‘DON’T FIX ME – I’M NOT BROKEN’

Courtesy of the Inyan Magazine

I greatly appreciated Rabbi Ginsberg’s article on providing equal treatment to individuals with disabilities. I have been working with children with disabilities for over ten years, and one of the hardest parts of the job is maintaining the children’s dignity in public. Other children stare, but that’s not a shock – it’s the stares and comments of the parents that seem so wrong. (The children I work with are typically not verbal, and often have no way to communicate emotions or complex ideas beyond “I want ___,” so I cannot say how they feel about the stares of adults or other children. I assume, though, that they dislike the stares as much as any other person would.)

To all the adults who feel embarrassed or awkward when you see a child (or adult) with special needs, it might help if you stop and imagine that it’s your child, your sibling, your parent who appears so different. What would you do? How would you want people to react? I think most of us would want our family member to be treated “normally,” to be given respect, treated like anyone else – not singled out because of a trait or behavior that is probably out of the person’s control.

I would specifically like to address the reactions of many adults to children with autism. Some kids with autism behave in ways that are not considered socially acceptable – rocking, grunting, shrieking, pacing, or crying while on line at the grocery or walking down the street. Please, please imagine this was your child. Would you stare? Would you feel annoyance because your own child is making so much noise on line, or would you be silently praying that others accept your child for who he or she is? And yes, maybe it’s uncomfortable that the person ahead of you in line seems so different, but take a deep breath, remind yourself that the noisy child is above all a child, and try not to stare.

If you have a child in line with you at the store and he or she is staring, I would suggest you take the initiative to 1) remind your child that others don’t like to be stared at, and 2) acknowledge (in a quiet voice, of course, or later, once out of the store), that the person your child is staring at appears a little different, but is still one of Hashem’s children. For example: “I know he is making noises that are really loud, but maybe that’s how he tells his mother that he’s unhappy. Hashem made us able to tell others about our feelings, but we all do it in different ways,” Especially with younger children, if you choose never to acknowledge (either in the store, or in a more private setting) the person at whom your child is staring, you may accidentally be sending your child the message that people with special needs are somehow taboo, something not to accept or acknowledge. It’s important to mention the situation to your child so you can show that you were aware of it, and that you are comfortable acknowledging that Hashem makes some people different from others. We tend to avoid talking about whatever makes us feel uncomfortable, but this is a way to help your child learn to feel more comfortable around people with disabilities – even if you yourself still feel that discomfort.

Important: It’s OK to recognize your own and your children’s feelings of discomfort. We naturally tend to fear what is unfamiliar. If you can verbalize your discomfort (even to yourself), it can become a teaching moment for kids old enough to understand – “I felt embarrassed when the girl in the shoe store kept rocking so hard the bench shook. Did you feel that?...This is what I thought to myself to help me understand her…What did you think to yourself?”

Pearl Grey

Brooklyn, NY