My Ideas Are Very Much Like A "Super-Nova": Very Wide-Ranging & Totally Unpredictable!
The other day, I had just gotten out of my car in a parking lot, and I was getting my walker out of the back seat to go into a nearby store. I heard the faint sound of laughter and words from a young child (ie. age= ~8 to 10) goading a sibling to look in my direction. When I turned around to look, there were two boys of similar age, the younger one pointing, both walking toward me from halfway down the parking lot, with a woman slightly ahead of them. When they got closer to me and were obviously going into the same store, I called to the younger of the boys, the one I saw pointing in my direction, and I asked, "Young man, do you think it's nice to point and laugh at a person because they're different from you?" While he looked back at me with surprise that I would speak to him at all, the woman, probably his mother turned around and asked me what happened. I told her that the boy had pointed at me, laughed and tried to get the other kid to do the same, as they walked behind her farther down the parking lot.
At this point, the woman asked the boy if this was true, to which he denied it. She didn't believe him and insisted that he come over to me to apologize. He reluctantly moved, barely looking in my direction and said a very quiet, "sorry". When he turned back toward the woman and other boy, the woman told him to go back to me and apologize "like he meant it and say it louder". This he did, looking more sorry that I caught him, than being sorry for insulting me, but I acknowledged his apology and again reminded him that he wouldn't like it if someone did the same toward him, pointing and laughing if he seemed different or unusual, etc. Then he turned back again toward the others, closer to the store's entry and I thanked the woman as we all approached the store.
-- Should I have done this? Many would argue that he was just a kid, innocent in his curiosity and reactions to something he didn't understand or see commonly. Also, I could have ignored the initial sounds that made me turn around to face him in the first place, knowing it was a young kid with reactions I've encountered countless times before. Perhaps I should have waited or decided not to react to his behavior, unless he repeated it similarly when he was less distant from me and his mother might also more naturally catch him in the act as well. Would that have been better for everyone involved? In my educated opinion and in my heart, that lack of action/reaction wouldn't help or resolve anything at all. Even and especially the youngest children need to be taught respect for others. For those adults not properly exposed or taught the same lessons in life, mutual respect is the most basic understanding they must learn to act as role models for all children!
Still, physical distance is a shield that adults, adolescents and even children know will probably protect them if they get caught, because they can always say they were looking, laughing at something else, getting more responsible adults to more readily believe and/or defend them in any confrontation. Sometimes when that happens, the "adult" will accuse the victim of then "picking on an innocent child for their natural curiosities or reactions" without any responsibilities of their own. Other times, the parent/adult will just yell at or hit the child for their actions, because they initiated embarrassment to themselves, denying their own responsibilities as guardians and teachers to their children. Of course, this kind of action is contraindicated for potential education to all individuals involved, as well as almost guaranteeing repetitions of similar offenses in the future.
As times progress and there is more accurate information available to the public about dwarfism in general and about our lives as equally human and nonetheless sensitive to hurt and embarrassment however, I think confrontation with children and adults is appropriate, as long as the "survivor" of the teasing, insulting and/or harassment because of their physical size and/or disabilities, doesn't resort to equally insulting accusations based on perceived � or believed prejudices based on race, religion or mental disabilities or other physical differences.
An example of this kind of "retaliatory response" might be: "Well, you're just laughing at me because you're retarded and/or stupid like most #$!^%* (ie. insert the plural of a common disabled persons', racial and/or religious epithet known) I've seen or known before during my life!".
Healthy confrontation isn't meant to be a weapon to hurt another person as you feel you have been hurt. This act is meant to state how one feels when a certain action is done to/against them (ie. or perceived to have been done). It is also a way to neutralize pain and educate or try to get the "harassers" to look inside themselves for a moment, for them to feel what it might be like to reverse their roles with you for that frozen piece of time & space. Healthy confrontation is to speak and share truths, so if apologies and/or penance are required to help restore another person/s' mind or being, that apology or penance can be sincere and heartfelt.
Yet the survivor must be aware that these kinds of confrontations do not necessarily result in any kind of reconciliations. Occasionally or even regularly, the survivor who confronts their harasser must just be satisfied that they tried to educate, empathize and/or correct a wrong, that their resilience wasn't compromised, and they will survive to live honestly and challenge the misconceptions or poorly socialized again someday! 
For An Email Discussion Grp Whose Main Focus Is About What Most Affects Our Lives As Little People, I Responded To A Concerned Parent Of A Young Dwarf Child Not Even Out Of Diapers Yet!
Dear P.,
You wrote:
"With that said, I recently began wondering about the social education of children in private schools. Is it possible that children in private schools are not exposed much to any child of difference, be it children with Downs, LP's, kids in wheelchairs, etc.?
If you are following my thinking here, wouldn't this produce adults who are less accepting of difference? Isn't this classic discrimination? Am I completely off base in wondering if the children from the private schools may be big trouble for "J" having not been exposed to him when they are dropped into the public schools?"
Turning 45 on Sunday, the 12th, this achon. (i.e. is an abbreviation of achondroplasia, my type and the most common type of dwarfism/disproportionate short stature), went through elementary school, then high school, from the early '60s through the mid-'70s, both of which were private/parochial (catholic) schools. I was the 4th of 7 surviving children in my family, and my parents really didn't want to make things much different for me than my siblings before or after me. Long before there was the
As for diversity... besides me then, there were only a couple of other children with any physical difference or handicap (ie. one boy, a year behind me, had a malformed arm without a real hand, so he wore a metal/mechanical prosthesis), and maybe 2 or 3 children were of any ethnic/racial difference (from a family of Greek ancestry). --- High school was much more difficult for me, both physically & emotionally, as it is for many "average kids". Still, I survived, with various scars to show from my personal life influences, along with how/what this secondary education taught all of us.
I often felt that my own difference made it more possible for me to empathize w/ others who also experienced prejudice or discrimination. Of course, there were exceptions to this basic theory of mine that I won't detail now.
All of these experiences had both positive & negative effects on my life as it now, and I'm not sure I would have done things much differently then if I had the choice. The one thing I definitely would have changed then if I could have would be my exposure to LPA as a young child, either as a preschooler or at least in early elementary school. My parents knew about LPA when I about 6 or 7, then told me when I was 10 or 11, but showed no enthusiasm of their own to join and gave me little to nothing in encouragement for this activity then. Still, my family had assorted serious issues then, so I'm not sure what, if anything, would have been that different for me or them, if I had gone to one or two local LPA meetings at age nine vs. nineteen, when I actually did join (on my own, via serious prompting from my then current therapist).
So many things have changed over the last 20 or 30 years, in education, employment and in many other areas of our society. Children from almost all societies of life are exposed to many kinds of diversity, mostly good kinds, yet they experience risks & hazards that I never ever imagined as a youth. My parents feared the effects of racial turmoil (ie. along with their own prejudices becoming more visible) in our neighborhood of Chicago, during the sixties and therefore prevented me from inviting friends of different races to our home to my social gatherings. Today, both parents & children fear other children bringing guns to school and shooting many, or meeting new "friends" via the internet, only to find out these "friends" are pedophiles participating in high-tech stalking, etc. Moreover, while greater numbers of ethnic, religious, physical/mental & other kinds of diversity exist and are accepted in our towns, neighborhoods, jobs and schools, both private & public, all of us now face and lay awake at night fearing well-hidden pockets of fundamentalist zealots who aren't afraid to die while expressing their demands/creeds with horrific acts of terrorism & human carnage.
How does all of this happen; what are we teaching "our" (ie. universal possession) children of each successive generation, regardless of whether they are taught in public or private schools? -- As a child of the sixties, now an adult of the 21st century, actually what and how did we learn, from which most influential adults, and what/how will we teach our children today and tomorrow?
We are all both students and instructors simultaneously, consuming and spreading around what passes through our senses, then our minds that process everything into words & action. In many ways, I believe that we are all responsible for the ways we influence others and we need to be aware of that always! The greatest responsibility for concepts taught and absorbed in the child belongs to those adults who spend the most time with them, usually the parents or guardians. Schools are secondary influences on those same children and therefore should be critiqued by the lessons taught and absorbed as well. Public, private... go to inspect the habits/lessons learned by the pupils from each, and there is the answer to your question of choice.
As usual,
Laurie
Another Subjective Challenge!
� 2003
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