So lying is all right, if the person you’re lying to has Down syndrome? Is what I’ve described any more complicated than that? Hey, let’s take an airplane trip with him and tell him that he’s making the plane fly with his mind. What’s the difference?
I suspect everyone’s heart was in the right place. But how carefully was this considered? Is bending reality for this young man truly in his interest? Moreover, apparently his mother is actively stoking his desire to play college football, which, absent similar systematic deception, is clearly ridiculous.
I want a person with Down syndrome to experience all he can, and as people like John Mark Stallings demonstrate, that can be quite a lot. However, I have serious reservations about whether that should extend to his family and friends deceiving him about what he can do, and thereby actively distorting his understanding of success. Also, I certainly don’t think his mother should be talking college ball up to him, when the chance that will have a cruel end is so high.
I think it would be more dignified, and more importantly much kinder, to find him a role with the football program in which he can actually contribute. That’s valuing him, not patronizing him.
As a society, we talk quite a bit about those with challenges deserving inclusion and respect, and I’m all for that. But I think if we’re really trying to do that, we genuinely include them, not lie to them. We have one world.
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He could play for TN. And meet their academic requirements.
I’m going to hell, aren’t I?
All kidding aside, his mother (and all of the contributors) is setting him up for big-time disappointment. And that will be very sad.
Life Goes On.
Maybe he’s The Waterboy. “Mawma says foosbal is da debil!”
Look, it’s a cute thing they did for a kid they all like. Mom telling him he’ll play in college is kind of mean, but not being the parent of a child with Down’s, I’m not really sure what I’d say. We do tell our kids they can be anything when they grow up and dammit if we don’t move heaven and earth to try and make it possible/probable. The average life span of a person with Down’s is 49. I think I’d make the whole world Disneyworld if I could.
And who’s to say he couldn’t coach some football? We already have Les Miles.