pay attention

Go and check this link [Dead link - 13/5/8] out right away and don't come back till you've read it. It's kind of a two for one. You'll get taken straight to a post from the blog quodlibet [Dead blog - 13/5/8], which is well worth your attention anytime, but that post provides a link to another site, Autism: Getting The Truth Out which you really need to read. Be aware that it will take some time to read through the whole of it.

When you come back I hope you'll see that the message there has a far wider applicability than simply listening to people with communication difficulties. It's about being aware that what you believe other people think, how you believe they feel is just that, your belief. An individual, whether experiencing problems of communication, or being a part of any minority, is the only person who can tell you what they think and feel, and it's your duty to find a way to hear what they say. It's not easy, even when we're aware of this we still make assumptions and may speak on behalf of others from the perspective of our own views.

I think this entails taking a wider view of situations, so long as you don't get overwhelmed. An example that sprang to mind was from an episode of BBC 3's Little Angels, about dealing with challenging behaviour in infants, that I happened to click through recently. The single mother featured had great difficulty with her child, but it was pretty apparent that her problems stretched beyond that. Her post-partum depression was mentioned but not examined, nor the possibility of depression at other times unrelated to the birth. She was provide with extremely useful tools to cope with her child's behaviour, but nothing more profound. Now clearly a programme of this nature has a limited brief, and the benefits of being able to effectively manage the child's behaviour and happiness are obviously immense, to both parent and child. And yet one felt that there was more that could, and should be done.

At one point the mother said of her son, "I don't want him to grow up like me." Now there's a heartbreaking statement, someone who thinks so little of herself that she doesn't want her child to grow up to be like her. Perhaps that was just a passing moment, but potentially it represents low self-esteem and poor self-image. But again the comment went unremarked, and there was no indication of the mother receiving any help with this specific issue. Perhaps there is no problem, or perhaps she does receive help and the programme simply didn't cover it, but it's the kind of thing you want to know more about.

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