The Po Show

Mental

When you have a special needs child, you are constantly wondering how that child's development differs from that of his/her "normal" peers. As he's grown older, I've wondered how Matthew's self-awareness, his self-image, has been affected by external perceptions of who he is and what's he's like. For the longest time in school, he suffered a barrage of abuse from other kids over labels like "weird" and "crazy." It was bad, hideously bad.

Now he's gone through a lot of healing, through being in a place where the kids really understand that everyone there has issues. Though they totally get on each other's nerves at times, everyone understands that the others can't help how they behave. And he's surrounded by teachers and other adults who utterly and completely get him and know how he needs to be engaged. But it's still just one part of life, one part of Matthew's world. There's still the world outside of school, outside of our own home. There are people whom he encounters who don't understand him, and that will continue throughout his life.

And then there's the rest of the world. What has really gotten me thinking is media; specifically, how special needs kids, and special needs persons in general, are portrayed. What set me off on this round of musings was a show that my kids have started watching on Nick, called The Troop (they have just recently started liking live action tween shows, which they used to abhor. Tessa once drew a picture of a person running away and screaming, "Red Alert! Emergency! Drake and Josh Marathon!!") On this show, teenagers in a secret organization called The Troop are recruited to kill or capture monsters that have wandered in from other dimensions, and return them to their own dimensions. In one episode, they are discovered by a bad guy teen character, who wants to use the monsters to take over the world. They thwart his efforts, and at the very end of the episode it's revealed that he's locked up, ranting and raving about the monsters, in a facility called the "Lakewood Institution for the Emotionally Challenged." Hahaha, how funny!

Except if you have a child who *is* emotionally challenged. Or emotionally disturbed, as the official designation still reads. Or emotionally disabled, which sounds nicer, so I wish they would use it as the official designation. In any event, it's not so funny then.

I've noticed on shows like iCarly (which is the show that my kids were forced to watch with their cousins when we were in CA over the holidays, and which led them to discover that they actually liked some of these live action tween shows), there are a lot of jokes along the lines of "Did you take your medication?" when a character is acting erratically. Or "He'll have to deal with that with his therapist" when a character experiences something upsetting. But all light-hearted and laugh track-infused. I think of all the times parents worry aloud that something they did is messing up their kids, and someone else jokingly tells them, "Oh, don't worry, they'll get you back when you get hit with the therapy bills!" Hahahaha!! How hilarious!

Except if you have a child who *is* on medication, who *does* have a therapist. What does that child think of all of this hilarity? Hahaha, your suffering is so the stuff of comedy!

I know this is all indicative of how uncomfortable our society is with mental illness, and really with behavioral differences in general. When you're uncomfortable with something, you either ignore it or make a joke about it to diffuse the discomfort, and when it comes to mental illness, society does both. I say "society" like it's some abstract thing, but what it really means is people. People do that. And what does that do to the mental and emotional development of my child?