Vladimir Beloiartsev

Fact checking:

Down syndrome is the most common genetic abnormality in the world. According to statistics, every 700-800th child on the planet is born with Down syndrome. This ratio is the same in different countries, climatic zones and social strata. It doesn’t depend on the parent’s lifestyle, their health, presence or absence of bad habits, skin color, nationality.

About 2200 children with Down syndrome are born in our country every year. Boys and girls with Down syndrome are born with the same frequency, their parents have a normal set of chromosomes. It’s no one’s fault that a child has an extra chromosome and it cannot be.

Down syndrome isn’t a disease, but a genetically determined condition. 

According to international expert’s rates, there are about 50,000 people with Down syndrome in Russian, and about half of them are children. Russia doesn’t have its own statistics on the number of people with Down syndrome.

Source: https://downsideup.org/

Vladimir’s mother, Tatyana Beloyartseva:

“Vova’s diagnosis was a brutal blow to my pride.

I’m a teacher, and I have always believed that prosperous parents should have had “prosperous children”, and Vova’s appearance was a real surprise to me. I was sure that could not happen to me — a woman from a decent family, without bad habits, with a higher education and a good job. But that was not the worst of it.

When he was one and a half years old, he had the most serious disease — leukemia. He had complete atrophy of the body, medically induced white blood, blepharitis of both eyes — in general, a condition almost incompatible with life. 

I was literally persuaded to keep him. “Do you realize that he will never even be able to say ‘mommy’ to you?” they admonished me, insisting that I surrender him to a shelter to “give birth to a new, healthy one.” But I decided no. This is my maternal cross — and if he is destined to live, then he will next to me, and if he is destined to die — I will bury him like a human being, because for a year and a half, my beloved son, my long-awaited son was near me”.

“And here was the turning point — the realization than no one can do anything but me as a mother. His life is in my hands and only I can do something to help him. From the medicine perspective they’ve basically said: “We are pre powerless”. So for almost a year I taught him how to move his fingers. I massaged him every hour, every day.

I was afraid of waking up one morning and finding his cold body.  

— so I spent the first month on very little sleep.

When the first movements appeared, it was a great joy. First his fingers, then his hands, then his feet. For a long time, his hands worked, his legs didn’t work, but we moved around on the floor as best we could and I started showing him letters and teaching him how to pronounce sounds.

By the time he was 4, he wasn’t just talking — to my surprise, I had taught him to read”.

“During his growing up, we have to face different challenges. 

It was very hard for my eldest daughter. I asked her to walk with Vova in the park and she was back in tears: “ I’m not going to walk with Vova anymore, 

They say to me, “Lena, whose brother is a fool!”

Of course, it was very painful and difficult”.

Vladimir’s sister, Elena Digurova:

“Vova and I are 10 years apart, so in fact he became my “first child”. I constantly stood up for him and didn’t let anyone to offend him. The attitude of peers to him — and to me, as a “retard’s sister” — was often like a second class.

But children don’t just bully — most of the time they are repeating the words of adults who didn’t explain to them that children are different, but laughed and looked down on them.

Sadly, but tellingly

the boy who bullied Vova the most had an accident — he received severe burns that disfigured his life. He was never able to recover.

This is an important lesson to people who think they are “normal”

— never know what might happen to you or your children. So stay human — in every situation”.

Tatiana Nikolaevna: 

“One day they came home very upset, and Vova had been crying for a long time:

“Mom, why don’t the children want to play with me? I’m not like them?”

He was about 8 or 9ish years old. It was his first conscious question. And then I began to explain to him: 

We’re all not like that. We’re all different. We’re blue-eyed and black-eyed, white-skinned and dark-skinned, short and tall, fat and thin. We are very different.

But what matters most is how we perceive life and the world around us.

And if you’re like that little raccoon looking out into the lake and making faces, life will make faces back at you. And if you look at the world with love and enjoy every day and the people who are around you, if you respect yourself and feel like a human being, then others will feel it too.

This, apparently, became the basis of upbringing — and it gave its results”.

Elena:

“We brought up Vova without emphasizing syndrome. Just a member of our family, just a son, a brother, no pity: “Eat with a spoon — no, not with your hand”. One more time. And again.

The most important thing is treating a child with special needs as a normal person. 

There are also healthy children who start reading and speaking late — you really have to be patient here. 

As for the reactions of others, evil tongues always speak first of themselves. “Everyone shares what they can”. The wrong weight and the wrong hair color are also judged. You can’t please everyone. 

People will always look askew at someone. There is no reason to become invisible”.

“Vova is amazing. He is really a very kind person. 

 It’s almost impossible to make him lose his temper, to bring him down from a positive mood, on the contrary — he always tries to find such words to cheer up or balance a person. 

He is very fond of life-affirming postulates about always defeating evil, world peace, universal values — little more, and he will become a local guru for people who have lost their bearings and faith in themselves. I wouldn’t be surprised. 

I think he could easily be a motivational speaker.” 

Andrey Pigarin, close-knit friend, entrepreneur.

— Hello, beautiful! , — Vova happily greets me on the other side of the screen.

— How are you doing, darling?

— Best of all, sweetheart! 

— Vova, let’s start our interview by answering this question: if you were asked to tell who Vladimir Beloyartsev is — what would you say?

— I’m a creative person. That’s the most important thing. I try to put my soul and my love into creativity. So that people understand everything themselves. I am engaged in Caucasian national dances, and in dance I feel real most of all. It’s in dance that you can show what is the real Caucasian spirit, passion, fire, excitement. My character is exactly like that.

Creativity is what character is all about.

— Do you feel like a star today, Vova?

— In Mozdok, maybe, yes. But I don’t want to fly high and fall painfully. I walk on the ground.

I don’t want to prove anything to anyone. I’m satisfied with what I have now.

— Would like to start a family in the future?

— I’m 36 years old now, and many people say that it’s time to start a family, to get married. I understand that it’s necessary, but first of all it’s a great responsibility. A financial, among other things. I can’t take it on yet. Yes, it’s true, I like pretty girls. But the most important thing in a girl is upbringing. It depends on the parents. To know your roots and traditions, hold on to them, honor them.

Gentle, modest and graceful is my type.

“Yulia, you know, sometimes people without any mental peculiarities do such monstrous things that Vova looks the most adequate and decent of all. 

For example, after my mother’s death, the scammers wanted to take custody of Vova for the sake of real estate — they changed his passport and tried to reissue his pension to themselves. When I rushed to the Pension Fund, the conversation with the girl who was drawing up all this looked like this:

— Do you have it written that the person is disabled and has a guardian?

— Uh, yeah.

— Then how can you commit such manipulations without my knowledge?

— Well, he asked for it.

Silly smiled and shrugged. 

I wanted to shout, “And who’s the mentally disable here?!” 

Elena, Vova’s sister

Tatiana Nikolaevna: 

“Thanks to Vova, I realized what true love means. 

Love is unconditional acceptance.

First of all, the children. After all, we want them to be the most extraordinary, the best and God forbid, not like the neighbors’ ones. 

Loving “good” children is, of course, very easy. 

And to love unconditionally, just like that, without any conditions, just to live because he is there — loving him just for what he is — this is probably the greatest feeling of mother love, which I realized for myself. 

Love for children is impossible without love for everything. If you don’t love the world, if you don’t love life, this sky, this earth, these flowers — if you don’t love it yourself, it’s simply impossible to instill it in a child. After all, you can only truly give what you have”.

— Do you feel happy, Vova?

— Yes, and always have been. How do I explain it? Easy!

To be happy is to be confident in yourself. In what you do.

It’s important to always remain human. In all situations. Don’t betray, respect your family.

It doesn’t matter whether you have the syndrome or not. The major point is what kind of person you are.