(Dis) Orders
Picture this, a high school track star, the envy of many girls, valedictorian, and a commencement speech in which he thanks his teachers by saying: ...for teaching me all the things that used to be hard for me, but aren't anymore, To me, graduating doesn't mean you know everything already, but you've learned more about yourself while gaining in strength and responsibility, and figuring our how you can improve more in the real world as you get older. These words came from Bryce Notbohm who is autistic. He added in his speech: I think of myself as a man, not an autistic man. To anyone who doesn't have, or doesn't know about autism, Bryce's mother offers this in her book, Ten Things Every Child with Autism Wishes You Knew, a book she says "will help you view autism from angles you may not have yet considered." But here is what you won't see in her book (in her words): You won't see autism referred to as a disability or a disease...you won't see the word "disorder;" ...You won't see "autism" capitalized...We don't capitalize breast cancer, diabetes, glaucoma, anorexia, depression, or other conditions that don't include someone's name, like Asperger's. And finally, the word "normal" never appears in this book outside quotation marks.
To be honest, I know little about autism, or Down syndrome, or cerebral palsy, or Tourette's, or a myriad of other conditions that are visible almost daily. The slightly folded hand or the sharp rebuke, the drifting attention or the custom-looking wheelchair. But mother and author, Ellen Notbohm, wrote an article about her son's autism, which led to a book which led to other books and suddenly quick and easy-to-read information was out there, among which emerged these chapters: I am a whole child; My senses are out of sync; Distinguish between won't and can't; I am a concrete thinker. I interpret language literally; Listen to all the ways I am trying to communicate; Picture this! I am visually oriented; Focus and build on what I can do rather than what I can't do; Help me with social interactions; Identify what triggers my meltdowns; Love me unconditionally.
On finishing her short book, I couldn't help but think of how much of what she was describing applied to my mother and others in my mother's situation, their age and mobility and mental state seemingly reduced to a point where they were now being treated as disabled or at least less able to help themselves. Certainly many of them faced physical issues, from incontinence to memories that seemed to wander off to a different time; but could some of author Notbohm's chapters be re-worded to fit my mother and some of the other residents: I am a whole adult...my senses are out of sync...I am visually oriented...help me with social interactions...love me unconditionally. But imagine hearing this instead: Young people are just smarter...people over forty-five just die in terms of new ideas. The first quote comes from Facebook co-founder Mark Zukerberg and the second from venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. Those quotes and others come from an article in The New Yorker about ageism and how the workplace (and perhaps society) basically writes off the elderly (with the exception of Congress and our Presidency). Gullette (Margaret Morganroth Gullette, resident scholar at the Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center) argues that ageism stems from the perception that old people are irrelevant...Ageism is further fuelled, Gullette believes, by what she calls the “ideology of scarcity”—the trope that the elderly are locusts who swarm the earth consuming all our resources. The relevant economic terminology is indeed grimly suggestive: those over sixty-four are part of the “dependent” rather than the “productive” population; they are “the burden” that the young must carry. A Moody’s report suggests that the aging population --often apocalyptically referred to as “the gray horde” or “the silver tsunami”-- will dampen global economic growth for two decades.
Author Notbohm wrote on her son't achievements: ...I would hear from at least one parent of a child with autism, "I can't imagine my child ever doing that!" And my fists would ball up between my knees in frustration and I would cry, "Why? Why can't you imagine it? If you can't imagine it, he may never live it." Added the article in The New Yorker: If ageism is hardwired, how can we reprogram ourselves? Greenberg and Co. (psychologists Jeff Greenberg, Peter Helm, Molly Maxfield, and Jeff Schimel) suggest three ways: having the elderly live among us and fostering respect for them; bolstering self-esteem throughout the culture to diminish the terror of aging; and calmly accepting our inevitable deaths. They note, however, that “all these directions for improvement are pie in the sky, particularly when we think of them at a society-wide or global level of change.” But add author Notbohm frustration to the mix and you perhaps end up with the sentiments of a letter-to-the-editor from Rita Tobin on the ageism article: In 2016, only 18.8 per cent of people older than sixty-five were employed, many in part-time or contract jobs well below their skill level. Significantly more wished to be, but were unable to find work...Age discrimination is illegal. Yet two Supreme Court cases, decided in 2009 and 2013, have been repeatedly introduced in both houses of Congress, only to be tabled in committee.
Despite appearances or reactions or ideas or physical abilities (said a flyer from the group Reach Out & Read: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, seven percent of all children will have some form of a disability.) we are all pretty much the same. Scale, the recent book from author Geoffrey West, tells of the similarities of vascular systems between animals and plants (think of a tree and it's branching similarity to our lungs), and how blood pressures and the number of heartbeats are pretty much the same between all mammals, from mice to elephants to humans. Early on in his book he describes it this way: This book is about a way of thinking, about asking the big questions, and about suggesting big answers to some of those big questions. It's a book about how some of the major challenges and issues we are grappling with today, ranging from rapid urbanization, growth, and global sustainability to understanding cancer, metabolism, and the origins of aging and death. It is a book about the remarkably similar ways in which cities, companies, tumors, and our bodies work, and how each of them represents a variation on a general theme manifesting surprisingly systematic regularities and similarities in their organization, structure, and dynamics. A common property shared by all of them is that they are highly complex and composed of enormous numbers of individual constituents, whether molecules, cells, or people, connected, interacting, and evolving via networked structures over multiple spatial and temporal scales. Some of these networks are obvious and very physical, like our circulatory system or the roads in a city, but some are more conceptual or virtual, like social networks, ecosystems, and the Internet.
During this season of joy and celebration mixed with cold and poverty, the year's end might be a good time to reflect on how we are viewing the world, how we are viewing others, even how we are viewing ourselves. Each of us --from the autistic child to the mother in a memory care facility-- is a complex individual, one who is just like us. Inside their minds rests someone who has or once-had the same life we each now enjoy, minds filled with challenges and memories, glancing and trying to process the puzzled faces looking back at them or that look of giving up. No sense trying, impossible, uphill battle. But as author Notbohm asked, why? Why are we thinking that way? If it's because we don't understand then perhaps we should ask. We should learn, we should talk. It might be as simple as looking in their eyes and seeing someone in there. Maybe we can just pretend that we're in an interview and that the tables have been turned. Ignore my gray hair or my wrinkles or my crumpled hand or slanted lip and see just me. Impossible? Perhaps for many just being seen be the greatest gift of the year. Who knows, it might even be the greatest gift that we give to ourselves.
To be honest, I know little about autism, or Down syndrome, or cerebral palsy, or Tourette's, or a myriad of other conditions that are visible almost daily. The slightly folded hand or the sharp rebuke, the drifting attention or the custom-looking wheelchair. But mother and author, Ellen Notbohm, wrote an article about her son's autism, which led to a book which led to other books and suddenly quick and easy-to-read information was out there, among which emerged these chapters: I am a whole child; My senses are out of sync; Distinguish between won't and can't; I am a concrete thinker. I interpret language literally; Listen to all the ways I am trying to communicate; Picture this! I am visually oriented; Focus and build on what I can do rather than what I can't do; Help me with social interactions; Identify what triggers my meltdowns; Love me unconditionally.
On finishing her short book, I couldn't help but think of how much of what she was describing applied to my mother and others in my mother's situation, their age and mobility and mental state seemingly reduced to a point where they were now being treated as disabled or at least less able to help themselves. Certainly many of them faced physical issues, from incontinence to memories that seemed to wander off to a different time; but could some of author Notbohm's chapters be re-worded to fit my mother and some of the other residents: I am a whole adult...my senses are out of sync...I am visually oriented...help me with social interactions...love me unconditionally. But imagine hearing this instead: Young people are just smarter...people over forty-five just die in terms of new ideas. The first quote comes from Facebook co-founder Mark Zukerberg and the second from venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. Those quotes and others come from an article in The New Yorker about ageism and how the workplace (and perhaps society) basically writes off the elderly (with the exception of Congress and our Presidency). Gullette (Margaret Morganroth Gullette, resident scholar at the Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center) argues that ageism stems from the perception that old people are irrelevant...Ageism is further fuelled, Gullette believes, by what she calls the “ideology of scarcity”—the trope that the elderly are locusts who swarm the earth consuming all our resources. The relevant economic terminology is indeed grimly suggestive: those over sixty-four are part of the “dependent” rather than the “productive” population; they are “the burden” that the young must carry. A Moody’s report suggests that the aging population --often apocalyptically referred to as “the gray horde” or “the silver tsunami”-- will dampen global economic growth for two decades.
Author Notbohm wrote on her son't achievements: ...I would hear from at least one parent of a child with autism, "I can't imagine my child ever doing that!" And my fists would ball up between my knees in frustration and I would cry, "Why? Why can't you imagine it? If you can't imagine it, he may never live it." Added the article in The New Yorker: If ageism is hardwired, how can we reprogram ourselves? Greenberg and Co. (psychologists Jeff Greenberg, Peter Helm, Molly Maxfield, and Jeff Schimel) suggest three ways: having the elderly live among us and fostering respect for them; bolstering self-esteem throughout the culture to diminish the terror of aging; and calmly accepting our inevitable deaths. They note, however, that “all these directions for improvement are pie in the sky, particularly when we think of them at a society-wide or global level of change.” But add author Notbohm frustration to the mix and you perhaps end up with the sentiments of a letter-to-the-editor from Rita Tobin on the ageism article: In 2016, only 18.8 per cent of people older than sixty-five were employed, many in part-time or contract jobs well below their skill level. Significantly more wished to be, but were unable to find work...Age discrimination is illegal. Yet two Supreme Court cases, decided in 2009 and 2013, have been repeatedly introduced in both houses of Congress, only to be tabled in committee.
Despite appearances or reactions or ideas or physical abilities (said a flyer from the group Reach Out & Read: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, seven percent of all children will have some form of a disability.) we are all pretty much the same. Scale, the recent book from author Geoffrey West, tells of the similarities of vascular systems between animals and plants (think of a tree and it's branching similarity to our lungs), and how blood pressures and the number of heartbeats are pretty much the same between all mammals, from mice to elephants to humans. Early on in his book he describes it this way: This book is about a way of thinking, about asking the big questions, and about suggesting big answers to some of those big questions. It's a book about how some of the major challenges and issues we are grappling with today, ranging from rapid urbanization, growth, and global sustainability to understanding cancer, metabolism, and the origins of aging and death. It is a book about the remarkably similar ways in which cities, companies, tumors, and our bodies work, and how each of them represents a variation on a general theme manifesting surprisingly systematic regularities and similarities in their organization, structure, and dynamics. A common property shared by all of them is that they are highly complex and composed of enormous numbers of individual constituents, whether molecules, cells, or people, connected, interacting, and evolving via networked structures over multiple spatial and temporal scales. Some of these networks are obvious and very physical, like our circulatory system or the roads in a city, but some are more conceptual or virtual, like social networks, ecosystems, and the Internet.
During this season of joy and celebration mixed with cold and poverty, the year's end might be a good time to reflect on how we are viewing the world, how we are viewing others, even how we are viewing ourselves. Each of us --from the autistic child to the mother in a memory care facility-- is a complex individual, one who is just like us. Inside their minds rests someone who has or once-had the same life we each now enjoy, minds filled with challenges and memories, glancing and trying to process the puzzled faces looking back at them or that look of giving up. No sense trying, impossible, uphill battle. But as author Notbohm asked, why? Why are we thinking that way? If it's because we don't understand then perhaps we should ask. We should learn, we should talk. It might be as simple as looking in their eyes and seeing someone in there. Maybe we can just pretend that we're in an interview and that the tables have been turned. Ignore my gray hair or my wrinkles or my crumpled hand or slanted lip and see just me. Impossible? Perhaps for many just being seen be the greatest gift of the year. Who knows, it might even be the greatest gift that we give to ourselves.
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