Conference Update
Posted
October 29, 2006 at
10:21 am by
Andrea
My presentation on Friday was part of a panel about mommy blogging. There were five of us; the other four covered mommy blogging as a genre, how blogging about mothering publicly can affect your mothering, mommy blogging as folk art, and how advertising is beginning to affect mommy blogging. My topic was the experience of writing about mothering a child who is, in some way, different–whether it be disability or illness or just an undiagnosable genetic syndrome–on the internet.
In one of those moments of serendipity–or perhaps sensitivity after exposing myself to this issue for a few months–yesterday there was a section in the Toronto Star about access to post-secondary education for students with disabilities, and how attitudes are slowly changing. The articles gave me a great deal of hope–perhaps we, as the last generation to expect students with differences or issues or delays to be segregated educationally, are the last of the dinosaurs, the last to feel uncomfortable in the presence of a child not regularly featured in Parents magazine. Perhaps stand-up comics who can’t stand up and PhD students who can’t spell without assistance will simply be accepted, normal parts of advanced education for our children, and workplaces will automatically accomodate them because schools have automatically accomodated them, and they expect the world to work that way.
Perhaps it will be like the second wave of feminism–not perfect, not fixing everything by any stretch, but accomplishing nonetheless such a sea change that the way things used to be, the world of lowered expectations and isolation and segregation, is no longer imaginable.
I hope so. Because when, after finishing that, I find this letter about the death of a man with primordial dwarfism, I dread the world my daughter will live in.
(I’ll come back and write about the actual panel and how it went once my co-presenters have had a chance to decompress and post their own talks, so that I can point to them. And parts of this post will end up on my own blog tomorrow–but I didn’t want anyone to think I’d had that heart attack. It actually all went very well.)
Tags: disabilities, Education, mommy-bloggers, mommy-blogs, motherlode |
5 Responses to “Conference Update”
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1. Cristina said:
October 29, 2006 @ 11:53 pm
I share your hope that this world will embrace people with differences instead of just treating them differently or MIS-treating them due to ignorance. Your voice is important to the blogosphere. I’m glad your presentation went well and look forward to hearing more about it.
2. Jessica Carlson said:
October 30, 2006 @ 7:22 pm
My experience is that it needs to start when kids are young. Too many parents are prejudice against those who are different and don’t want their “normal” kids in the same classrooms as kids who are different. That’s what sickens me the most.
It’s always said that kids can be so cruel, but what’s not talked about is that it’s the parents who are the true antagonists in my opinion.
3. Jessica Carlson said:
October 30, 2006 @ 7:22 pm
Oh, and I forgot to mention — glad everything went well and you lived to tell about it!
4. Andrea said:
October 31, 2006 @ 8:22 am
Thank you; and Jessica, you’re so right. This one really comes from the parents. I recently read a blog post elsewhere by a woman whose son has, I believe, Down Syndrome; and his own step-grandmother was taking the mother to task for allowing him to attend regular school in a regular classroom. Because it’s so bad for hte other kids to have to be near a kid w/ DS, you see, and it will mess up their educations.
With family support like that, who needs enemies?
5. Jessica Carlson said:
October 31, 2006 @ 2:04 pm
“Because it’s so bad for hte other kids to have to be near a kid w/ DS, you see, and it will mess up their educations.”
Ugh. I actually hear parents saying these kinds of things too and it blows my mind in this day and age, people can still be so ignorant and cruel.
I just don’t understand why people would not want to embrace diversity and teach their kids that everyone is different.
Some of these parents think their kids are such geniuses and that any child who intrudes on their genius child’s entitlement to get more attention than anyone else is a hindrance. Makes me want to take my thumb and pointer finger and crush their heads. (Thought I’d throw in that old Canadian show reference, LOL.)