No Heroic Measures

Before I take up the baton and add my perspective, I want to direct you to this essay at Sea Change Ripples, written by a good friend whose thinking on disability issues has both paralleled and influenced my own. This most recent essay is an important one, addressing the tendency of professionals who work with the disabled to receive hyperbolic accolades, and more importantly, to eventually believe their own hype. It's an important point, and I'd suggest that it also applies to parent advocates. And fancy pants authors.Hero. It's a word that gets thrown around rather freely, particularly in the disability community. You read about hero teachers who change the world for a kid. You read endless stories and remarks about hero parents who do things that other parents say they could never do. (This is bullshit, by the way. No one is ready to do what special needs parents must do. You learn how, usually through screwing up dramatically, you figure it out, and you do so in a hurry because who else is going to do it? You figure it out and become a "hero", or you put a hose in the tailpipe of your car in the garage and you give up. Most of us heroes choose the first option, for some reason. Well, that's what makes us so heroic, right?) You read about heroes in the community who do heroic things like daring to treat someone with a disability like a human being who has intrinsic value.We seem to have set a pretty low bar for heroes.I think perhaps the most troubling use of that term is ...

Source: Schuyler's Monster: The Blog - May 8, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: Rob Rummel-Hudson Source Type: blogs