Same old, same old

[nightengalesknd]

Today I attended a conference largely aimed at parents of children with a particular condition. The specific condition doesn’t matter here. The information sheet handed out about the agency that sponsored the conference, an agency which, I might add, does a lot of great things, wrote that this condition is “one of the most devastating of all”

Comments

[nightengalesknd]

I have read both Karen and With Love From Karen many many many times. Most recently, last month.

And yes.

Also, the evolution of her parents, from opposing even getting a wheelchair to realizing all the benefits. And I still see this attitude today, with young children who can walk if someone sets them up and helps them, so they don't get independent wheeled mobility for years because, after all, they walk. There is at least one study that showed that toddler-aged kids who got power chairs made more gains in language skills than kids who didn't, maybe because they were better able to create cause and effect.

Although I have always looked at Karen and walking at least partially through the lens of its time. Schools would not accept a child who could not walk. This was preIDEA, preADA and pre504. So walking was in some ways a means to the end of education in a school with other kids. It shouldn't have been a necessary means to that end, but it was, given the realities of that time. So in some ways I am gentler with the emphasis on walking than I am with the contemporary emphasis.

[wotyfree]

Yes. It was an honorable mistakes at the time, I think. I think Karen got hurt badly by it. But it wasn't the same as someone doing that now. They didn't know better.

(I think insisting that she learn to write before letting her get a typewriter was much less defensible though.)

[nightengalesknd]

Yes.

And both things still happen now. Well, for typewriter, substitute computer/iPAD/dictation software. But yes.

And as badly as Karen got hurt, I suspect she fared better than many many of her agemates with disabilities because her parents generally made a good faith effort to consider her as a whole person. They even sought the input of disabled adults - something we still have difficulty getting most parents to do.

[wotyfree]

Yes, definitely. I didn't mean that as an attack on them. I think they pretty clearly did the best they could.

I wish parents would learn from that part of what they wrote. They were always very, very clear on the fact that she was a person. (Much more so than the people who would get all offended by this book because everyone calls her a CP.)