Senior Robert Coleman walked into the NHS library with his sister Sabrina Coleman a few steps behind. They took a seat at a long, rectangular table, Sabrina sitting catty-corner to her brother. Robert sat straight in his chair, hands placed on the desk while Sabrina curled up in her chair, one leg tucked under herself, eyes darting from her brother to her lap to the other side of the room.

It’s a common sight for people at NHS to see the two sitting like this. Sabrina was born with Down Syndrome, a genetic disorder that occurs when when an individual is born with a full or extra copy of chromosome 21. In society, a great deal of stigma still exists towards individuals with Down Syndrome. According to the Global Down Syndrome Foundation, people often say they believe individuals with Down Syndrome cannot play sports, read or write, or go to regular public school.

Robert and Sabrina are helping to dispel those myths by shedding light on the joys of living with Down Syndrome.

“You think of someone with Down Syndrome as someone who can’t really function or do a lot of things that we think of,” Robert said. “However, she will be talking to me, and she will make a reference or a comment that is supposed to be funny, and it cracks me up because I wouldn’t expect that coming from her. She comes up with new materials every day.”

Of course, Robert points out there are still things Sabrina cannot do completely on her own.

“Right now I have a job where the state pays me to drive her around to her various activities like speech and music,” Robert said. “Also, my family members are pretty technologically inept, so I help Sabrina [use the computer]. She really enjoys using the computer, but she doesn’t really know what she is doing. At school, I don’t really help her much throughout the day. I drive her to school, then I take her to her classes to make sure she gets there on time. At home, I help her with homework when she needs it. Other than that she is pretty self sufficient when she is just having free time.”

Sabrina also cites all the things her brother does with her, like teaching her the basics of how to drive and helping her with her math homework. However, her favorite thing to do with her brother is to cook.

“Yeah it’s not that advanced of cooking,” Robert said. “She really likes ramen noodles, so I like to help prepare her for later when she wants to be more independent.”

Although Robert helps Sabrina with many things, he says that Sabrina has affected his life immensely as well.

“She has made me a lot more aware of people with disabilities, and she has made me a lot more tolerant and patient with people who are not cooperative,” Robert said. “She has also let me see from a lot of different perspectives on a lot of different things.”

Like all siblings, there are challenges to their relationship.

“Well patience certainly has been a challenge, because she is very strong willed and stubborn when she wants to be,” Robert said. “A fairly large challenge is actually interacting with her like a normal brother, because it would be pretty easy for me to just not interact with her at all. I know there are some siblings out there that choose that route with their siblings with disabilities, and so I try to make a point of treating her like a normal sister and actually try to annoy her and all the things that come with being a sibling.”

In the end, Robert reflects on a time when he was reminded just how important his relationship with his sister is.

“Sabrina isn’t allowed to have a Facebook account because my mom doesn’t want her to have her presence online,” Robert said. “But recently, she was able to get onto Facebook because my mom never logged out. So my mom saw a Facebook post open from a person called Sabrina Coleman that used a lot of swear words and things like that. She was really worried that Sabrina had made a Facebook account and was using profanity on it. My mom came to me and asked me to help her with that, and I found out that it was a different person’s [Facebook page]. So that really opened my eyes to how innocent Sabrina can be because she found that person by just typing her own name into the Facebook search bar because she wanted an account that badly. So something as innocent as that can lead her to getting into trouble with her family.”

Despite challenges and hard times, when asked about Sabrina’s future, Robert looks at his sister and smiles.

“I think the future is going to be very bright for Sabrina, mainly because she is a very intelligent person,” Robert said. “Academically, she might not get very far, but she is definitely going to be able to be an independent person and probably live by herself at some point. She loves spending time online and interacting with people online who actually can’t see her as someone with a disability. They just see her as her character online. To them, she is probably just someone who is young and doesn’t have very good sentence structure. She is going to be able to make a lot of good friends online who like her for her personality and her character and not just because she has a disability. Overall, I would say she is going to be just fine.”

Robert believes it isn’t always easy to get to know someone with a disability but he feels it is worth it.

“It takes a lot of effort to get to know them, but once you do, its very rewarding,” Robert said. “You get to see someone with a very vibrant personality and a lot of creativity and a lot of freethinking.”

Sabrina makes her brother look away as she tells about what she wants for her future.

“I want to grow up and be a teacher, and I want to be driving soon, maybe,” Sabrina said. “I want to stay in town with my brother . . . because I love him so much.”