The following is the speech given by Pam Friesen at the 2004 Tulip Tournament banquet. It has been copied here with her permission.

Incredible joys. Unbelievable frustrations.  Wonderful proud moments.  Terrifying fears. These are all emotions that I’ve experienced, being a parent of a child with Down syndrome.  Now I know you parents out there are saying – we all experience those emotions, and you’re right.  But when raising a child with Down syndrome, the rollercoaster of emotion reaches incredible heights and dips frightfully low. I want to share with you some of our joys, frustrations, fears and dreams.

With good intentions, many people told us that we would be great parents for Stacey, that God chose us for a reason. We couldn’t see it… and it was all really hard to absorb…but then we found a poem that helped us. Some of you may have heard it before, but I want to read it for you.

Welcome to Holland

By Emily Pearl Kingsley

When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip – to Italy.  You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans.  The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David.  The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go.  Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”

“Holland?!?” you exclaim.  “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.” But there’s been a change in flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland, and there you must stay.  The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of famine, and disease. It’s just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books.  And you must learn a whole new language.  And you will meet a whole new group of people you never would have met.  It’s just a different place.  It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and catch your breath, you look around…and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills…Holland has tulips.  Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy…and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there.  For the rest of your life, you will say, “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.”

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever go away…because the loss of that dream is a very, very significant loss.

But…if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things…about Holland.

My brother, seven weeks earlier, had landed in Italy.  Good friends of ours, five weeks before us, had also landed in Italy. That’s where we had wanted to be, too. It wasn’t too bad when it was just the three of us at home, but when we got together with family and friends and saw their children doing things that Stacey wasn’t doing, the differences were glaring. But then we found this poem …and we would look at each other and simply say…We’re in Holland!  It was amazing how much this helped!  We also learned that how we reacted to Stacey – with our unconditional love and acceptance – would help set the tone of how others would react to her and to us as well.

So I’d like to say…Welcome to our Holland.

Waiting…..waiting for her to talk. It was a long wait.

Her first word finally came at the age of 2 ½. And then it wasn’t “mom” or “dad”…it was “frog!”

What joy! – She’d finally learned to say her first word

What frustration! – It was such a slow process / learning words / combining them into two word sentences / then three word sentences / then four & five & six – we still work at speech all of the time.

A Dream – For the day we could have a conversation.  Will it happen? When will it happen?

What joy! – Just this year (she is 12 now), I can finally say that I can have a small conversation with Stacey.  Success in Holland is soooo sweet!

I remember working with her to push herself into a sitting position, letting her go and watching her stand alone for the first time. Then later watching her “walk” for the first time while pushing a stroller on the grass in our back yard while my tears of joy flowed.

These moments are special for every parent but somehow even sweeter when you have to work so hard and wait so long for them to happen.  This kind of joy is only found in “Holland.”

At the age of four, Stacey learned to read… but comprehension is much harder to learn and continues to be the main focus in school today.

She has learned to print and then to handwrite, to spell and to do math but many still simply look at her and assume that none of that is possible.

For Example: Stacey was in a reading group in the library a few years ago.  Each child in turn was given a chance to read. The librarian was going to skip over Stacey but her TA insisted that she have a turn. Of course, she read beautifully. I was in the school later that day and the librarian came up to me and told me the “incredible news” – Stacey could read really well. I just smiled and said, “of course she can.” It’s a constant struggle to get others to see past her disability.

We consider ourselves fortunate – she’s been in an inclusive classroom setting since Kindergarten with supports.  However, a constant fear is that funding for her supports will be removed.  Some school divisions are showing signs of moving back to segregation regardless of what is best for the child.

Being in an inclusive classroom is beneficial for all the children.  Stacey has good role models…for speech, behaviour and work habits.  And her peers learn that not everyone learns the same way or at the same pace. They learn to accept differences in others and to experience empathy for each other. To further their understanding, I’ve gone into her class each year to educate her peers about Down syndrome, how it affects Stacey and what they can do to help her.  As a result, her peers have turned into wonderful advocates for her.  (Example:  When Stacey was in Grade 3, she was running around the track at recess with some friends.  She fell down and a little Grade 1 girl decided to make fun of her. Stacey’s friends immediately lectured the girl on how to treat other people, etc. As more of Stacey’s friends came around the track, they also stopped and joined in – approx. 15 kids all together. They proved that with proper education, children have a better understanding about differences and will advocate on behalf of others).

Stacey is very outgoing and sociable. Although she is well liked and has many friends at school, it is seldom that she is included in activities outside of school. This is an all too common occurrence among the families that we know. Friendships are an ongoing concern and the lack of real friends and the reality of loneliness is a constant worry.

Our journey through the school system has been fairly good.  We’ve been fortunate to have had supports in the classroom for her which has really helped her learn academically as well as helped her learn social skills amongst her peers. She is just finishing Grade 6 this month and this has been her best year yet. This was made possible through a fabulous teacher who worked very hard to include Stacey in all aspects of classroom and school life.  As a result, Stacey has grown by leaps & bounds.

Unfortunately, we also have many close friends who can not say the same thing about their experience in the school system.

We all want independence for our children. To watch them grow up and eventually leave home and start a life of their own.  Independence is something we want very much for Stacey and yet fears and reality temper our enthusiasm about it.

When Stacey was in Kindergarten, just after the Christmas break, I was getting dressed to walk her to school when she said, “you stay home, I go myself.”  Wow, what a great moment!  So I let her go – and then followed behind to make sure she got there okay.

Another time she asked to ride her scooter around the block by herself.  I let her go, but then quickly ran around the block from the other direction and watched from a distance until she was safely home again.

You see, I’ve lost her more times than I can remember; downtown at the Health Sciences Centre; once she climbed onto a bus at school (when she doesn’t even take the bus); at the beach; last year she climbed over the neighbour’s fence and was in their garage playing with the dog. Each time I thought I’d never see her again. Thankfully, each time we found her.

She is demanding independence and to do things herself.

Our fear is she has no street smarts despite our efforts to teach them.  In reality, she is so friendly that she would go with anyone without a second thought. Independence, however necessary, becomes very scary. Statistically, vulnerable people like Stacey have an 80% chance of being abused by the time they are just 18 years old. The future does scare us.

But despite all our worries & fears, we still have dreams.

It has been a dream of mine to do one particular thing as a family. We would be playing in the park or in our front yard and a family would pass by on their bicycles. I love to cycle and I dreamed to be like that family one day.

We had heard of only one child with DS who actually rode a two wheeled bicycle so we knew that this was a daunting task.

We started the riding lessons at least 6 years ago. 4 years ago my husband, Ed, admitted to me that he believed Stacey would never be able to ride a bike. But I continued to dream.

Ed also has a dream. Ed has been alpine skiing since he was a kid. His dream has been to go skiing in the mountains with his own kids one day.

A few years ago we put them on cross country skis to see how they would react to the sensation of sliding on the snow. We couldn’t go more than 5 minutes before Stacey was complaining about the whole idea.

We took them to Falcon Lake ski resort one warm day in spring and had her on a tether so we could control her speed. She seemed to enjoy it, but at the end of that day I admitted to Ed that I didn’t think she would ever be able to ski on her own.

Well, this past year has really been something!  Near the end of August last summer, she got her balance and we are now riding bike as a family.  And after only our third trip to a Manitoba ski hill, Stacey found her ski legs and is skiing on her own in perfect control – and we are now planning a family ski vacation to the mountains next Spring break!

We both saw different potential in her. I knew that she had it in her to ride a bike and Ed had no doubt that she could ski even though neither of us saw the other as a possibility.

So just like us, everyone else who gets to know our sons and daughters sees something in them that others may not. If you look and listen, you too can see the beauty that only exists in Holland.