As a young mother of a child with "different abilities," I had my moments!! Moments of excitement and pride at the accomplishment of my first born, and moments of distress and sadness and even some jealousy when seeing what other children were doing that I wasn't sure my son would do.

When I was a brand new mother, I found myself trying to adjust not only to motherhood in general and the caring for a brand new baby, but also trying to cope with the varied emotions and concerns of a brand new mother with a baby with "special needs".  One would think that I would have had lots of advice from everyone I met but the reality was that nobody knew what to say at all and even my pediatrician did not know too much about Down Syndrome.

Over the years, I have felt that part of the challenges we were given when we had a child with Down Syndrome was to help educate society about people with different abilities and to help new parents of children born with special needs.

My son is 15 years old. He was born with Down Syndrome. In the last 15 years I have amassed enough stories to fill volumes. However, right now I want to just stick to the topic of: Expectations. When Joshua was born the doctors advised us to not "waste our time, energy or money." They claimed that our son would never amount to anything.