Susan Senator

They will beat their swords into market shares and their spears into social storybooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. — Me, and Isaiah 2:4 and Micah

What is going to happen to this country, to this world, if the numbers of autism keep jumping? Or, if science and medical technology allow people to live, who otherwise would have died in utero or from having been born prematurely? We all tear our hair out and cry to the heavens about the problem.

But — are the numbers the problem? Or is it just that we currently don’t have the resources to accommodate these people? And, if enough people have these problems, isn’t there the possibility that it will force society to change its values and find that money? If society had the money to take care of pain, to educate, to hire supportive staff, to house, to accommodate and employ — would it actually matter so much that some people could not sit quietly in movie theatres, stop from flapping in restaurants or playgrounds, have tantrums in supermarkets? I am talking about if there were enough money. The war in Iraq is costing around $720 million daily. Most people feel this war should never have happened in the first place. Even of those who do, many feel it is now a failed venture and the troops should be brought home. With so many other places on fire in the world, we cannot justify being only in Iraq, nor can we propose going into all the other places. We have to tend to our own gardens now.

If we tended to our own gardens, we would have enough money for the people in need in this country.

If we could build sufficient schools with enough space for small, separate classrooms when needed, but also with enough money to train regular education staff to include and mainstream wherever we could — and yet kept those classes small so that staff could be effective and everyone within could learn in their own style — we would not have a problem of having too many special needs kids. The problem results from not enough money, from mismanaged priorities — the Iraqi war is but one example — not from the people themselves with the issues.

If you think about it, it is actually a good thing, the changing face of our populations, the addition of multiple disabilities, of autism spectrum thinkers, of Down Syndrome classmates and friends, of kids with CP trying to speak and kids without CP learning to understand them. Our children are now used to kids flapping, working with aides, being pulled out for math support, using wheelchairs in elevators in schoolbuildings. Our kids are learning that bullying is wrong, (even if they still do it a little, you have to start somewhere). We have anti-bullying curricula now. That is lightyears better than in my day, when poor developmentally delayed Clayton came into the classroom and peed on the floor and we just laughed and no one said anything, no one explained, and I never got to know him. I was afraid and looked away.

The shifting ingredients of society, now in the classrooms due to the miracle of modern medicine, soon to be in neighborhoods and in the workforce, is a brilliantly beautiful manifestation of the wonders of life. Life was first formed from random mutations of cells and evolution. Most of us are now two-legged, sighted, reasoning, speaking. But some of us are not. Big Fucking Deal. We are all here, and we all must be brought to the table. Our children are learning that, and they are getting over it and incorporating these experiences into their daily lives.

This program was sent to me by a reader (thanks, Susan B!), and you will notice that the father talks about the boy’s hard life. It got me wondering, would Walker’s life be this hard, if there were no stigmas to overcome, no dismissals on face value? If no one looked away from Walker, but actually embraced him so that his father and mother could get a break?

If the community fearlessly embraced their “disabled,” unafraid because they were used to difference and because there was enough money to provide training and understanding, would Walker’s life and his father’s life be less isolated and sad? Perhaps it is the constant burden of feeling that difference = wrong, emphasized by the penny-pinching mentality of school systems, caused by lack of funds from the government, that contribute in a huge way to the disabled and their families feeling like outsiders, like grateful beggars.

Am I a dreamer? Maybe. But we all know, governments are voted out, priorities shift, laws are signed into being, and society changes. We can imagine a better world because we actually witness it sometimes in our kids’ lives. We don’t have to settle for shitty conditions. We can do better than this; in fact, sometimes, in our children’s classrooms, we already do.