First off, I don’t want to hear about the term handicapped. I don’t care if you prefer physically challenged, handi-able or whatever the ‘in’ PC phrase is. I don’t have time to stay on top of arbitrary and always changing terminology.
I just had a deaf gentleman in my store with a project of his and I had the best time helping him. It cheered me up considerably…because prior to him stopping by I was left drained and irratable by some older ladies that were in the store earlier. Why is this? It isn’t the first time that feeling has happened to me. I have worked with blind people before acting as a guide swimming, scuba diving and bike riding and I always feel like I am getting more out of the experience then they are.
My son is high-functioning autistic. When he was younger, we took him for speech and occupational therapy. We saw lots of other children there, many who were worse off than him. One thing I’ve noticed about many parents of special needs children, is that they learn to accept their child’s condition - and make the best of it. For the most part, they can’t change it - so they do the best they can. Those that wallow in pity get nowhere.
I think the children pick up on that. They learn to overcome their limitations** **and that can be a powerful thing. They learn that they have power over a lot of things.
No, you’re not weird. We can certainly learn a lot from people with various kinds of difficulties. Watching someone deal with a handicap makes you want to give yourself a kick in the pants when you start feeling down about yourself.
I have helped a few deaf people before … and the most amazing thing to me is how much two people can communicate without using verbal words or any established set of hand signals (I didn’t know sign language). It was amazing how simple it was to give driving directions, operational directions, etc. I always think of this when certain fellow teachers think it is madatory that in order for people to communicate, they need to speak perfect English … like it’s mandatory or something. It’s surprising how much of our communication is non-verbal.
I think we (people) feel better from helping handicapped people because we underestimate ther ability, we learn something new from the experience (something perhaps we never considered), we learn something new about ourselves, we learn that handicapped people really aren’t different from us (with the obvious exception), we learn there’s really no legitimate reason to be anxious or even scared when dealing with individuals.
I usually feel pretty good when helping almost everyone. Helping people with specific challenges is always rewwarding, IMO, because you learn something about yourself, “Wow, I didn’t know I could that” … and because (obviously), not everyone is willing/able to help a handicapped person … for whatever reason.
I am very comfortable around deaf people. I’m glad it’s a situation/relationship I never avoided while growing up.