Beating the odds

One week from today, Cedar Vance will don a cap and gown and proudly accept her diploma with the rest of Whitefish High School’s Class of 2010.

While many graduates might consider their public school careers wild rides, Cedar’s has been wilder than most.

And had Cedar’s mother, Bobbi Hall, listened to a doctor’s suggestion 19 years ago, her triumphant graduation might never have arrived.

Cedar weighed just 2 pounds 10 ounces when she was born. She seemed healthy, apart from her size.

But a few days after Cedar was born, a doctor told Hall why her baby was so small: Cedar had Down syndrome.

Hall was alone in a hospital room when the doctor told her. She was still reeling from the news when he continued, “You should maybe look at institutionalizing her.”

That was not an option, Hall said. But facing an unknown future with a daughter with Down syndrome was terrifying.

“I knew nothing about Down’s. I was scared,” Hall said.

The information she found about the syndrome was vague and frightening.

Some children with Down syndrome can have heart defects. Their growth can be slow. Sleep apnea, vision and hearing problems and hypothyroidism are common.

It was overwhelming, Hall said.

“In the beginning, all I could think about was her disability,” she said. “To me, that was really scary.”

Probably to cope with her fears, Hall turned to denial.

“It came to a point where I said, ‘No, she is not disabled,’” she said. “I swung the other way, to a place of denial.”

Eventually Hall found a place between the extremes.

“I realized she has tremendous capabilities even though she has a disability,” she said.

It helped, Hall said, when she learned “disability” simply means “incapable of doing.” Under that definition, every one of us is disabled, she said.

After being told to consider sending Cedar away, Hall didn’t expect help from doctors. She didn’t find much help from psychologists, either.

“They label them and then they are done with them,” she said.

So Hall was on her own, a 44-year-old mother with an infant whose needs she wasn’t sure how to address. Instinctively, she turned to the place she felt most comfortable: the saddle.

She already had been riding throughout her pregnancy. Cedar brags that her ability with horses is older than she is.

“I’ve been riding horses since before I was born,” she said.

When Cedar was 6 months old, Hall put her in a pouch and took Cedar with her on rides. Doctors don’t recommend that, Hall said — but she figured as long as Cedar’s neck was supported, the baby would be fine.

Hall attributes Cedar’s high functioning abilities now to the fact that Cedar grew up on horseback. Her balance and coordination are better than many people with Down syndrome, and Hall credits the horses with helping Cedar develop.

When she was old enough, Cedar learned to ride on her own, simply by watching her mother teach other people how to ride.

Now she’s involved in pole bending, barrel racing and trail class events in the Special Olympics. Cedar is more comfortable on horseback than most people ever will be.

“She can ride a horse bareback, arms out, by herself,” Hall said. “She giggles and laughs to her heart’s delight.”

The horses keep Cedar busy on the weekend. In addition to raising her own horses, Hall boards them, and Cedar helps feed and exercise them when she isn’t in school.

But she’s a girly girl, too — a “princess girl,” Hall explained. “Sometimes in the morning she’ll ask me, ‘Will you fix my hair like Belle [from “Beauty and the Beast”]?’”

Cedar also is a cheerleader. Hall and Wendy Wheeler, the para-educator who has been with Cedar since the second grade, discovered that during a powder puff football game Cedar’s freshman year.

“After every good kick or goal, she just was jumping up and down and cheering and patting everybody else on the back,” Wheeler said. “Bobbi and I looked at each other and said, ‘She wasn’t such a good football player, but she sure is a good cheerleader.’”

Cedar proved that her junior year, when she tried out for and won a spot on the cheer squad. She was a Bulldogs cheerleader her junior and senior years.

“When the other cheerleaders are sitting down, she’s standing up in front of all the band and all the football team ... yelling at them, telling them what to do through the whole game,” Wheeler said with a laugh. “She’s a little bossy.”

The team put up with it, though. The whole class adores Cedar, Wheeler said.

“They’re very good with her — so patient, so understanding,” she said.

Wheeler said she has mixed feelings about graduation. After moving from grade to grade with Cedar for 12 years, she almost feels like part of the class.

“I have a terrible feeling I’ll be a basket case at graduation,” she said. “I told Cedar already I’m probably going to cry a lot.”

After graduation, Cedar probably will spend more time with the horses, Hall said. She also might help in some of the district’s special education classes.

“She’s a really good reader. She would help kids who need help with reading,” Hall said.

Hall said she hopes other parents of children with Down syndrome can learn from her experiences.

Focusing only on someone’s disability, as Hall did at first when Cedar was born, hurts the disabled person, she said.

“We’re doubly disabling them,” she said. “We have to move out of this place.”

But not everyone believes parents can raise children with disabilities.

Hall met a woman at a basketball game who had a 3-year-old grandson with Down syndrome. When he was born, the family had been told the same thing Hall heard days after delivering Cedar: That they should consider putting him in an institution.

Like Hall, they didn’t consider it, even for a moment.

“It’s really encouraging to see Cedar,” the grandmother told Hall.

Hall urges parents to listen to themselves when it comes to their children.

“We know our kids better than anybody else,” she said. “Do not back down. Fight for what you feel is right for them.”

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.