She Said What?

On Monday I finally relented and went to the doctor since I was pretty sure I had a sinus infection. After chasing Hailey around the reception area for a few minutes the nurse called us back to the exam rooms. She looked at me and asked me if my son was "in the program" at Burr Elementary. I kind of looked at her, realizing that she did look familiar. So the conversation continued like this:

ME: Yes, Andrew is in the preschool program.
NURSE: Oh, he is in Ms. D's class?
ME: Yes.
NURSE: My daughter is in the other preschool class. Is he going to be in kindergarten next year because I heard that each child can only do the program for one year.
ME: Well, my son has a diagnosis and he just turned 3 in December, so he will automatically returning next year.
NURSE: Oh, I didn't know that.
ME: My son has Down syndrome, so he attends 2 mornings a week until he goes on to kindergarten.
NURSE: Oh, I'm so sorry.
ME: I'm not. He's a great kid.

The exchange goes on for a few more seconds until she leaves the room with my chart. But the rest isn't important to my issue.

Until Monday, I don't think that anyone has really said, "I'm sorry" when I announced that Andrew has Down syndrome. I don't usually bring it up in a social conversation with someone I don't really know, but I did since our kids attend the same school. I was also caught completely off-guard. Here I was, talking to a relatively young NURSE, with a child who is a typical peer in the special education preschool program. I NEVER thought that I would hear those words coming out of her mouth. After she left the room, I kept thinking, that's all I said to her? Should I have taken the time to educate her about children with special needs?

What do you think? What do you do (if anything) in those situations? And, if you had 15 seconds to educate someone about how great our kids are, what would you say?

Kim :)