Vote For Isla, 4, To Be The New Face of Kinder
October 13, 2009
A little girl called Isla is in the running to be the new face of Kinder Chocolate.
Isla has Down’s Syndrome.
Please vote for her and help to change people’s perceptions of disability.
Thanks to Christina Martin for the info.
Same Difference 
All this does is reaffirm the anti able child movement! My friends son Joshua is in this contest and the cynical behaviour of Islas friend to play on the sympathy vote for her child is disgusting. Joshuas brother has downs syndrome. Do you see his parents playing the disability card for voting……..no, because this is low and exploiting Islas disability, nothing else. Shame on these parents!!!!!
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Please tell me where ‘I’ have exploited my child. I did not post this blog or any of the others that have been posted so I am not sure why you are attacking me directly.
Please refrain from attacking me about something you know nothing about.
Isla’s mummy
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Begs the question if you nothing of this blog how you have responded to it so promptly?? Can you also please read my comment, im sure I say ” the cynical behaviour of Islas friend”, i do not believe this is a direct attack on islas mummy but rather a dimplomatic comment on a blog page. Can you also please prove that Iknow nothing about this? I am a registered peadiatric nurse and have been for 20 years, so believe that I am more that qualified to comment on blattantly uneducated and somewhat ignorant comments which seek to win holidays, rather than ask my credentials prior to posting a direct attack upon me.
I would be more than happy to discuss my qualifications with you, especially in respect of the education of Downs syndrome children if you so wish.
A.Kotmarsh URAC BSc Hons
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Angie
I actually have no interest in your qualifications and at no point did I question them. My reference was to the fact that you know nothing about me, my daughter or the way in which I personally asked for votes.
I quote ‘Shame on these parents!!!!!’ – If this is not a direct attack on me and my husband then please explain who you are talking about.
Please show me where I have requested votes mentioning Isla’s disability? I am not responsible for what third parties choose to write. I only know of this blog because another person sent the link to me. This blog has nothing to do with me and in fact the first time I visited it was yesterday evening after the link was sent to me. Perhaps you need find out a little more about who wrote the blog before pouring shame on my family.
‘blattantly uneducated and somewhat ignorant comments’ – it was you who made a comment about something that you happen to find on a blog. In that comment you made a sweeping statement that we were exploiting our child without actually knowing the facts.
Again, I invite you to prove this. The only time that we have mentioned DS is in her quote, Isla doesn’t speak so what were we supposed to write? We simply stated a fact.
‘I would be more than happy to discuss my qualifications with you, especially in respect of the education of Downs syndrome children if you so wish.’ – given your experience I would have thought that you would be aware of the importance of refering to the person before the disability. My daughter is not a Down syndrome children she is a child with Down syndrome.
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Angie,
If you had followed the link to Christina Martin’s blog, you would have seen that on october 12th, Isla’s mum Emma wrote
“Thank you for your votes – the link to your blog was sent to me by a friend who saw it on a Twitter page. I will make sure I stop by from now on!”
In this day and age there are lots of ways of monitoring the web for comments etc. and even if you are n;t doing this yourself, with all the friends and supporters that the family have it it inevitable that someone will have spotted it and probably passed it on.
Actually that is one way that Isal has so many votes, the smaller circle of friends who were originally asked to consider supporting Isla were excited by her entry (because after all she is gorgeous) and as wella s voting, they in turn passed it on to their friends. It doesn’t take much to see how it works and of course apart from the original posting, whatever is said is completely out of the family’s hands.
I freely admit that I asked my friends to vote and commented that it would be fantastic for a child with Down’s Syndrome to be in the final 30, because I personally think it would. Over the past 20 years I have seen so many occasions when people with disabilities are excluded that I didn’t want to see Isla miss out becuase someone in charge decided that perhaps she might not be compliant at a photo shoot or something like that.
Isla was not the only child with Down’s Syndrome in the competition, but I am not aware that the other parents were subjected to the citicism that Isla’s family have endured. Most of this seems to have arisen because they answered truthfully the question posed by Kinder about what their child said and from that it was known that Isla has Down’s Syndrome. If you read many of the other entrants comments it was quite clear that they were not the kids comments but were written by the parents with the hope of winning the competition, I notice they don’t seem to have made it to the final 30.
You say that your are a peadiatric nurse with 20 years experience, in which case I would frankly have expected you to have a little more thought and understanding.
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Hello everyone,
Just to clear something up. I am the owner of this blog and I wrote this post. As the post says, I found this information through Christina Martin’s blog. I simply wanted to provide some publicity for Isla. While I have nothing but good wishes for Isla and her parents, this does not mean that any of the other, able bodied finalists do not deserve to win just as much as Isla does. They do, and I am sure Isla and her parents agree. Let’s keep comments polite, please.
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Angie. These blogs you claim to have seen asking for votes for Isla due to her having Down Syndrome….where they actually written by either of her parents? You have been asked by her Mum on this, and the other sites you troll to provide links to either parent doing this, and yet, you have shown nothing.
I think it is YOU doing the insulting with your spiteful comments.
A touch of the green eyed monster perhaps? You mentioned before that you are a friend of a parent of another competitor. Is “Josh” also aware of the full in’s and out’s of the competition? Is any child really?
Your being a paediatric nurse does NOT make you an authority on Isla. I too am an RSCN, and would never claim to know everything. A good nurse would never claim to know everything, as nursing is a constantly evolving role. I pity your patients and their families.
These comments you make towards Islas parents are libelous, and should be retracted. Islas parents would be quite within their rights to seek legal advice over your mallicious remarks.
As an alledged healthcare professional, you ought to know better
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Isla has of course as much right as anyone else to enter the competition, and I will be voting for her. Actually, controversy usually helps candidates, though I think some of the comments here are particularly mean and despicable.
My son has DS and has done some paid modelling too, not on the basis of having DS but just because he is very, very good looking and works well with the photographers. If you happen to come to Glasgow you might see his face on the back of some of the buses and taxis (no jokes about the back of a bus please) , but he also stars as the face of Downs Syndrome on the main Wikipedia Downs Syndrome page which received hundreds of thousands of page downloads a year. He is now 15, in full time mainstream education, and studying film-making at night school two days a week with an eye to a potential future career in the film industry.
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My goodness!
I just stumbled across this whilst googling the Face of Kinder competition and saw Angie Kotmarsh’s vicious comments.
If you have a problem Angie, address it to both this blogger and myself.
Do not launch an attack on Isla’s parents.
From a personal standpoint, the whole point of my wanting Isla to win is not BECAUSE she has down’s syndrome, but IN SPITE of it.
So that in future it can become a non-issue, and people don’t have these kinds of discussions every time a disabled person appears in the public eye.
Moreover, it is down to me whom I support in any given competition.
I backed Isla because I wanted to.
I have no connection to the family.
I have a disabled brother myself so that is why it touched me personally and led me to ask for votes.
Do not presume to declare it a conspiracy.
By the way, Isla was one of the winners and deservedly so.
Christina
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