Don’t Box Me In

We need to share more love in the world.

Not hate.

“I am tired of people continually putting others into boxes based on made up ideas of how they should be or what they should do.

We are all people, on different journeys with different values, ideas, different interests, sexuality, abilities/disabilities and neurology.

We are diverse.

And we are all worthy of love and acceptance.

I’m tired of conditional love and acceptance.

Let’s celebrate our differences and move towards acceptance of each other regardless of our differences.

Unconditional love all the way!

♥ stuff the boxes that others try to place us in!”

This post was written by a lovely woman whose had being judged by others up to ears. So open your hearts and listen to what it is she has to say. She’d like nothing more than for her message to go viral so please feel free to reblog and share this in as many places and as many times as you can. Thank you K for you wonder full words.

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Child Bride

The child of two lost souls,

Still searching for an anchor,

Chosen as much for her vulnerability,

As her beauty,

She became fruit for his harvest,

Sun kissed,

Pastel dress,

Willowy and wholesome,

Yet bathed in the sin,

Of errant beliefs,

Her gifts transformed her,

Into his sacrificial lamb,

Patiently he’d watched her flesh grow,

As he’d secretly inhaled her youth,

Until this day,

When he’d make manifest,

His ancient  alchemical way,

Of transforming a girl child,

Into a physical gift.

Wrapped in the white,

Concealment ,

Of silken ribbons,

Behold,

The prophets new child bride.

Lost and alone,

Afraid and betrayed,

Encircled by those,

Who chose to obey,

Too blindly,

The well crafted lines,

Designed to conceal,

This,

His most contemptuous,

Theft.

Life mistaken for death,

And endless vulnerability.

On The Learning Curve

Original Art Work by M.Slater

I love my 12 year old daughter. She’s the most unique and fully observant  child I’ve ever  known,   and even though our lives together can occasionally seem like a string  of mismatched misunderstandings,  we none the less have an absolute ball trying to decipher the social world around us.

Yesterday we were discussing  some issues she’d been experiencing  “fitting in” at school.

We’d whittled down the broader issues of my daughter “feeling  out of place” and  her  overwhelming sensation that certain girls around her were “ghosts making annoying back ground noise with their talk”,  to one significant problem.

She never felt as if she understood whether the girls around her were being nice or, as she put it, ” being  sincerely nicely mean”.

So as much as possible, to avoid her own sense of confusion over this,  she’d begun to  try and block them out.  Hence her ghost girls analogy.

Original Art Work by M. Slater

Now the inability to understand the intentions behind other people’s comments is something  that  I also struggle with from time to time . So I told her to try a trick that I use when all else fails.

 If someone says something that I can’t make sense of or simply can’t interpret, I’ll  to ask them if they can explain to me, exactly what it is they meant by their comment.

After giving her this advice my daughter  replied,

‘Well mum, no offense and all but, I don’t think I want to do that then.’

‘Why?’

‘ I just…..I don’t want people to think that spending time with me is “too much like hard work.”

‘Why on earth would you think that people would think that?’

‘Because that’s what ‘Sophie’s mother says about you’.

OK. So maybe my strategies for deciphering this world  do sometimes leave a lot to be desired.

None the less , I love the way that  my daughter ‘s  words and actions  gently remind me that, even though I’m her mother, I am still working my way along the same learning curve that she is. And that’s OK.

What do your children teach you?

 

A mother warrior is…

A Mother who hears there is no hope for her child and,

Instead of retreating and mourning,

Breaks down walls,

Weaves her way through obstacles,

Follows her intuition,

Even when people tell her she is crazy.

She is a mother who believes in hope.

A mother who believes in miracles and,

Is able to carry on with strength and determination,

Even when surrounded by those who doubt her,

And offer her no support.

She is a mother who never gives up,

Even when she keeps hitting dead ends.

These are the women who will continue to open the door,

So future generations of children won’t have to suffer.

These are the mothers with hearts of gold

And shields of nothing more,

Than flesh and bone.
These are the parents who fight,

Giants on daily basis,

And each in their own way,

Win new ground every day.

They are seekers of change.

Seekers of truth.

These are the warrior mothers,

I walk beside proudly,

And whose numbers I hope,

Will one day over flow.

The Medicalisation of Difference, Homosexuality, Women, Pregnancy and Birth

 

Kate Cregan (2006), in her work “Mapping The Human Body”  sites the example of the non existence of  homosexuality until it was labelled and defined by the medical fraternity in the late nineteenth century as a clear and present example of the  very capacity of the medical system to both construct label and define it’s meaning.

 

“Homosexuality became known in a medico-legal way within particular knowledge systems that there after have controlled its meaning” (Cregan, 2006 :46). Deborah Lupton (2003) in her work  ‘ Medicine as Culture’ also draws attention to the way in which the medical establishments definitional power is at play in the twenty-first century siting the medical professions latest assertion that genetics may be able to predict illness as  evidence that“ the knowledge base of scientific medicine has encroached even further into defining the limits of normality and the proper functioning and deportment of the human body” (Lupton, 2003:1).

 

According to Lupton (2003) this desire for the control and regulation of the human body is particularly pertinent to pregnant women enmeshed within  a health system that  seeks “increasing  control over women’s bodies” through  medicalization and surveillance (Lupton,2003:158).

 

The regulational and  definitional power with which medical institutions control and regulate the female body can be seen clearly in Karen Lanes work on pregnant women.   Siting Ulrich Beck’s analysis of risk in the modern world, Lane shows how the very notion of ’risk’ has now, through a medically induced process, become synonymous with the biological acts of both pregnancy and of giving birth, so much so than women who choose not to give birth in a hospital setting are often accused of not caring for or risking the health of their unborn babies ( Lane, date, page).

 

The irony that  for hundreds of years giving birth has been regarded as a ‘natural’ biological act that has now been medicalized beyond the point of individual choice for the women concerned, indicates the immense capacity of  medicalised perceptions to invade and persuade social thought and individual behaviour (Lupton,2003: 159). As Norbert Elias noted  “this kind of dictum ignores the wide variability  of bodily development and leads to  the patholigisation of what are essentially natural bodily functions” ( Cregan, 2006: 30).

 

The control mechanisms set in place within the debate over the safety of homebirths are themselves defined by the medical establishment that provides the very power base with which it seeks to regulate and control the human body and clearly earmarks how in  “post modern embodiment, we have internalized the control mechanisms that are set in place by various authorities of delimitation institutionally legitimated epistemologies”  (Cregan, 2006: 59).

 

The fact that pregnant women even feel the need to seek medical permission to engage in a home birth  provides proof of just how medically regulated and controlled such biologically natural processes have become and reinforces Foucault’s initial observation that such definitional capacity “results in a more subtle and diffuse power by which we internalize regimes of control and learn to self-regulate our selves through the regulation of the body” ( Cregan, 2006 :41).

 

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What’s the problem with Piggy Backing? A Very Specific Example.

 

In the course of my work I have spoken  with many parents  of disabled children. The issues and problems they face are enormous.  However the most common concern that parents of school age children raise involves  the lack of  recognition for funding and support their children receive within the education system.

Many parents are aware of the problems with funding but few parents are aware of the practice of “Piggy Backing”. Those that  are often remain unaware of the broader problems that this practice has created in terms of quantifying the current funding process.  

For me the health and safety issues alone associated with placing highly vulnerable or severely disabled children alongside children with ‘behavioural issues’ is enough to raise several red flags. These red flags also include wider moral and ethical issues regarding educational equity and civil and human rights violations.  

As an example,  when speaking with the parent of a teenager with severe ADHD and Anger Management Issues ,the parent explained to me that her son  had never qualified for funding or aide time due to his high IQ. Yet despite his high IQ her son was failing in several classes at high school. When asked why  she thought that might be the parent reported that her son had a strong tendency toward violent outbursts and that he was frequently being expelled because of this. She also commented that while in school her son found it extremely hard to concentrate for more than 5 minutes at a time and that often his teachers reported that his behaviour (up-ending desks and chairs, being verbally abusive to staff and students, threatening acts of bodily harm to self and others) disrupted the class.

 Despite all of these issues her son was still in school. I asked the parent how she’d managed to keep her son in school. She then revealed that her son, despite not qualifying for funding, did indeed have a teacher’s aide who worked with him daily within the school environment.   The individual support he received came via a teacher’s aide initially employed to work with a teenager with Down Syndrome whose level of funding allowed for a full time, one on one aide, for the entirety of the school day.

The parent then described how her son had been accessing the support of the teenager with Down Syndrome’s aide for the last 6 years.  This “Piggy Backing” onto another child’s aide began in grade 5 when despite placing her son on Ritilan as requested by the school, his aggressive behaviours continued. His teacher at the time, out of desperation, teamed her son up with the child with Down Syndrome and his aide as that child was often excused from being in the class room in order to take part in one on one activities with the aide elsewhere while the rest of the class worked on.  The parent reported that this worked for her son and that all concerned were much happier with his being able to leave the classroom.

It worked so well that the following year in grade 6 the parent specifically requested that her son be placed in the same class as the young fellow with Down’s Syndrome. The school happily obliged and the process of “Piggy Backing” continued.

When it came time to choose a high school for her son the parent admitted to asking the aide which high school the lad with Down Syndrome would be going too and ensured that her son enrolled in the same one. The parent also then had a meeting with the Principal at the new high school  to specifically request, once again, that her son be placed in the same classes as the “boy with the aide”. This request was honoured and the “Piggy Backing” continued unabated for the next 4 years,  during which time  the teenager with ADHD had been expelled from school for violent and aggressive behaviour no less than 6 times.

I asked the parent how the young lad with Down Syndrome reacted to her son when he became violent. The parent admitted that she had no idea as this had never been viewed as an issue of concern to her and she stated that the lad with Down Syndrome “didn’t seem able to learn or do much of anything so I don’t suppose it matters much to him”. I asked her if she’d ever met the other boy’s mother or spoken to her.  The answer was no followed quickly by the statement that , “Well really it’s nothing to do with her. It’s organised by the school.”

At this point I’d like to state that from all accounts, in speaking with this mum, she is a very loving and caring parent who is facing the challenges of raising a very demanding son  and trying as best she can to see that her son receives access to help and support within the school system.  In short she is playing the hand she’s been dealt to the best of her ability and few of us could criticise her for that. The fact however that the help and support her son receives may be coming at the expense of another child within an institutionally and systematically endorsed setting does however worry me.

Why should it be that in order for an aggressive and violent teenager with ADHD to receive support   within school, an otherwise vulnerable and placid teenager with Down Syndrome  has to  be placed within the line of fire of  such behaviours? This disturbs me greatly and I can’t help but wonder if the other mother knows that this is her son’s schooling experience?

One would hope that at some point during her sons IEP meetings that the situation of sharing an aide with an overly aggressive student might have been discussed but who knows? And who knows what behaviours and thoughts that teenager with Down Syndrome may have taken home with him? Was he distressed by his exposure to the other boy’s aggressive and violent behaviour? Did he and his family experience nights where the he could not settle as the result of that exposure? Did his vocabulary of swear words increase?  Did anyone check to see if the lad with Down Syndrome had been hurt in anyway during any of the outbursts?  Was the boy’s mother ever even informed of the arrangement that her son was being exposed to for past the 6 years?

 

The fact that parent of the teenager with ADHD has never once in 6 years spoken to or met the other boys mother bothers me because it means that in all that time there has never once been a consultative meeting process occur in which the needs of both boys together have been discussed in relation to the teaching strategies applied  to both boys in tandem within the school.

It indicates to me that there is a good chance that the other mother has never been informed of the situation nor given the opportunity as an advocate for her own child to voice her opinion regarding the situation.

This matter also violates several human rights issues. The key ones being the right to personal safety, to being fully informed of any and all institutional practices that impact on your child and the right to expect the invocation of fully informed consent before any such institutional practices are agreed to.

 Disability rights should include the rights of all disabled adults and children and their families to be safe, to be supported, to be informed and to have the issue of their consent taken more fully into account. I’m not sure the practice of “Piggy Backing” under such circumstances can be seen to uphold any of those rights for any of the people concerned.  Yet this is what is taking place within our schools and being sanctioned by our wider education system. 

Though this is a very specific example and there may be cases in which the format of “Piggy Backing” may convincingly be argued to have worked, the point still remains that “Piggy Backing” is a practice that has the capacity to expose the most vulnerable in our society to the most aggressive and all within a educationally sanctioned setting. 

Shouldn’t we at the very least be asking why this is being allowed to happen?