Families can be cruel before they come to accept the differences their children exhibit, from homosexuality to autism and dwarfism, author Andrew Solomon told the audience at Northwestern University's Cahn Auditorium in Evanston Oct. 20.
"Acceptance happens very gradually," said Solomon, who is the author of "Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity." The 2012 book, which explores the struggles toward compassion many parents face, has received more than two dozen awards, including the National Book Critics Circle award for nonfiction and The New York Times Dwight Garner Best Book of 2012. During the talk, Solomon provided examples of families he interviewed during a 10-year period who had children or siblings with differences. The pain the parents felt often far exceeded the problems perceived by the person with the disability, he said.
But with acceptance, families can see the positives associated with the diversity of thought from experience with a disability. "In some ways, they have developed and become extraordinary as a result of those differences," he said. He told of a child who had felt excluded because of her difference and yet went out of her way to support her mother's bout with cancer, including shaving her own head so her mother wouldn't feel alone in her journey. Yet many parents don't initially rise to the occasion of their child's disability.
Solomon spoke of the "split between love and acceptance," and said accepting a child has a disability or other difference often takes time. "Love is there from the minute a baby is born. Acceptance is a process. It takes time. It always takes time, even if your child does have an obvious exceptionalism."
Often the process includes feelings of disbelief, sadness and outrage prior to acceptance, but it's rarely linear. "People have acceptance, and they then have a setback," he said. Parents might think they understand their child's circumstance, but when they realize they don't fully grasp it, they might become bewildered all over.
Solomon acknowledged his interest in people with differences stems in part from his own experience being gay. "They always loved me, but it took them a while to accept me," he said of his parents.
While the gay rights movement has allowed for more acceptance of lesbian, gay and transgender individuals, partly because of media attention, society still treats many people with disabilities as outcasts, Solomon suggested. "Much less press has been given to attitudes about people with differences," he said.
Solomon said his research, which included interviews with about 300 families, indicates when the path toward acceptance is emotionally bumpy for the parents, the child with the difference also feels the rough spots. The challenge for the child is weathering the parents' efforts to correct their disability, or cure them. "Many things put forward as cures are more traumatic than the conditions they aim to address," Solomon said.
When a child hears a parent repeatedly say "I wish my child didn't have autism," Solomon suggested the child often interprets it to mean "I wish my autistic child didn't exist."
Children with autism don't know what it's like not to have the disability, so they can't understand their families' lack of acceptance.
Solomon obviously took the perspective of the child with a disability during the talk, while also displaying empathy for the families. He reminded the audience no human is perfect. As a result, he said, "Everyone who has children has children who are flawed." Yet many people choose not to talk about the differences, which can lead to isolation.
From Solomon's work, he says he learned the experience of "negotiating differences" in a family is universal, and talking openly about it can unite people and encourage acceptance.
Attitudes within a family often do change over time. "People's positions shift over the course of a lifetime," he said. "People end up having a lot of pride in it later on."
Many of the families Solomon interviewed reflected on the sense of purpose they gained from having a child with a developmental disability or other difference. "People ended up grateful for lives they would have preferred to avoid."
The Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities at Northwestern University presented the free event, made possible in part by the Harris Fund.
Journalist Ann Meyer is the communications manager at Little City, a campus for children and adults with disabilities, in Palatine, Illinois.
