To celebrate World Down Syndrome Awareness Day on March 21 st , we got our family and some friends together to go out for dinner and some fun.
We enjoyed a delicious Mexican meal—Josh has never met a Taco he didn’t like. It was during dinner, with family and friends around the table at that busy restaurant, that it happened once again.
It wasn’t intentional. It wasn’t by design. It just happened as it always does.
While all of us were doting over our grandson, enjoying our food and conversing about our days or where we have been or are planning on going—Josh is left out of the conversation.
Now I will admit it, Josh is not a big conversationalist. Getting him to talk out loud is often a challenge.
He can talk. He does talk, but sometimes he just doesn’t seem to want to talk.
So when the eight or so of us got talking it was fast, furious and not for the faint of heart.
Ergo, Josh, who we had gathered together to celebrate, gets lost in the shuffle.
We all know him well. We all love him. We all wanted to be there to celebrate him and others—But he gets lost in the shuffle.
Josh’s world of words is limited—His pattern of speech is much slower than most of ours and sometimes his volume just isn’t there.
But that’s where we have to do better. We have to slow down. We have to not just talk, but listen.
We have to do better at engaging him and pulling the best out of him.
Now, we have worked with some talkers in our day. And we have just as tough of a time getting them to be quiet as we do getting Josh to speak up.
It’s just going to take our Intentional Inclusion to make conversation happen! But it will be worth it, I promise.