092 – Montage Of SFN Mentor Fathers Reflecting On Raising Children With Down Syndrome Dads

Dad to Dad 92 Montage Of SFN Mentor Fathers Reflecting On Raising Children With Down Syndrome Dads

Special Dad: I was actually the one who diagnosed her in the delivery room, even, probably before the medical professionals. And then when she was born and came out, uh, I looked at her and I knew immediately that she had down syndrome. And I said to Cathy, I said, it looks like we have a Special Olympian.

Tom Couch: This is the Special Fathers Network dad to dad podcast of the close to 100 dads we’ve interviewed thus far, many are the proud parents of kids with down syndrome. So today we’re going to hear clips from these dads. We’ll hear how they reacted to the news that their child has down syndrome. And we’ll hear how these children have been a real blessing.

That’s all on this Special Fathers Network, dad to dad podcast. Here’s our host David Hirsch.

David Hirsch: Hi, and thanks for listening to the dad to dad podcast, fathers, mentoring fathers have filtering with special needs presented by the Special Fathers Network.

Tom Couch: The Special Fathers Network is a dad to dad mentoring program for fathers raising children with special needs through our personalized matching process.

New fathers with special needs children connect with mentor fathers in a similar situation. It’s a great way for dads to support. Dads to find out more, go to 21stcenturydads.org.

David Hirsch: And if you’re a dad looking for help or would like to offer help, we’d be honored to have you join our closed Facebook group. Please go to facebook.com, groups and search dad to dad.

Tom Couch: So now let’s listen to these special fathers. Talk about their experiences, having kids with down syndrome.

Special Dad: I distinctly remember getting a phone call from her. When the results came back in because I was on an overnight field trip with my second one, it was, it was just kind of a wave of, Oh my gosh, what’s what’s what am I going to do?

How am I going to deal with this? And all of these different thoughts flooding in, you know, can I handle this? Why is God put this in my life? Is there a reason for it? I did not know a lot of kids with special needs growing up, and we did not have any advance warning that Jessica was going to have down syndrome.

So literally we found out about her diagnosis in the hospital delivery room and it was shocking. You know, I remember, uh, just, you know, being in the financial planning industry and in business. Jumping way out into the future, thinking about what retirement was going to be like with a adult child living.

I’m sure. I’m sure with any body there, there is that element of just being overwhelmed, you know, with, with what’s coming and, and truly you have, you have to go through what, for lack of a better term, a morning of not having this. Child that’s exactly like all of your other ones. Right? So you have to kind of grieve that loss so that you can embrace what you do have.

Let me tell you what she did say in the hospital. Literally like the first words out of her mouth, when we found out was I will raise this kid. I will love this kid. I will be this kid’s mom. And I’ll never be happy again, when we look back on that, it’s like, It couldn’t have been further from the truth.

The other thing about having a mentally disabled individual in your family, you know, they bring you down to earth every now and then our daughter enjoys the simple things in life. So to watch her have an ice cream Cohen and see how much she enjoys that, or. Ride a horse or to finish a puzzle and to see her joy and being successful in doing that, you know, those quite minor things and that she enjoys so much really bring you down to that basic level of satisfaction.

It, some of the funniest moments in our family life or when she’s in the hospital with pneumonia. Oh, my, she woke up in the pickier, the pediatric intensive care unit and that because she hadn’t been thriving and something finally loosened. And they said, Hey, Sarah, do you want something to drink? And she wanted a milkshake.

And so she took her first step of the milkshake. She looked up at everybody and says, tastes like something you’ve been sick in the hospital for 10 days. And she had like about a dozen things. She said during that hospital, that everybody is just lying to everybody. And so she has these moments of that.

We think life is going to be a certain way. What cultural says is it’s a negative thing. And then when you get to experience that, those of us who do have kids with down syndrome, it’s not right. Actually the lucky ones, because we are fortunate to live life. Differently and see the beauty in that and see the humanity of our kids, which is a good thing.

It’s shifting the narrative of how we see things. So what’s the mission of John’s crazy socks. We have a very simple mission was spreading happiness. Hi, my name is Zach Quentin from Sean shortly before Thanksgiving, he sat me down and he said, dad, we need to talk. I said to my dad, Dang. I really want to go to bed with you.

You said we should sell socks. My catchphrase stocks I’ve bought some you and Nancy are the cofounders of druggies play house, this international network of down syndrome, achievement centers. How did it start? What was your original vision? And it was really an opportunity just to have families come together and just share experiences, ideas, and opportunities for all parents and individuals.

The community would edit dancing. And I think this is a common thread actually, throughout the special needs community is the siblings are such good people. Charlie’s got the biggest heart that I’ve ever seen. One of the individuals that’s our biggest supporter with this book is an OB GYN. He actually orders the books 10 or 15 at a time and keeps them in his office.

And he said, I didn’t use to always know what to say to someone when they had a diagnosis of down syndrome. As now I have this book that I hand them and say, congratulations. You’ve got some amazing days ahead of you. Lots of hugs, lots of encouragement. Every time that Jack achieve something for the first time, it’s so monumental and it’s so worthy of celebration.

I saw that and he ran over there and he got this trophy and I’m telling you all of the garbage that we’ve gone through. All of the things that we tried to get them involved in all the times that we took him out of the house to take a walk or go to the beach. In hopes that something will click all of that became validated because he stood there on the podium with his trophy.

And I looked at my wife and she’s just bawling. Tears are flowing. It was maybe the happiest moment that we’d had in years gay would say that boy has been my light, my life, my joy. The greatest gift God ever gave it. I think that’s what we talked about Charlie, and how he sees the world differently because yes, I see the world differently because I have a summit dance and the big takeaway is everybody it’s equal.

John sets the tone a lot. You know, John is always looking to see what can we do for others? It’s a simple idea. The more you do for others and minerals, we are, you know, most, most people down to them don’t care a whole lot about money. They don’t care a whole lot about trying to impress you. Uh, they want you to be happy.

They want to love you. And you know, those are, those are the important things for people with down syndrome. I would say typically I realize I’m overgeneralizing, but you know, we can all learn a lot from that. I can, I’ll try to be more like that, quite frankly.

Tom Couch: Thanks for listening to this montage of special dads talking about their special kids.

Listen, next time when David Hirsch talks to another special father on the dad to dad podcast presented by the Special Fathers Network, the Special Fathers Network is a dad to dad mentoring program for fathers raising children with special needs through our personalized matching process, new fathers with special needs children.

Connect with mentor fathers in a similar situation. It’s a great way for fathers to support fathers, go to 21stcenturydads.org. That’s 21stcenturydads.org.

David Hirsch: And if you’re a dad looking for help or would like to offer help, we’d be honored to have you join our closed Facebook group. Please go to facebook.com, groups and search dad to dad.

Tom Couch: If you enjoyed this podcast, please be sure to like us on Facebook and subscribe on iTunes or wherever you listen. The dad to dad podcast is produced by Couch Audio for the Special Fathers Network. Thanks for listening.