Tag Archives: Special Education

Outcast by Association

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Jesus and the Leper

This kind of thing happens a lot, but I don’t often share it in this forum: a passage from Scripture or an insight from prayer will speak directly to my life as an autism dad. This time, it’s an insight that came from the Scripture readings at Mass today (Sunday, February 11). So, having explained the spiritual nature of this post—at least the beginning of the post—let me move ahead.

First, the Story.

Today’s Gospel reading was the story of Jesus healing a leper. It’s in Mark 1:40-45. The man, somewhat timidly, says to Jesus, “If you will it, you can make me clean.” Jesus, in reply, touches the man and says, “I do will it; be made clean.” And the man was healed.

But then Jesus tells the man to keep this miracle quiet—only to show himself to (not necessarily tell) the priests, who had the power to release him from his exile and allow him to return to his home, his family, and the synagogue. So what does the man do? He goes around telling everyone what Jesus did.

Mark tells us that because of the man’s loose lips, “it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly. He remained outside in deserted places.” By touching the infected flesh of a leper, Jesus became ritually unclean, just as the leper had been. And because this fellow spread the news, everyone knew what Jesus had done. He was now barred from entering any town or village. He couldn’t even go visit his mother back in Nazareth.

A Simple Choice.

Okay, so that’s the story. Here’s what hit me: Willingly (I do will it), Jesus took upon himself the isolation that had been this unfortunate man’s lot. The ritual uncleanness had passed from the leprous man to Jesus, so Jesus could no longer be around other people any more. And without a peep, he accepted the consequences of this action. Knowingly, by his own actions, he placed himself under the judgment of the law.

What I found interesting is the simple, unassuming way that Jesus did this. There were no recriminations against the upholders of religious purity. No sense of superiority over those who enforced the law with no regard for the people they were condemning. No protest against the unfairness or extreme nature of the judgment. He quietly accepted the verdict. He willingly became an outcast so that this fellow could be reunited with his family and friends.

Outcast by Association.

There’s a parallel here for my life as an autism dad. Over the years, I have had countless meetings with teachers, administrators, school psychologists and school counselors. Along with Katie, I have pushed and pulled, schmoozed and confronted, plotted and pleaded to get my kids the help they need. I have even gotten one teacher fired and another demoted because of the way they worked (or failed to work) with my kids.

As you might expect, I have become persona non grata in a few schools. I have been identified as that dad on more than one occasion. One assistant principal became very adept at not returning my calls or e-mails. A teacher once told me, “You know, not everyone is cut out for school” as an attempt to keep me from pushing for help for my son. Another administrator grew so weary of my advocating that all sense of comity shriveled up, and every communication became unnaturally stiff and formal. It’s as if I had become an outcast myself.

I’ve done all of this so that my children could be more welcomed into the community of their classmates and into the community of learners that is their right. Of course, I’m willing to do it. I’d do anything to make sure my kids get every chance to succeed.

But before you get the idea that I’m a hero—or that I think I’m a hero—let me give some perspective.

Parting Ways with Jesus.

As I said above, Jesus became an outcast willingly. There was no bitterness in his heart against those who judged him. He felt no recrimination against the people who barred him from entering their towns. He held no judgment against his judges. There was only concern for the ones who had been excluded and demonized. He even forgave the people who crucified him.

I, on the other hand, can give in to the very same us-versus-them mentality that I have railed against when it is aimed at my children. I can issue harsh judgments about their teachers’ ignorance, blame the school administrators for their callousness, and even issue a blanket condemnation of all the neurotypicals around us—everyone, that is, except my close friends who, of course, get it.

So this is where Jesus and I part ways. Jesus feels just as badly for the people who do the judging as he does for their victims. In his eyes, everyone is a victim. They may be victims of the structures of sin in the world that convince people that they get ahead by pushing other people down. Or they may be victims of the structures of sin in their own hearts that make them demonize the “others” around them—the attitudes of rivalry and animosity that lurk inside everyone’s heart. Or, most likely, they are victims of a mixture of both.

It Starts with Me.

Of course, I will never be as pure or humble as Jesus. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try. I don’t want my kids to grow up with a victim complex. I don’t want them to grow up bitter at the world. I don’t want them to develop some perverse sense of superiority to the “haters” and “judgers” out there.

It starts with me. Children learn what they live, so I need to create an environment of openness and generosity in our home. I need to model forgiveness and understanding. And because my kids can have a hard time grasping social cues and relationships, I need to be as clear and patient as possible.

This, I think, is one of the most important lessons I can instill in them. Because no matter where they go or what they do, they’ll always stand out. Maybe not all the time, and maybe not a lot, but they will. It’s inevitable; they’re too different not to. And no matter how much progress we make as a society, there will always be people who don’t understand. People who treat different people as lesser people. People who write them off. Even people who turn them into scapegoats.

If I can teach my kids to forgive and not judge, they will develop into men and women whom people will want to be around. They’ll find their communities, their homes, their tribes—places where they can thrive and make a difference.

It starts with me. But then again, it really doesn’t. It started with Jesus. He set the tone. He showed the way. And by his grace, I can too.

A Down-Under Politician Looks Down on “Those People”

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Pauline Hanson Australia

A troubling report from Down Under. Have a look at this article about Pauline Hanson, a senator from Queensland, Australia. In it, she argues, quite inelegantly, for students with autism to be separated from their peers and placed into self-contained classrooms. Why? Because these students are “holding back” the other students who want to learn.

Below are three quotes from her address on the matter, followed by three comments—all of which should be painfully obvious, but apparently are not. At least not yet.

  1. “Most of the time the teacher spends so much time on them they forget about the child who wants to go ahead in leaps and bounds in their education, but are held back by those.”

As if children with autism don’t want to get ahead or are incapable of making leaps and bounds of their own. They deserve more than to be “looked after.” Please don’t assume they are incapable of anything more than this. They’re not burdens needing routine maintenance or looking after.

  1. “It’s no good saying we have to allow these kids to feel good about themselves and we don’t want to upset them and make them feel hurt.”

What a cruel mischaracterization! This comment reveals an ignorance that is both embarrassing and unacceptable in a public official. I have no doubt that parents of autistic children want more for their kids than that they feel good about themselves. Like all parents, they want their children to receive an education, to develop their skills and gifts, and to know they can make a real contribution.

  1. “We need to get rid of those people because you want everyone to feel good about themselves.”

Well, at least her office later clarified that “those people” referred to “do-gooders” demanding autistic children remain in mainstream classrooms. But my sigh of relief was cut short when I realized that she was still talking about “getting rid of” some nuisances and who may be threatening the status quo. Again, the condescending language of exclusion, elitism, and overweening power. As if you can get rid of any parent.

 

Words from the Unwise

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Lawsuit-Officer-handcuffed-elementary-school-students-with-ADHD

So this bit of news has been making the rounds the past couple of days among autism and other special-needs parents. It seems that in two unrelated incidents, a police resource officer in a Kentucky grade school put an eight-year-old boy and a nine-year-old girl in handcuffs in order to restrain them—cuffing them around their biceps because their small hands would slip through the cuffs. Both students have ADHD, and the girl also had a history of some kind of trauma.

The school was aware of the children’s diagnoses, as was the police officer who cuffed them. Both students had been removed from their classrooms because of disruptive behavior, and when the principal was unable to contain the situations, the officer took over, employing the handcuffs. (Note: watch the video at the top of the article at your own risk. It’s very disturbing.)

According to the report, the girl was especially upset by the situation, to the point of needing psychiatric treatment in a hospital. Understandably, both sets of parents are suing the officer involved.

This is a very sad story, especially in a time when attention has already been focused on police officers abusing their power and mistreating people who live on the margins. These incidents may not rise to the level of Freddie Gray or Michael Brown, but they come pretty darned close.

I don’t want to say much about the incidents—I don’t like stating the obvious or dwelling on people’s stupidity. But I do want to look at the article that described the situation. Actually, not the article (although it does have a couple of really embarrassing typos), but the utterly irresponsible headline that was assigned to it:

Lawsuit: Officer handcuffed mentally disabled kids as punishment.

Disabled? Mentally? What does that even mean? The report only talks about ADHD and some unspecified trauma. It’s not as if the kids had been lobotomized or anything. There’s nothing in the report that indicated the students were “disabled” in the sense that most people understand that term.

It doesn’t take a genius to see how this terminology places a kind of perception filter over the whole story.

“Oh, the kids must have been truly and deeply disturbed.”

“I can understand why the principal let the officer shackle the children.”

“These are mentally disabled kids—it’s not as if they were ‘normal’ kids. I guess it’s okay.”

It may not seem like a huge deal—just a matter of poor wording. But in this time when the Americans with Disabilities Act is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary, we don’t need to be going backwards. Remember, it was the ADA that ushered in the era of person-centered language. So we talk about a man with schizophrenia rather than calling him a schizophrenic. We talk about a woman who can’t walk instead of calling her a cripple. And we talk about a child with ADHD rather than calling him mentally disabled. Or at the very worst, we call him a child with a disability.

It shouldn’t be rocket science at this point in our history, and yet here we are. We’re still using hurtful, discriminatory words. Words that justify abuse, fear, and marginalization.

ADHD Hall of Fame.

But that’s not all. Terms like “mentally disabled” give the impression that the kids are slow learners or are academic underachievers. It puts them in a category of “less than,” when there is absolutely no evidence in the article that this is the case. For all we know, these kids could be total freaking geniuses who happen to have ADHD. It’s not uncommon, after all for this combination to occur.

Here, for instance, is a list of some well-known, very successful people who also have ADHD:

  • Virgin Airlines CEO Richard Branson
  • Quarterback Terry Bradshaw
  • Musician Justin Timberlake
  • Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Katherine Ellison
  • Comedian Whoopi Goldberg
  • Actress Michelle Rodriguez

Would you call any of them “mentally disabled”?

Words from the Unwise.

It’s possible that the editor who created this headline thought the article would get more views if he or she used a provocative title. Or maybe the editor was trying to allude to the recent police brutality stories. But it was a very poor choice of words. It’s deeply offensive, and it did a huge disservice, both to the story and more important, to the kids.

But hey, I guess we’re making some progress. At least the headline didn’t call the kids retarded.

It’s All About Us

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I’m so proud of my oldest daughter. All by herself, without telling us, she produced this video for a project in her Aspergers-only school. She doesn’t often tell us what she’s thinking—not uncommon for any 13-year-old girl and even more prevalent with girls on the spectrum—so I was blown away when I saw this.

Dissecting a Victory

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So today was the big day. We had our eligibility meeting at the school to determine if our fourth child, a third-grader, qualified as being on the autism spectrum according to the school district’s definitions. And I’m happy to report that the IEP team (consisting of the school psychologist, the speech therapist, our son’s teacher, the assistant principal, our private psychologist, and Katie and me) all agreed that he met the district’s criteria for being identified as ASD.

A Good Day.

On one level, not much has changed as a result of this new designation. He is still receiving the same services he received under his previous designation as “Language Impaired.” We’ll revisit his Individualized Education Plan later in the school year to see if he needs more help than he’s currently receiving.

But having him identified as being on the autism spectrum is also a safeguard for the future. Should things go downhill for him in the social/emotional sphere, as it has done for our older daughter, school officials will know that part of it is because he has autism. And that will alter the way they intervene and how they will help him.

Should he run into further glitches in his auditory processing, his short-term memory, or his ability to adapt to new surroundings (like changing classes in middle school), it will be that much easier for accommodations to be put in place to help him.

And since kids on the autism spectrum tend to be literal thinkers, it will be easier for him to access special-ed helps as the curriculum begins to demand more inferential thinking and not just rote memory or quick calculations. He can learn these skills, but he’s probably going to need more help in making the jump from the literal to the figurative.

So this was a good day. It was a long time coming, too—the fruit of a couple of very tense preliminary meetings and hours and hours of preparation on our part. It came after we had to challenge the previous assistant principal’s thinly-veiled insinuations that we didn’t know what we were talking about and that she was the real expert in autism. It came after a couple of years of seeing his school-related melt downs increase in frequency and intensity. And it came on the heels of two similarly long-fought victories for his older brother and sister. That makes us three for three. Quite a lot to celebrate, don’t you think?

Walking a Rocky Road.

So why, as Katie and I left the meeting with our son’s new designation in hand, did I not hoot and holler in victory? Why was there a lump in my throat instead of a smile on my face?

Because my son still has autism. Because yet another official organization has recognized—and thus reminded me—that he has a disability that will impair him for the rest of his life.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad for what we did. It’s going to protect our boy through his entire educational career. It’s going to open the door to a set of services and accommodations that will help him learn how to live in this strange world filled with neurotypical people.

But I know that through that door lies a path of misconceptions and of challenges that I wish he would never have to face. A path where potential friends may not understand him and may even reject him.

A path where potential employers may not see the gifts he has to offer.

A path where the joys and comforts of a family of his own may be forever elusive.

It’s a rougher, rockier path than most of his peers will be walking. And that’s never a fun thing to think about.

A Sobering Reminder.

We got a stark illustration of this just a few hours after that all-important IEP meeting. Katie called me at work to let me know that our boy had had a rough day at school. Because he didn’t complete a homework assignment over the weekend (we thought he had), he received a 40% grade.

It wasn’t a huge assignment, and it wasn’t a big deal. But in his literal brain, it was a complete and total failure. He came off the bus with his fists clenched, his brow furrowed, and his jaw trembling in a heartbreaking mix of anger and shame. Katie tried to help him work through it, but the rest of the afternoon was a complete loss: melt downs over new homework, high-pitched tantrums at his “annoying” younger brother, and anxious, hyperactive “stimming” that was so intense that I was afraid he might hurt himself.

He did calm down eventually, and we got his homework done. In fact, once he got all his frustration and anxiety out, he sailed through most of the work. He’s a pretty smart kid, after all. He just needed to expend himself before he could get his brain back in gear.

So this is the challenge he will be facing—and Katie and me along with him: how to manage the down side of his autism so that all his gifts and talents can shine. Because he really is a sweet, innocent, affectionate, intelligent, perceptive fellow. He has so much to offer. There is so much he can accomplish. He has the potential to enrich the lives of countless people. He just needs more help than most in getting there. He may have some serious glitches, but he’s an awesome kid. I just want everyone else to be able to see that.

It’s our hope that today’s “victory” will help this happen.