him.

Those who volunteer to work with kids at Special Olympics and basketball leagues are a very caring, high-caliber group of people. So are the families who take part in Special Olympics. Chris made friends playing different sports. He made friends with other athletes, some of whom had different disabilities. Far fewer kids with Down syndrome compete in Special Olympics. Most of the events Chris participated in had ten to twenty times more kids with disabilities other than Down syndrome. The reason is obvious: kids with Down syndrome have far greater physical and intellectual disabilities than most other kids, even those who compete in Special Olympics.

Chris started his Special Olympics participation as a decided underdog. The truly inspiring thing about him was, win or lose, he was always happy after the race. He could finish dead last but still be ecstatic, walking up to people and high-fiving them and saying, “Nice job,” like a good sport. A wound-up guy like me never competed with the kind of heart my son did. I wished I could be a little more like him. I would look at him after a race and think, “With all your disadvantages, how can you be so happy?”

Respond

Describe a difficult situation or defeat you have encountered.

Did you feel joy? Did you ask the Father to fill you with joy despite the circumstance?

Prayer

Lord Jesus, please fill me with Your joy today!