Thanks to some "disability networks" I'm part of on facebook, around this time of year I start getting pictures of kiddos on crutches and in wheelchairs darting off to their very first days of school, all smiles and happiness. Poor babies don't know yet that public school is like some special kind of Purgatory for the handicapped. I want to wrap my arms around all of them and pull them in close to protect them from the bullies that will tease and taunt them, and possibly trip them in the hallways and spit in their Lunchables, trap them in bathroom stalls, and make quacking sounds as they walk past. It's been almost a decade since I last saw the inside of your average public school, and I still remember days spent crying in the restroom because some little sadist hacked up a snot ball in my lunch tray or gleefully gave me candies that had been dropped on the floor first, just to have the pleasure of crushing my little soul when it was revealed that he wasn't, in fact, simply being friendly.
Most of these networks are run by parents with disabled children, as a way of meeting one another, getting advice, having a shoulder to scream on. And I think that's great. Every parent needs that sometimes, I'd bet, and parents of special-needs kids likely need it more often than most. It has to be an incredible kind of hardship, raising a disabled child. If I'm to be completely honest, it was probably this very hardship that sent my mother flying off the edge of unstable and straight into a serious deficit of sanity. To begin with, there are a thousand trips to medical specialists: pediatric orthopedists, makers of braces and wheelchairs and walkers, surgeons. Then countless days spent watching your child suffer great pain at the hands of those surgeons, being reconfigured and encased in plaster, hooked to morphine and catheters, enduring assaults by saws and needles, and then therapy: physical, occupational, speech; whatever it is it's frustrating and it makes kids cry, and PT is the worst of them all. I had my hips, quads and hamstrings done all at once when I was 7, and the way I screamed when a therapist touched my legs probably tore people's hearts out. I can still remember it, unfortunately. My whole self burned with hurt. A few times I fainted. I can't imagine how it must be to be a parent, watching all this and helpless to do anything about it.
Maybe that's why parents of disabled kids, the ones who don't lose it completely like my mother did, operate with a special kind of blinders on whenever they can. They've seen enough hurt; they want to believe that something will be "normal" for their child for once. And maybe it will. Maybe all those kiddos going like gangbusters for Kindergarten will have excellent public school experiences. But that little niggle in the back of my mind, the voice of experience, just can't bring itself to buy that. I know people who have had exactly that, but they are few -- and sometimes the shrewdly trained consciousness can tell that some of the cheer and grinning is for show. Because disability marks a person. It just does. It's inescapable. And when you need things other kids don't need, you have to haul around your differences like luggage from planet Freak. I took a walker with me into 2nd grade. Ungodly noisy, boxy thing that squeaaaaaaaked and rattled with every step. In Kindergarten, I had a classroom aide to follow me around: help me get to the bathroom, load and unload my backpack, put me on the bus. I used a specially padded chair, and for years I saw a physical therapist who came to the school and pulled me out of class to stretch me out so I wouldn't lock up like the Tin Man. I think I saw a P.E. class maybe twice in my life -- the rest of the time I had hydrotherapy at the school's pool with two other disabled kids. Part of the bullying problem is that other kids don't understand that these things are essential. All they see is special treatment. Getting to miss class, and going swimming instead of getting creamed with a dodge ball? Totally special treatment. And they resent it. In my opinion, there's not enough education about these things in schools themselves. All teachers ever seem to say is that "Little Johnny is just like you," but kids aren't stupid. They can see plain as day that Little Johnny is different -- and so, for that matter, can Johnny. Tell him he's just like the other kids, and he'll break himself in half trying to be exactly like them and wondering what makes him a persistent loser because he can't manage to fit in. If you ask me, this just undermines Little Johnny's self-esteem. Children should be taught tolerance and integration, and respect for differing abilities. In an ideal world this would happen at home, but many parents are too busy or don't care or never learned any of this themselves, and are too afraid to approach the subject. It makes them uncomfortable, I think. Everybody wants their blinders sometimes.
If I could make a job for myself touring the school districts around here and giving presentations on inclusion to schoolchildren, I'd do it in a heartbeat -- but that's no job title I've ever heard. Maybe I should just start cold-calling preschools and elementary schools and offering myself as a speaker free of charge, because seriously, I'd do this for free. I remember the hell I went through during my school years, and it still pains me to wonder how many of those pictures of happy little faces headed off to class will come back at the end of their first day confused and disenchanted. It makes me go all snarly and protective. There are things to be said for bullying and a positive correlation in character building, but there is such a thing as way too much for a child to be forced to handle. And something tells me that educating children about disability would be a better outlet for my convictions than cracking some bratty little heads together.
This idea ... it's worth something, I think. Maybe I'll try to figure out how to get started with this.
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