Some advice for Sarah Palin

I don't know what she is doing, and I don't really care. I found it a little offensive when she was campaigning and said in her speech that she "was going to be an advocate for us", sure, now that she had a kid with a disability, we were supposed to look to her for leadership. Please. She knew nothing about having a child with a disability. What she should have been doing was asking for advice, not acting like she automatically knew exactly what to do. No one is prepared, nobody knows what to do and can just walk into it acting like they are the authority on this subject. How arrogant.
Had she asked, I would have said this:
Don't expect to do anything quickly-when I take Carli to the grocery store, I have learned to accept the fact that we will have to buy all of her favorites, even if we have them at home.
We will look at all the fruits and vegetables and name them, and talk about what color they are.
She will push the basket.
She will drool over the steaks in the meat department and probably insist we buy flowers, preferably yellow ones, especially if there is a holder in the cart for them because that is where flowers go.
You will not do this trip quickly, and if you try, it will only make it worse for both of you.

Don't expect to "match" clothes-yesterday, for the third time this week, I tried to discourage Carli from wearing an orange shirt with pink and blue flowered shorts. After a long battle Courtney said "Mom, what are you doing? Who cares if her clothes match at the book store? Let her wear what she wants, and lets go!" So I did. And it was okay. I used to think "Good Lord, what is wrong with that mother letting her kid out like that?" But now I get it. I totally get it. Some battles just are not worth it. I always said I would never cut bangs on Carli, because in my head, I thought it made her Down Syndrome features more prominent. But guess what? Carli developed this habit of holding her hair back when she walked, both hands up by her ears, holding her hair out of her face while she walked. It was bizarre, and it drew attention to her, people actually stared more when she walked like that. So I took her to the hairdresser and told her what our newest issue was. She cut Carli bangs. No more issues. Just another issue resolved in the life of Carli.
I don't think these are the things Sarah Palin was thinking of when she claimed to be my new "advocate". See, she doesn't know about these things that pop up. She is thinking of health and school issues. But when she deals with the day-to-day changes, habits and activities of Trig, then she can be an advocate for someone. But first, she needs to experience it first hand.