Sibling experiences

By Jordan, Georgina and Fraser Kirk

When I moved to Dunedin for university at 18, my sister and I walked past a group of young people in a bar. One of them had Down syndrome, and was having the absolute time of their lives. We stopped and stared, realised we were staring and quickly walked away, both smiling. We said to each other, “Spencer’s going to be like that”.

It meant so much to us to see this. As weird as it sounds, it’s something that still sticks with us, because now, Spencer is definitely like that.

We’re very lucky to have Spencer as our youngest brother. He’s definitely changed all of our lives, and we’ve had lots of fun, interesting, crazy, sometimes sad, often funny experiences growing up with him.

As we’ve gotten older, we’ve also seen the impact that Spence has had on our friends and the wider community around him. He has a great time, loves to dance, loves a party, and like all of us, doesn’t love the aftermath of the next day.

There have been many stories involving our brother Spencer, but we wanted to just shed light on this particular one. We were all invited to our cousin’s wedding and it was time to hit the dance floor. Spencer loves dancing. He is by far the best dancer out of us all, and we’re all very happy to stand back and watch the show. What better time for Spence to put all his hard work at dance practice into good use. Spence decides to start break dancing in the middle of the dance floor full of confidence (which by this point we’re all very used to). We had an absolute blast, but a nice moment came from our mum spotting this message the next day:

“This is a bit random but my husband was playing music at a wedding at the Mount on Friday and noticed an awesome family with adult children in which one of those brothers has Down syndrome. He thought that he seemed like such a cool dude who knew how to party! That was so encouraging for him to see, as parents of a younger one — lots to look forward to with our kids.”

When we were younger we didn’t often get to see young adults with Down syndrome in a positive light, so we’re stoked to be a part of this young family’s story. For us, there have been so many positives having Spencer around and included in every part of our lives, and we wouldn’t have it any other way!