As told to Leah Greenburg

Many years ago, I was in the park and I saw a girl I vaguely knew. She was there with her younger sister, who clearly had Down syndrome. I watched them for a few minutes, my respect for this girl increasing by the second as I observed her patience with her little sister. I remembered that I once heard somewhere that Hashem gives kids with special needs to special families and for a moment, I felt a stab of… I don’t know, was it envy? The little girl looked so cute! She was smiling and offering hugs to everyone she met. I remember thinking to myself that if my mother had a baby with Down syndrome, I wouldn’t be ashamed or embarrassed. I would be proud and excited from the very beginning! I would always have patience and be as wonderful as this girl in the park.

You’re probably wondering if my story is going to end with my mother having a baby with Down syndrome and me then coming to realize that nothing is as easy as it looks. Nope!

Here’s a little information about my family: I’m the oldest of six. First comes me, then Yechiel Aryeh, then Naama, then Devorah’le, then the twins Moshe Dovid and Elisheva. I’m often lumped together with Yechiel Aryeh because we’re closest in age.

My younger siblings are really cute (most of the time) but I guess you could say I have major sibling rivalry with Yechiel Aryeh. He takes my things without permission — I can’t even count the number of times I’ve put something important down on the table and Yechiel Aryeh just walked off with it. He’s also careless, so sometimes he’ll take something of mine and seem to completely forget that he took it. I’ll spend weeks looking for it, only to find it outside in the yard, completely ruined from the rain.

I used to be really into a particular game that I would play with friends for hours in my room. Yechiel Aryeh would come in when I wasn’t there (I was trying to train him to knock, without success) and walk off with essential pieces! This type of thing happened almost every single day. I’d go crazy when I saw what he’d done. I’d go crying to my parents, but they were having similar issues of their own with Yechiel Aryeh and didn’t know what to do. At one point, he went through my mother’s purse, pulled out a hundred-dollar bill, and took it to school with him! My mother was beside herself, but said she felt fortunate that at least she got the money back.

My parents kept urging me to be patient with him. They bought me presents to placate me and said he would probably outgrow his difficult behavior eventually.

We tried brainstorming ways to keep Yechiel Aryeh out of my stuff. When my mother said he’s probably just jealous because he really admires me, I went through my entire room and made a huge box of things for him that I didn’t really need. When I gave Yechiel Aryeh the box, he was delighted. But in the middle of the night — when I was sleeping — he went into my room, and helped himself to other things too!

Boy did I scream at him in the morning. Which got me into trouble. But what was I supposed to do? He was completely exasperating! And my parents were completely unsupportive (without meaning to be); they just had no idea what to do with him either. Nobody seemed to get it. I couldn’t STAND him!

(Excerpted from Teen Pages, Issue 744)