After years of talking about it, I have finally broken down and am starting a Parent Support Group for people raising children with high functioning autism and Asperger Syndrome. I finally determined that if it was important enough to talk about, it was important enough to do.
The first meeting will be June 30th and I have to admit...I'm excited. I suspect that there are many parents, like Dwayne and I, who are down in the trenches, waking up in a new world every day with their special needs child, working hard, barely surviving, and frankly, doing the best they can under less-than-optimal conditions.
No one comes to parenthood wishing for a special needs child. But that's life. It's a lot like the old pre-school adage: "You get what you get, and you don't throw a fit." Which brings me to the topic of this post: acceptance.
I'm sure you're just as familiar as I am with the current cultural buzzwords "diversity," "inclusion," and "tolerance."
I find these words to be completely inadequate to describe the kind of world I want my children to live in. Diversity is a throw-away word. If you get right down to it, we're all diverse. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, right down to our fingerprints, of which no two are the same. Every person, then is a masterpiece, a one-of-a-kind...never to be duplicated again.
With his amazing height, his sandy-blonde hair, and big brown peepers, my son appears to be the typical 12-year-old. His is largely an invisible disability, and people expect things out of him that he's not capable of doing at this time. Behaviors typically-developing children pick up on naturally come much harder to Jared. I'm sure that most of the time he feels like an alien who crash-landed to earth.
Inclusion implies that there are boundaries in our world - that some are inside the circle of influence and some are outside of it. I think those boundaries (which largely exist in people's minds) need to be completely demolished. No one is better than anyone else in this world. We are all children of God and we deserve to be treated that way by our fellow man.
Tolerance is a word I hate with a passion. Merely tolerating a person who is different from you isn't nearly enough. It implies that the feelings of hatred or misunderstanding still exist somewhere within the person, but that the person has chosen to simply deal with the individual and nothing more.
Acceptance is the better term, I think. When we accept a person just as they are, we're basically saying, "I see YOU, and what I see is wonderful." Our world would be a much better place if we'd quit criticizing each other and just give one another a pass.
Is it really your business that your friend is overweight? Does she need you to tell her that she's fat? Even if you are concerned about her health, what must it do to her psyche to hear you say, "You really need to lose some weight?" Accept her for who she is and let her know that you love her. She is your friend, after all.
What about the man in your Sunday School class who stutters and with whom conversations are much longer than necessary? Are his thoughts any less important because he can't communicate as well as you can? Take time to listen. You may learn something.
And what about the little boy at your daughter's school who uses a walker and appears to have something wrong with his legs? Is it really important to go up to his mother with pity in your voice and ask her about it? Will you be unable to function without knowing? Or can you look into his deep blue eyes and see his precious soul?
Or how about those ugly things you say about yourself when you look in the mirror. Do you see wrinkles, fat, moles, and sags? Or do you see God's creation - aging, yes, but still beautiful?
Is it really such a burden to approach the people on your daily path with kindness, understanding, and acceptance?
This is the kind of person I aspire to be. This is the world I want my children to grow up in, and I don't think I am alone.
It all begins with accepting ourselves - warts and all - and accepting that we aren't perfect. And it ends with understanding the same thing about others and letting them just be.
The educator Mary McLeod Bethune once said, "Love thy neighbor is a precept which could transform the world if it were universally practiced." Amen, Sister Mary!
