Down Syndrome: The Children's Theraplay Foundation

Each year, about 6,000 babies are born with Down Syndrome, according to the CDC. Down Syndrome is a congenital disorder that causes intellectual impairment and physical abnormalities such as hypotonia, ligamentous laxity, and decreased strength which prevent children with Down Syndrome from developing motor skills at the same level as children without the disorder. The Children’s TherAplay Foundation provides therapy for children with disorders such as this. An employee from this foundation wrote a success story named “Meet Leo” about a young boy with Down Syndrome. Although the author used some logos to convince the audience of parents with special needs children that the therapies Children’s TherAplay provides work, the most important appeal was the author’s use of pathos to connect to the audience on a more meaningful level in an attempt to convince the …show more content…
The father said that Leo was an “extreme case” and that they had to feed him with an “eyedropper” which shows that Leo had it tough. Later, the author put in another upsetting quote from Leo’s father: “Leo turned four in August and we spent well over the first half of his life in what we would call survival mode, trying to stay out of the hospital, trying to get off of oxygen, trying to get him to just do the things he needed to do to get going.” He used this quote with the term “survival mode” to emphasize how Leo had an extra hard time even surviving as a baby. Again, since the audience is parents with disabled children, the audience could potentially relate to these difficult issues Leo experienced and could become heartbroken for Leo and his family, since it could be reminding them of their own child. The author attempted to use this connection to Leo’s parents as a way to use pathos to convince the audience to use their