Perfectly Human: Created with a Purpose

Maggie is a 17 year-old girl with Down syndrome, who loves life, adores food, and can’t live without music. She is my daughter, adopted from Brazil at 14-months old. She is very uncommunicative unless she knows you, and is happy to sit without talking for long periods of time. She could eat peanut butter at every meal. She decides what she will and will not do and can out-stubborn most people we know, hands- down, no contest. She loves Mary Poppins, and Hairspray, and Beauty and the Beast, and can sing most of the songs, and knows all the words. She doesn’t go anywhere without her dolly (a dark brown groovy girl), and you can use that dolly to motivate her to do almost anything. She loves to work, though due to limited abilities, there are few things she can do completely on her own. Those things she can do, she does in spades! She sets the table, clears the table, puts all the clean dishes away, carries laundry to each person’s room, puts groceries away, and loves it when we do a whole-house cleaning.

Most people don’t think too much of Maggie, or what they think isn’t too nice. She makes funny sounds. She pulls her pants up after she goes to the toilet (all the way up to her chest, and usually over her shirt, which does look a bit socially unacceptable). She says the same words over and over and over and over. She doesn’t ask about your life, or what you’ve been doing. She is 17, and takes a dolly everywhere she goes.

Read more here: Perfectly Human: Created with a Purpose by Holly Nelson – Thin Places.