STROBEL: ‘MACLEAN IS MACLEAN’ – Family looks beyond Down syndrome
Article content
Little Maclean O’Connor marked his first birthday in an emergency room in Melbourne, Australia. Howling kids, worried adults, harried doctors and nurses.
tap here to see other videos from our team.
STROBEL: ‘MACLEAN IS MACLEAN’ – Family looks beyond Down syndrome Back to video
tap here to see other videos from our team.
We’ve all been there. Maclean had a bad case of croup.
A doc checked the toddler’s chest, peered down his throat, looked him over and said to his parents, Adam O’Connor and Heather Bradbury, “Does he have Down syndrome?”
“Uh, no!” they said, startled, thinking the doctor had confused Maclean with some other kid. The doc shrugged and sent them home with cough meds.
That Aussie medico was onto something.
“We had no idea,” Adam tells me. Routine pregnancy tests had raised no alarms. The facial features of Down syndrome were slight in Maclean’s case, and further masked by infancy.
But two months after the trip to emergency, as the kid was failing to meet typical milestones, another doctor confirmed Down syndrome.
“Everything changed completely overnight,” says Adam. “All the images that you have planned for your kid’s life switched in an instant.
“You sit at home, look at YouTube videos (about Down syndrome) and cry. It was so shocking.
“But we’re way past that now.”
Recommended video
tap here to see other videos from our team.
Which brings me to Variety Village, for Maclean’s weekend Building Blocks class. It teaches life skills to kids with disabilities, especially how to get along, how to play nice.
“It can be difficult for some of them, the socializing, interacting with each other,” says staffer Evan Thibeault, 23.
This time, a game of musical chairs has gone horribly wrong. Maclean, 10, is on the floor in a corner, with three staffers trying to coax him back to the little group.
Variety Village staff are saints. Soon, Maclean is bounding down a hall, waving happily at everyone in sight.
“That’s the real Maclean,” says his dad, waving back. “He’s a happy guy. It may be a generalization that children with Down syndrome are more affectionate, more cheerful, more loving, but it is certainly true of Maclean.”
The kid is in Grade 4, knows his alphabet and loves arithmetic. He does everything his classmates do, just not as fast. He can string words together, but the sentences are often baffling, if you don’t know him.
Soon after the family moved from Australia to Toronto — Heather is Canadian — in 2020, a neighbour put them on to Variety Village, the iconic sports centre in Scarborough geared to kids with disabilities.
Maclean takes swimming lessons and joins Variety’s legendary summer camps. Brother Wills, 7, also swims and does taekwondo. Their parents use the gym.
“Wills is younger, but he’s sort of the big brother,” says Adam. “He’s Maclean’s protector.” You mess with Maclean, you mess with Wills. The former, though, is no wallflower.
The Village has done wonders for Maclean’s confidence. “You come here, and you’re part of a community,” says Adam. “The whole facility is built for it.”
You’d think, if your child had Down syndrome, you’d wish it were not so. It’s not so simple. Of course, you’d want his or her life free of the complications that come with disability.
But, if a kid like Maclean did not have Down syndrome, well, he wouldn’t be Maclean.
“We wouldn’t have it any other way,” says his dad.
“Maclean is Maclean.”
HOW TO GIVE
Variety is a godsend to kids like Maclean O’Connor. You can help keep it so, by contributing to my Sun Christmas Fund for Variety Village. Watch for promo ads in the Toronto Sun or donate direct at sunchristmasfund.ca You’ll join the following recent donors on the honour roll:
Joanne McTaggart, Prince Albert, $25
David Simpson, Scarborough, $100
Helen Sparkes, Toronto, $50
Dorothy Horner, Newmarket, $30
Florence Morris, Scarborough, $25
John Jamieson, Courtice, $50
Bonnie and Richard Finch, Clinton, $25
Jim and Jackie Cowan, Stouffville, $200
Linda Hannah, Ottawa, $5
Joan Embree, Orleans, $65
Shawn Hill, Scarborough, $100
Robert Hyypia, Scarborough, $50
Andrew Bilicki, Toronto, $88
David Johnson, Toronto, $100
Peter Mitchell and Krista Scott, Etobicoke, $60
Evelyn Chesson, Scarborough, $200
Claudette Wilson, Toronto, $200
Lisa Levac, Brantford, $100
Jack and Linda Meyer, North York, $50
Christina Blizzard, Scarborough, $100
Donald Kennedy, Mississauga, $100
Lynn Duckworth, Toronto, $25
Margaret Stott, Scarborough, $50
Anne Ryan, Toronto, $50
Arthur St. Onge, Georgetown, $50
Patricia Foran, Scarborough, $100
Roger Ould, Mississauga, $100
Mary Ballantyne, Oshawa, $30
Patricia and Dennis Moffatt, North York, $75
Joe Bowen, Markham, $100
Turners of Little Current, Manitoulin Island, $230
Total: $2,533
TOTAL TO DATE: $84,119
Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information.