{"id":1779,"date":"2010-11-07T18:45:58","date_gmt":"2010-11-07T23:45:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/?p=1779"},"modified":"2010-11-07T19:06:08","modified_gmt":"2010-11-08T00:06:08","slug":"the-dignity-of-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/the-dignity-of-risk\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dignity of Risk"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/a>I went alone with Nat to Orlando this past Friday, just for one night.\u00a0 Of course I was a little nervous, because I had never done anything like that — with any of my sons, actually — but mostly because Nat has a history of difficult behavior, from tantrums in public to happily waving his arms while talking to himself.\u00a0 The tantrums have nearly disappeared in the last 3 years, but still I act like it could happen any minute!<\/p>\n

I was sick of that, sick of the fear that kept me from fully enjoying Nat as much as I wanted to.\u00a0 So, with Nat’s 21st birthday nearly here, I decided I would take him with me to a conference in Orlando (the 60th Anniversary of the ARC of the US<\/a>) where I would be giving a short presentation on an authors’ panel.\u00a0 The hotel was located right in Disneyworld, extremely convenient to the parks, and it seemed like maybe we could do it.<\/p>\n

Of course we could do it.\u00a0 Nat’s traveled on long plane rides so many times by now.\u00a0 He’s proven himself over and over to be a guy who is up for many things, and also very forgiving, despite his own anxieties about the uncertain.\u00a0 I’ve written so many times about how he’s surprised me with his ability to try something new, or something that was not always easy for him.\u00a0 I am therefore not surprised that the trip was completely smooth.\u00a0 Security was easy, they were lovely to Nat; the planes were on time; the weather was high sixties and sunny; our room was comfortable; the presentation went perfectly.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We obtained the “Special Needs Pass” at Guest Relations at Disney, no questions asked and so we had no lines to wait in.<\/p>\n

We found that we liked doing the same things.\u00a0 Once Nat became familiar with the scary-thrilling intent of rides, he was into it.\u00a0 With Nat, most things are about conveying the overall concept to him, and then familiarity breeds interest.\u00a0 By the time we were at Splash Mountain, Nat not only got it, he remembered Splash Mountain from when he was a boy of 8.\u00a0 I could just tell, because of the excited way he walked towards it and the way he kept repeating, “Splash Mountain, Splash Mountain.”<\/p>\n

How perfect was it?\u00a0 We didn’t even get very wet on that flume.\u00a0 We walked and walked (very fast, which is the way we both prefer it), and eventually the sun was setting.\u00a0 I really had to pee.\u00a0 I figured Nat did, too.\u00a0 We didn’t want to go home yet.\u00a0 And here we hit our first snag:\u00a0 there were only large public bathrooms, no individual disability-friendly ones. We stood there outside the men’s room and I went over the risks in my head:\u00a0 1) a creepy guy talks to Nat.\u00a0 2) Nat inadvertently shows private parts.\u00a0 3) Nat can’t figure something out, like the hand-motion towel dispensers and freaks out.\u00a0 4) a creepy guy talks to Nat.<\/p>\n

Then I allowed myself to consider these problems rationally.\u00a0 1) Even if a creepy guy talked to Nat, Nat would not answer him.\u00a0 It often takes a lot of prompting to get an answer if Nat doesn’t know the person.\u00a0 Plus, why would someone single out Nat, a tall man not making any trouble?\u00a0 Chances seemed slim.\u00a0 2) Nat is not all that aware of what counts as public nudity, although he doesn’t intentionally do anything inappropriate in public.\u00a0 It’s only about open doors.\u00a0 So, I could tell him to close the stall door.\u00a0 Most of them stay closed, even if you don’t lock them.\u00a0 Then at least he would get credit for trying to be private.\u00a0 3) Nat could probably figure out an automatic towel dispenser or drier.\u00a0 He is pretty good figuring stuff out.\u00a0 4)\u00a0 Again, why would someone talk to Nat, other than the fact that he’s very cute, and why would it be a problem?\u00a0 Most likely there would not be a creepy guy in this family-oriented place.<\/p>\n

This is what I’ve come to think of as “the dignity of risk.”\u00a0 If Nat is to become as independent a man as possible, he must be allowed to do what he needs to do, even if it is a little scary, not completely predictable.\u00a0 I told him to go quickly and to close the door.<\/p>\n

Just a few minutes passed and I then heard the sounds of very zealous towel-dispensing and crumpling.\u00a0 Nat came striding out, looking the same as ever:\u00a0 ready for the next thing.\u00a0 Now it was my turn, but I have done that before.\u00a0 I just tell him to sit down and wait for me, and not to go anywhere.\u00a0 I know he will do as I’ve asked because even if he got up to walk around, he always ends up looking around for me.<\/p>\n

We’re together, after all. \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I went alone with Nat to Orlando this past Friday, just for one night.\u00a0 Of course I was a little nervous, because I had never done anything like that — with any of my sons, actually — but mostly because Nat has a history of difficult behavior, from tantrums in public to happily waving his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-sH","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1779"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1782,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779\/revisions\/1782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}