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Laurence Clark
Laurence juggles stand-up comedy with family life. He’s previously toured an anti-Jim Davidson show and been called a ‘sit-down comic’ by Cherie Blair - which was nothing compared to what he calls her! You can catch up with all Laurence's activities on his .
Oh what a birthday surprise
11th November 2008
Writing with his wife Adele this month, Laurence tells how a bit of misunderstanding or prejudice doesn't just affect disabled people - it can affect their children too. Sometimes with extreme consequences.
Every year, as our son Tom’s birthday on 11th November approaches, what should be a very happy time for us becomes filled with upset and tension. Like any other parents, we want to celebrate and make it a day to remember. However, we always seem to end up worrying whether his friends from nursery and their parents will be turning up to his party. We believe that this is not down to Tom being unpopular with the other children, but rather their parents’ misconceptions about us as a disabled mum and dad.
Last year, on the morning of Tom’s birthday party, a message was left on our answer machine from the parents of one of his little buddies, saying they couldn’t make it. An hour later they turned up. Had they suddenly realised they were free after all? Or was it the result of a guilty conscience?
Only two of Tom’s friends from nursery came to his party, despite us having sent out over a dozen invites. Moreover, the parents who brought them barely found time to acknowledge our presence, despite us having provided all the fun, food and free drinks. Quite often this sort of behaviour isn’t something that can be specifically pinpointed as discrimination, yet at the back of your mind you instinctively know that you’re being judged on some level.
Tom has always been a very active child, and is forever climbing about ... and indeed falling. In fact, when he was a toddler, a fellow disabled parent suggested we should put him in a baby harness attached to a lead so that we could stop him running away from us when we were out and about. Although this may well have worked, God knows what sort of parents we’d have looked like if we’d been seen around town taking our baby for a walk on a dog leash.
Only two of Tom’s friends from nursery came to his party, despite us having sent out over a dozen invites. Moreover, the parents who brought them barely found time to acknowledge our presence, despite us having provided all the fun, food and free drinks. Quite often this sort of behaviour isn’t something that can be specifically pinpointed as discrimination, yet at the back of your mind you instinctively know that you’re being judged on some level.
Tom has always been a very active child, and is forever climbing about ... and indeed falling. In fact, when he was a toddler, a fellow disabled parent suggested we should put him in a baby harness attached to a lead so that we could stop him running away from us when we were out and about. Although this may well have worked, God knows what sort of parents we’d have looked like if we’d been seen around town taking our baby for a walk on a dog leash.
There was an occasion, however, where other people’s negative perceptions of us as parents could have had far more serious implications. One morning when Tom was about 9 months old, he woke up gurgling and babbling away as usual and peering at us through the bars of his cot. In those days Adele used to push him around the house in his pram, as she wasn’t able to both carry him and keep her balance at the same time. As she turned her back to get the pram, we heard an almighty thud, immediately followed by a piercing cry. He’d somehow managed to climb right over the side of his cot and fall onto the floor. We just couldn’t forgive ourselves.
It so happened that Tom’s Health Visitor was due to come round to give him a routine check-up on this particular morning. When we explained to her what had happened, she checked him over and reassured us both that he was okay, and that all babies take a tumble from time to time. However, she also advised us not to take him to the hospital as, in her words, we’d have had the social workers down on us like a ton of bricks.
So if we’d done things by the book and taken our son to be checked out, we’d have been patronised and possibly had judgements made about our parenting abilities; yet by not taking him, we ran the risk of being accused of neglect. From our perspective, this is pretty much a no-win situation.
In truth, having two disabled parents has probably broadened Tom’s outlook and exposed him to issues that other children his age don’t experience. For example, the other week we went to a restaurant which had a step to get in, and Tom took it upon himself to tell off our waitress for not having a ramp for his daddy.
So if we’d done things by the book and taken our son to be checked out, we’d have been patronised and possibly had judgements made about our parenting abilities; yet by not taking him, we ran the risk of being accused of neglect. From our perspective, this is pretty much a no-win situation.
In truth, having two disabled parents has probably broadened Tom’s outlook and exposed him to issues that other children his age don’t experience. For example, the other week we went to a restaurant which had a step to get in, and Tom took it upon himself to tell off our waitress for not having a ramp for his daddy.
In short, it’s frustrating that our roles as parents are not more widely recognised and respected. People seem to generally assume that our son looks after us and that we couldn’t possibly be taking care of him. This means that we’re forever conscious of being observed and judged, which in turn can make us feel like we have to prove ourselves.
Anyway, this year Tom himself chose to have his fourth birthday party at a local family-friendly American diner. This time we just invited our friends’ kids instead of the children from Tom’s nursery. He had a great day, and the people who came actually talked to us as well as him.
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Comments
I loved the bit about Tom telling off the waitress for not having a ramp for his Daddy !
He sounds like a bright lad ;
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Ha!
Tom sounds like my Kit. She's 14 now and constantly "gets in the face of" pretty much anybody who disses me... I'm deaf, so if I'm treat shoddily or harshly by anybody like waitresses/shop assistants or anybody in between, they soon get the sharp end of her teenage tongue! She's always been the same; checkout operators who ask if I want cash back are easy targets for her when they sigh and get shirty coz i don't hear!! Being told off by a 4 year old (10 years ago) soon shuts them up!!
And I know how you feel about other kids' parents not bringing their offspring to your Tom's party.... sometimes Kit's friends parents wouldn't allow them to sleep over when they were a bit younger, because they were worried about how we would hear smoke alarms etc... or how the kids would get breakfast. Kit's dad is hearing, but if he was at work (nights) that's when we generally had a sleepover.
Parents forget that deaf / disabled are actually "normal" parents too... we have our kids to hear smoke alarms and to ask what other kids want for breakfast! Do they assume that if my smoke alarm sounded, that all the kids in the house would ignore it?!
It's an issue though; Kit's hearing and all her friends have been so far. Other kids parents were terrified of me; kids themselves were fine.
Now that my Kit is 14 (hearing) and has her own boyfriend (deaf, by the way), she's well happy that mam can chat with her deafie boyfriend. In the kitchen. With all the lights on. And my labrador watching out for kissin!!!
Boo
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I was horrified and deeply saddened to read your article, Lawrence.
My dad was disabled and regularly had to face comments about what was he doing having kids etc. back in the days before the DDA. It made me very protective towards him.
When my second son was born and we discovered he was Downs, I faced a lot of overt and covert discrimination.
Now I just think of the very wise words of my wonderful and very wise Health Visitor who helped me come to terms with David's condition:
Those who understand matter. Those who don't understand simply don't matter.
It's stood me in good stead as I've gradually become more disabled as well.
Glad your little monkey had a good and happy birthday surrounded by loving parents and real friends. That's all that matters.
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My nephew (aged 4) has apparently taken to telling people who park on the road outside his school that they are VERY NAUGHTY, because people in wheelchairs can't get past. :)
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you have just scared me to death as i am doing my first ever birthday party in about three weeks for my son and i know there are some of the mums have a problem with me having a child and being a single mum. well all in can say is if they dont like it they can go do a run and jump cos if no one turns up that is their bad luck cos we are going to have a wicked day whatever happens
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Yes I'd a date organised with an able bodied girl last month and despite agreeing enthusiastically to go on the date with me when I asked, she backs out of it an hour and a bit before we're due to meet, due to hurting her back and it makes you wonder. But what can one do?
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I've noticed that as well from a friend of mine with CP (and this version of CP is literally the worse end).
The CPers got a younger brother, and he once came up to me when I was doing trampolining and just started to talk; he mentioned alot of things that people within his class thought he was dumb.
I'm not 100% sure if his classmates knew his brother, but I would perfectly understand now that the same impression existed there as it did here.
Tom has taken a good step into the right path; be proud that he was capable of speaking against those who should really know better - the fact that he has you already goes to show he knows alot more then anyone else could.
- FPR
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