All the wishing in the world will not make it so

[pktechgirlbackup]

There's a quote in The Artificial Ear from the hearing parents of a deaf child, that put her in a mainstream classroom instruction because they "wanted to give her a normal childhood" and "didn't want deafness to define her." Those are reasonable goals, but... you can't give her a normal childhood by putting her in an area where normal children have normal childhoods. We talked in about the need for peers in regards to gifted ed, but it's even starker here: being surrounded by people you can't communicate* with isn't normal, and won't lead to normal development. And claiming she can get normal emotional development from a clearly abnormal situation strikes me as a serious acceptance issue on the part of the parents.

*If I remember correctly, the kid was not yet good enough at lip reading and speech to interact well with hearing children. obviously getting her to that point is a good goal, but you can't reach it by pretending you're already there.

Comments

[scythe-of-time.livejournal.com]

God, that's sad. All parents want to have their kids conform to a state of normality; they're judged, and pass that judgement down to their kids unconsciously.

Now, this is all simplified, but some parents get past the denial stage of "my kid will never be 'normal', and to hell with that," and their kids turn out awesome because the parents roll up their sleeves. Some parents don't, but their kids turn out okay because they were lucky. And some parents end up projecting and grieving and full of anger, and those are the kids that end up with the issues. (And the ones I feel sorry for.)

Also? Kids with mental illnesses and handicaps =