TEXARKANA MAGAZINE
21 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT DOWN SYNDROME
1. People who get to know someone with Down syndrome often develop a strong capacity for love and acceptance of someone who is different.
2. People with Down syndrome can have jobs and be productive and contributing members of society.
3. National Down Syndrome Society does not like or use the word ‘retard’ or ‘retarded.’ Period. ( www.r-word.com )
4. People with Down syndrome are smaller in stature. Girls average a height of 4’9” and boys 5’2”. What they lack in size, they make up for in awesomeness.
5. Approximately 45% of people with Down syndrome have a single palmar crease in their hands. This results from hypotonia as the hand was not held in a tight fist while the baby was growing in the womb. 6. There are three ways in which Down syndrome can happen, depending on how the cells divide: nondisjunction (approximately 95%), translocation (4-5%), and mosaicism (less than 1%).
7. IQ scores cannot capture a person’s potential, keep ‘intelligence’ in perspective.
8. 80% of babies with Down syndrome are born to women under 35 because this age group gives birth most frequently. 9. Down syndrome is named after John Langdon Down, the British doctor who fully described the syndrome in 1866. 10. An estimated 90% of parents who receive a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome will choose to terminate their pregnancies.
11. Approximately 40-50% of babies born with Down syndrome will have some type of
heart defect, often easily corrected with surgery. But be careful; they can steal your heart.
22
COMMUNITY & CULTURE
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs