The rage of the privileged is an
unedifying spectacle. I suspect most parents of disabled children
have been confronted by someone like Tess Stimson, who wrote in the Daily Mail recently that people with special needs should not be
allowed out in public until they've learned to mimic the rest of us.
The object of her ire was a young boy – in her description 'about
eight or nine', though Tess, as we'll see presently, is not the most
reliable of observers – who was hitting a spoon against a
restaurant table. He and his family had had the sheer bad luck to be
seated beside Tess and her friend. After about 40 minutes of
'mounting frustration' at having her conversation interrupted, Tess leaned over and snapped at him to stop. At which point the boy's
mother, who until then had been serenely unaware of the presence of a
Daily Mail columnist at the next table, found herself dragged into a
depressingly familiar scenario.
'The child's mother... stormed over,
incandescent,' writes Tess. '”My son is disabled”, she shouted,
pushing her face aggressively into mine.' I can only speculate, but
perhaps the tone of this exchange was set by Tess 'pushing her face
aggressively' into the boy's a few moments earlier. The mother then
goes on to point out that her son is in a wheelchair. 'I must admit I
hadn't noticed the wheelchair and did feel a pang of guilt,' Tess
writes.
There is perhaps no finer metaphor for
privilege than this upside-down response to a child's disability. The
boy's family will certainly have noticed the wheelchair, every time
they have to take the long route to enter a building, or wait for the
next bus because another pram or wheelchair is taking up the next
space, or phone a restaurant to make sure they get an accessible
table. Accommodating the wheelchair is woven into the fabric of their
everyday lives. But in Tess's eyes these challenges are eclipsed by
the inconvenience of listening to a spoon striking a table for 40
minutes.
Just as hunger pangs are quickly
banished by snacking on chocolate, so Tess dispels her fleeting sense
of guilt by bingeing on self-righteousness. 'Criticising another's
offspring, however anti-social their behaviour, has become a taboo in
our child-centric society,' she laments. 'Particularly if the child
has 'special needs', be that anything from ADHD to a broken leg.' Or
perhaps we've learned the rule that if you have a problem with the
way a child is behaving you should raise it with their parents first.
We do not learn from Tess exactly what
the boy's specific needs were, and she doesn't seem especially
interested. What we do learn is that she has a curious, 'one size
fits all' understanding of disability, as seen from the equivalence
of ADHD with a broken leg. Co-opting the 'some of my best friends are
black' argument, she informs us that one of her children has Type 1
diabetes and has to inject insulin at mealtimes, but proudly observes
that 'never once has this led to bad behaviour in a restaurant.' Now,
Tess clearly has the advantage of me in her knowledge of diabetes. My
understanding is that it's a serious condition that requires rigorous
management, but never before have I seen it compared to a
neurological condition. Children whose whole system of thinking is
fundamentally different can't be compared with those whose mood is
knocked off kilter by a sugar deficiency.
Tess insists that she sympathises
'deeply with the parents of any disabled child', but the mask soon
slips and she exposes herself as that most tiresome species of
hypocrite, a crusader for traditional parenting. The assumptions come
thick and fast, but mostly thick: modern parents are 'lazy' and let
their children 'run amok' 'because it's hard work enforcing rules'.
'Enough with the the kid gloves,' she declares; 'If someone can't
control their child, they should leave them at home with a
babysitter.' She extols the virtues of her own parents, who
brought her children up to be seen and not heard, and declares that
children with disabilities 'have the right to be treated like
able-bodied children and that includes being disciplined when they
misbehave'. She cites the example of her own daughter, who at the age
of eight 'was discreetly giving herself insulin shots out of sight
beneath a restaurant tablecloth'.
This last detail is telling, I think.
Tess applauds her daughter for coping with her disability, but for
masking it. The disabled must not look or act disabled, is the
implicit attitude. They are welcome in society on condition that they
stay discreet. If they are suffering, if they are isolated or
overwhelmed, they should stay home rather than burden the rest of us
with it. If this is sympathy, I'd rather go without it.
In the end Tess gets her way, as the
privileged always do. When her sharp reproach stuns the boy into a
hurt silence, she comments: 'Sometimes a firm, sharp word from a
stranger can be far more effective than yet another empty threat from
an overwhelmed parent'. Yes, it's easy to bully people into silence,
particularly when they lack the verbal skills to stand up for
themselves. But it takes a rare degree of boorishness to crow about
it in the pages of a national newspaper. For Tess picking on the
vulnerable is not merely justified, it is a courageous response to
the forces of political correctness. 'No wonder no one dares open
their mouth any more,' she says, directly after boasting of doing
exactly that to assert her privilege over a disabled boy.
Parents who have put their children
through hours of therapy, tried all manner of specialist
interventions and cheered every hard-won scrap of progress, are
understandably upset when they are branded lazy and irresponsible by
adults who can't control their sense of entitlement. I doubt if Tess
gave a moment's thought to the effect of her intervention on the
family she upbraided, but many parents wouldn't dare to take their
children out in public for months after that kind of setback. Tess,
presumably, would see this as a triumph for civilised values.
I've never sought to 'control' my
children. I'm not even sure I want to know what that means. I want
them to grow up to be polite, thoughtful and considerate towards
others, all qualities I find wanting in Tess Stimson. They mostly
behave well in public these days, as long I keep two steps ahead of
any potential setbacks. But even getting to this point has involved
years of painful trial and error, and at every step of the way there
have been Stimsonites chasing us out of museums, glaring at us in
restaurants and humiliating us in the supermarket queue. My successes
have been in spite of, not because of, these people's unsolicited
advice and hectoring stares. To give up would be to collude in
stigmatising my own children.