Thursday, May 06, 2004
CNN.com - Adoptive parents indicted in child starvation case - May 6, 2004So these kids were better off adopted, eh?
posted by Kimber
at 8:44 AM ::
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Wednesday, May 05, 2004
And....
I don't usually subscribe to the concept of Googlebombing but this is in a good cause. Thanks again, Joel.
Compassionate Conservatism
posted by Kimber
at 9:28 AM ::
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I have been reading
Joel's blog about his position on pro-choice vs. pro-"life". Great, visionary, albeit unlikely to ever happen. Then I read in one of my women's groups that one of the ladies and her husband in Australia had decided to adopt another child. She had three before her body gave out and they had wanted at least 4. When I read this email from her my first thoughts were of Joel and his vision of how it should be. This one is for you Joel...
"Well, today I rang the department that organises our state adoption services, and found out a few surprising things! It seems that here in my state, and most others as well, they almost never really 'adopt' out kids anymore... Instead, they are placed with a family under a 'permanent care order' from the courts. So, it's like you really do adopt the child into your family, but they keep their original name (including surname) and the birth family has supervised (my us) visitation rights to the child on a schedule set up by the Department on Human Services (that run all this)... And they almost never take in newborns... The children they give out to families are usually at least 12 months old, usually a little older... and they have some up to 10 years old. However, because of the age of my existing kids, with V being the youngest at eight years old, the oldest child that would be placed with us would be six years old, as they prefer them to be at least two years younger than any existing children in the family. So, we could end up with a child anything from 12 months old to six years old. The other thing she stressed was that these are usually children that have been taken away from or given up by families with traumatic backgrounds... such as drug or alcohol backgrounds, domestic abuse, and things like that... Which also means, there could be behavioural, psychiatric or any other problems with the child when we get it... depending on the abuse it suffered with the birth family, and that we would have to be prepared to deal with that as it develops. Even a child as young as 12 months can be effected by what it has experienced, and we have to be prepared to deal with that. After all this, I was still happy to at least go ahead with the preliminary steps of the process, but I'm not sure how Jason will feel about it all, so told her I would ring back tomorrow after discussing all this with Jason. I'm hoping that he will at least agree to have the initial sit down session with one of the department staff and have a question and answer session with them before completely making up his mind if he changes it at all after all of this... One thing I was surprised about though was the amount of children to families ratio. They only have around 10 to 15 kids to place each year, which isn't a lot so I thought we would be in for a long wait... but then she said they only get three to five families a year wanting to take children on... Now that REALLY surprised me! Anyway, I have to talk to J about it all tonight, and then I'll see what happens from there."
From another email:
"Here they try and encourage mothers to hold onto their children for as long as possible... offer all kinds of support and counselling, and only after months of trying will they finally take the kid from her... She said she's only had one baby given up for complete adoption in the last four years in our state!"
I guess anything's possible.
posted by Kimber
at 8:46 AM ::
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Tuesday, May 04, 2004
A final thought at the end of Autism Awareness Month...Autistics Need Acceptance, Not Cure
Wisconsin State Journal
Saturday, April 24, 2004
Morton Ann Gernsbacher
This month, which is Autism Awareness Month, I'm hiding my eyes and those of my autistic 8-year old son from the media.
National headlines that describe autism as an epidemic, or pandemic. Public service announcements liken autism to being kidnapped.
A government Web site defines autism as a "devastating scourge." An autism "expert" decrees that autism is worse "than Sept. 11 and AIDS combined." An Autism Society Canada board member proclaims that autism is worse than cancer -- because people with autism have normal lifespans.
Have you -- like my son and me -- ever heard parents say how learning that their child was autistic was like experiencing a death in their family? Have you ever been at the playground when a mother classifies her children, standing right there beside her, as this one who is autistic but these other two who are -- thank goodness -- perfectly normal?
They say that autism entails difficulty taking another person's perspective, appreciating how another person might feel. But when I read or hear such hate speech I wonder: Exactly who has a problem taking another person's perspective? Who can't appreciate the feelings of others?
My son surely can. He understands quite well that there are so-called autism "advocates" who despise autism, who march thousand-fold against it with placards calling for its defeat, its demise. His demise.
Oh, you say, those people don't want to get rid of my son, they just want to get rid of that part of him that's autistic. But research demonstrates that autistic traits are distributed into the non-autistic population; some people have more of them, some have fewer. History suggests that many individuals whom we would today diagnose as autistic -- some severely so -- contributed profoundly to our art, our math, our science, and our literature.
Most poignantly, many autistics affirm that it would be impossible to segregate the part of them that is autistic. To take away their autism is to take away their personhood. Despite our politically correct labeling, they are autistic; they don't "have" autism any more than homosexuals have gayness or lesbianism. Like their predecessors in human rights, many autistics don't want to be cured; they want to be accepted. And like other predecessors in civil rights, many autistics don't want to be required to imitate the majority just to earn their rightful place in society.
I'm a middle-aged psychology professor who holds an endowed chair at a major research university. But my son has taught me far more than I ever learned in my lab. Every time he walks by a poster avowing that autism must be eradicated, he teaches me grace. Every time he ignores one of the countless scholarly articles that tower above my desk, asserting he is disordered, he teaches me tolerance. Every time he embraces a world that so frequently rebuffs him, he teaches me unconditional love.
What if next year we celebrate the diversity of social interaction observed within and across all cultures? What if this "awareness" month marked a time to appreciate the variation that all humans demonstrate in their style and competence in communication? What if it heralded an era during which we marveled at the determined focus that in my occupation often wins indefinite tenure but in a precocious child gets labeled as diseased?
Then, neither my son nor I would feel compelled to hide.
Gernsbacher is Vilas Research Professor and Sir Frederic Bartlett
Professor of Psychology, UW-Madison.
posted by Kimber
at 10:45 AM ::
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