I do appreciate your perspective, and the additional context you supplied does help, however, you haven't yet convinced me that I was entirely mistaken. If you're up to it, I'd appreciate some further discussion.

That is not only untrue but a horrible thing to imply. I have never felt ashamed about any aspect of my daughter...

I appreciate what you have tried to add to this conversation, but your manner is very condescending and judgemental at times, if you have kids of your own imagine how you would feel being accused of being ashamed of your kids.

You may want to step back and re-read this comment thread. The original post concerned a brief exchange between a (presumably) first grade teacher and a student that the teacher considered to be a positive experience. Several others interpreted it the same way and contributed similar, positive stories of their own.

Then someone else came along and made a rude, presumptive comment that the OP was somehow harming the child in the story. Then you came along and posted comments that it's likely the OP would have considered condescending and judgmental. Do you not see the unmistakable irony in your objection to the tone of my contribution?

What I said would be "horrible" only if I somehow knew it to be untrue and what you said gave no reason to suspect that as a possibility. Your exchanges with others – argumentative from the outset – suggest that you may not realize how negative you seem to others, and you may be mistaking their responses as unwarranted attacks. Wording my own post strongly seemed necessary to "punch through" that.

As for whether I was condescending, nothing I said expressed a patronizing superiority. To be patronizing is to treat with apparent kindness that betrays a feeling of superiority. Clearly, I was not being kind, but that's not condescension.

We don't yet know enough to say whether I was being excessively critical (i.e. judgmental), even with the additional context you supplied:

When it was my daughters turn, all the nurses wanted to talk about was their old next door neighbour's sisters son who had Down syndrome. Later the same day we took her for a haircut, same treatment from the hairdresser...

Kids with Down syndrome have way more in common with other kids than they do with other kids with Down syndrome, which is something people could be more aware of and considerate of. If these nurses made the same links for a black child they would be labeled racist, but for kids with disabilities people often don't think before they comment.

When this happens on a weekly and sometime daily basis it can be incredibly frustrating, and disappointing.

I want her to be treated like every other kid...

First, your comparing this whole thing with racial prejudice ("Would you have made the same fuss if the student had answered "the black/Asian or red headed kid"?") simply isn't valid and creates what we might understand as a "false dilemma".

Skin color, hair color, and race, as characteristics over which people have no choice, have (or should have) nothing to do with behavior, yet your concern seems to lie entirely with behavior, all of which is chosen, and more than that, for which the responsibility is shared. How people choose to interact with and communicate with you and your daughter, in other words, may depend (to some extent) on how you interact with them.

The false dilemma, then, is your assertion that prejudice based in intrinsic characteristics (e.g. skin color) is somehow no better than prejudice based on the "Down's Syndrome" label. Worse, you seem to be mischaracterizing the kind intentions (if not the effect) of others as if they were just as reprehensible as bigory.

If you would like to discuss this further, and as my original post was wholly concerned with your behavior and not your physical characteristics, perhaps you may want to explain how you responded to those nurses and your hairdresser. When they made their comments, how did you react?

Would you characterize your reaction as positive or negative? If negative, were there alternative, positive behaviors that you might have chosen instead, and might that have affected the outcome? That's really all I was suggesting.