Parent Time

“Mommy, why is that boy walking like that?”

The sudden question pierces the quiet hum of the grocery store. Your heart sinks. Your cheeks flush. If a hole were suddenly to open in the floor, you would gratefully slip through it. The small yet strident voice belongs to your five-year-old daughter.

How should you respond? Do you apologize to the family who, thanks to your child, has suddenly found themselves in the spotlight? Do you haul your daughter away by the arm? Or do you pretend you are the only customer in the aisle who didn’t hear the question, absorbed as you are in the sale price of dog food?

When able-bodied children meet kids with disabilities, most parents want to teach them to respond appropriately — to understand and respect differences, not fear them. Yet it’s not always easy to put principles into action, especially for parents who were raised before integrated classrooms and wheelchair-accessible public spaces became such accustomed parts of our social fabric.

So, what to do when your daughter blurts out her unself-conscious inquiry in the middle of the pet food aisle? For advice on this and other questions, we went to the experts: parents whose children have disabilities.

Their first advice: Shed the embarrassment. Remind yourself that your child is merely expressing interest in the world around her. She might as well have asked why the carrots are orange.

“It’s just curiosity, which is fine with me,” says Annette Walker of Ottawa. Her 14-year-old daughter, Akasha, has Rett syndrome. Akasha — called Kai (“Kay”) by her friends and family — is non-verbal and uses a wheelchair. Her mom is used to kids approaching to ask why Kai doesn’t talk or walk. And Walker doesn’t mind. In fact, she likes the opportunity to educate them.

“I’ve actually had parents pull their children away from my child,” she says. “That’s more discouraging because that’s where the whole ignorance about disabilities is passed on.”

A simple response such as “his legs don’t work well” is often all it takes to satisfy a young child’s inquisitiveness. Children are marvellously open-minded about what fits into their range of normal.

Donna Platt agrees. Platt, who is raising a granddaughter with cerebral palsy in West St. Paul, Man., says most other kids are unfazed by the fact that 13-year-old Jessica doesn’t walk. “The little ones love her wheels,” says Platt, “and the older ones love to push her.”

Adds Platt: “I think children would accept another child with two heads.”

Originally published in Today's Parent, April 2004