Unfortunately most US television viewers cannot watch the Child of our Times series, but BBC should be commended for including a parent with a disability equally in their series. This interview highlights two common characteristics of disabled parenting. The series features Alison Lapper, a physically disabled artist who is a single mom, and who has been featured in documentaries about the birth and infancy of her son Parys. Alison’s disabled, naked, pregnant body is also the subject of a sculpture by Marc Quinn that is displayed on the fourth plinth in Trafalger Square in London until Spring 2007. In the interview, Alison describes how her parenting differs from that of non-disabled parents:
“The way I do things is probably kinder, because he never gets really shouted out, never gets hit; I just do it all by the tone of my voice and from that he knows where he stands.” Indeed, she’s found that trying to do things in the same way as non-disabled parents sometimes just doesn’t work with Parys. “I can’t run after Parys, and when people were running after him he thought it was a game. So I’d say to him ‘we’re not running after you’ and he’d stop in his tracks!”
Parents with disabilities adapt our parenting, and our children likewise adapt to the way we parent. Nondisabled individuals, so often tell me that they have such a difficult time managing their toddler or preschooler that they assume that if they have a hard time, there is no way a parent with a disability would do so. They reason that because they can’t keep their two-year-old out of mischief by watching her, they then assume that a blind parent, for example, would find the task impossible. There is no recognition that we adapt our parenting, and likewise our children adapt to us.
The other story Alison relates is the very real fear we constantly have of social services/child protection intervention:
Alison predicts that the series could also start to highlight issues that more often affect disabled parents, such as contact with social services. “They’ve threatened me three times now when I’ve had no care for Parys - on one occasion it was because I had to sack an au pair because she was smacking him. If I was an able-bodied mother they wouldn’t do this.”
Statistically we have much higher rates of social service intervention, and statistically we have a much lower chance of getting our kids back when they have been removed. (See Michelle Wates study: Supporting Disabled Adults in their Parenting Role, 2002.)
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