Including all children

Children Today, March-April, 1991 by Rud Turnbull, Ann Turnbull

As we write this invited essay for this special edition of Children Today, fall has come to America. The seasonal change that it brings reminds us that we have endured--and still must endure--another winter colored in greys and more to be borne than enjoyed. But it also reminds us that we have experienced a spring and summer that have been ripe with flowers and protean with possibilities. What a perfect time to reflect on the past and future for children with developmental disabilities and their families! What a perfect time to describe their movement from winter to spring and summer! And what a perfect time to suggest how the future--even with a harsh winter facing us--can be made warm and far more bounteous than past winters!

All across America families who have children with disabilities are in a late summer phase. They have cast off the dark garb, heavy and restricting, of their past winters. They still wear the bright clothes of spring and summer--the garments of FULL CITIZENSHIP, with liberty (in their choices about how to live), with equality (in their opportunities), and with community (through integration).

How can we be sure of this? Quite simply, this issue of Children Today presents the evidence. This issue of Chilren Today tells about families and children who are wearing a different set of clothes. This issue of Children Today presents evidence that families are discarding the cumbersome overcoats of winters past. These overcoats were restricting and not suitable for liberty, equality and community, for they were part of a tradition that wrongly taught that:

* Children with disabilities are burdens and can make no overall positive contributions;

* Families and children should have few expectations and should be "realistic" about their lives and grateful for only a few privileges and limited rights and opportunities;

* Families and children should expect to be included and accepted only by specialists and "their own kind;"

* Families and children should have few choices because they have few abilities, including the ability to choose;

* Families and children "are disabled" and inherently without strength, their disabilities being their chief attributes;

* Families and children with disabilities should accept second-class citizenship, for that is all they deserve or can earn.

There is other evidence, too, that families are wearing spring and summer-like, hopeful, optimistic clothes. It's all around us, and we can see it wherever we go--in every community in America, in the general stores and suburban malls, in rural and urban settings, in rich and poor communities, in black and white and yellow and brown neighborhoods, in the Capitol in Washington and the State Houses, in all the unexpected places where, in the past, children with disabilities were unwelcome and unusual. All you have to do is look.

You will see, too, that families and children with developmental disabilities are telling us something else about themselves. They are telling us that while they cannot choose what befalls them, they can choose their attitudes about life. They are also choosing to live by new values and new principles.

Several years ago, we decided to put into a few words what we ourselves had learned as the parents of a young man with two developmental disabilities. These few words also happen to be what we and our colleagues at Kansas University have discovered in our research on families with members with developmental disabilities.

The few words--the creed of the Beach Center at Kansas University, the spring and summer-like flowers that are harbingers of a different life--are POSITIVE CONTRIBUTIONS, GREAT EXPECTATIONS, FRIENDSHIPS, CHOICES, STRENGHTS, and FULL CITIZENSHIP.

The message of this issue of Children Today is that none of these flowers can bloom in the old world of winter, deprived of sunshine and warmth. Segregation is the equivalent of winter, denying the nurturing light and heat that are essential if new flowers are to bloom and new creeds are to be believed and lived out. Here is why, and what we can do to help these new flowers bloom.

Positive Contributions means, quite simply, that people with developmental disabilities and their families make positive contributions to each other, their communities and society. They cannot do so when they are segregated, for segregation denies them the possibilities for contributing. To achieve positive contributions:

* Each family's support plan, each child's education plan, each adolescent's transition plan, must identify at least one contribution that the person already makes and target more than the person might make;

* Families, professionals and the media should publicize these positive contributions (for example, at school, in community volunteer activities, at work, etc.);

* Families and people with disabilities need to keep focused on the contributions that they have made, especially when they are living during hard times, for the past in the promise of the future;