Laughing with my child

Margi Shrum — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:15:00 GMT

I am told that when I write about my son with special needs, people get all teary-eyed.

Well, now. I do have to correct that.

Yes, there are many challenges in raising special children. But there are also many opportunities to laugh. And there are many times when he leaves me just smiling at the touching things he does.

My 11-year-old son leaves me laughing several times a day, as his observations and struggles with language sweetly bump together.

"Is it constipated?" he asked me the other day when I was putting a hot pack on my sore arm. "It's not good for your body to be constipated."

"That's right," I said. "But my arm is not constipated."

"Does it have an eye infection?"

When my husband left the bathroom fully dressed except for his shirt, he was greeted by our son in the hallway.

"Why are you half-naked?" he said to my husband, somewhat angrily, showing he felt some modicum of decency was being violated.

"I miss you so much I will blow up with gas," he wrote to me in a note while I was at work one day.

In another: "Mom + mom = kiss."

With a little heart next to it.

He loves hearts; in fact, expressing his love of all things is one of his hallmarks. His teachers tell me they have rarely met a sweeter boy, a compliment I cherish even more as he moves into his teens and kids get sometimes not-so-sweet.

I returned home from work one day to find the refrigerator door covered with dozens of tiny hearts he had drawn on computer paper and cut out. Each heart said something like "I love you moon." "I love Pennsylvania."

"I love New York."

Recently, I had to confiscate his beloved GameCube because he refused to adhere to bed time rules. I told him once he regularly stayed in bed all night, he could have it back.

One Monday morning he greeted me early and said, "Can I have my GameCube?"

"No, you didn't stay in bed," I said.

"FINE!"

He stomped back upstairs.

He came down 5 minutes later.

"It's Tuesday morning. I slept all night.

"Can I have my GameCube?"

We have some idea of the things that make him burst into laughter. Frequently they are sight gags. He adores "SpongeBob," and the more visual the story, the more he laughs.

He laughs hardest at a silly Looney Tune in which Daffy Duck does a take on Carmen Miranda, dancing and gyrating around the cartoon room with a fruit basket on his head. Daffy's funny, but nothing's funnier than my son giggling so hard he turns red and nearly falls off his chair.

Unless he is singing. He's head-over-heels with female singers, such as Carrie Underwood, Natasha Bedingfield and Leona Lewis. His iPod is loaded with their hits.

One day recently I went to check on him in his room. I could hear him singing in there, one flat note after another. I think it was Lewis' "Bleeding Love." He seemed to have his iPod and ear buds on; I could hear tinny music.

His door was locked.

I knocked. The singing stopped. He unlocked the door and peeked out through a crack.

"What are you doing?" I said.

"I don't know."

"Ok."

He shut and locked the door. The singing resumed.

The R word

Margi Shrum — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:36:00 GMT

Oh, the uproars, the uproars! Here they come again.

The latest is over the movie, "Tropic Thunder," which liberally uses the word "retard."

It’s a spoof, but I can’t image many who advocate for the disabled are getting many laughs out of the use of "retard."

Just before this one, national radio show host Michael Savage created a outcry by saying that autism is the "illness du jour" embodied by "a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out."

How stupid is this man? Stupid enough to be called a "retard"? Gee, let’s hope only he would be mean enough to use that word.

I’ve been in the newspaper business for 28 years; I’ve been the mother of a child with special needs for 11. Pulling both of those roles together over the subject of semantics has not always been easy.

My professional training is to cut to the chase, make sure meanings are on the mark and tight headlines fit. Toss in years of working on news side, rather than, say, features (where I mostly work now), hobnobbing with grizzled veterans and I’m often enough on the block for an attitude correction. No more so than when I had my son and my smug little way of thinking that my kids would be perfect got upended.

I hate to think of years when I may not have been so sensitive. But I am also smart enough to learn, and use, lessons. Early in my career, I covered a school merger done for integration purposes. That opened my mind up to a whole other way of looking at things, not all having to do with race.

So did the first time someone explained "person first" language to me. Saying "a person with disabilties" rather than a "disabled person" shows you think of the subject as a person first, disabled secondly.

That lesson was underscored for me as I pushed to have my son mainstreamed, making sure others don’t bully him because he doesn’t always assimilate, making sure they don’t know that what he is isn’t an act at all.

I have over the years tried to make sure that when I write, when I edit, when I talk and when I observe, I am as sensitive as possible.

My career also means I respect freedom of expression. So dear old Mr. Savage has every right to be stupid as a mossback fence post. The makers of "Tropic Thunder" have every right to spoof and use a word that will make some of us shudder.

And the Arc, advocates for the mentally retarded, has every right to issue a statement against "Tropic Thunder," which its Greater Pittsburgh office did yesterday:

"In our culture, words such as ‘retard"...carry a lot of baggage from the days when people with disabilities were institutionalized...These hurtful words also create negative stereotypes that lead to discrimination and often times abuse.

"Today, children with all types of disabilities are included in all types of schools. People are included in all types of jobs. They work, they vote, they pay taxes."

I want to see "Tropic Thunder." Some of it sounds pretty funny (there’s a character called Alpa Chino, and the sendups of the movies sound delicious).

I also want to see if the use of "retard" bothers me. I’ve got to think it will.

But I have the right, too, to walk out.

And I have to right to applaud Arc, and to say, never use the word ‘retard’ around me or my son.

Special Kids

Laughing with my child

The R word