Joshua
and Ted
"One of the things
that gives me so much hope," Ted Kuntz says, "is how kids these days
just expect that children like my son belong and have something to
give." Josh graduates from high school next year, and since he began
kindergarten, he has been his father's window onto integrated education.
"It's delightful to see how the kids just accept and very quickly
look past the differences," says Ted. "They really see with new eyes."
It isn't just
children who have begun to see in new ways. When Josh began grade
seven, two male teachers flipped a coin to decide who would choose
their students first. The teacher who won started his pick with Josh
and, when asked about his choice, explained that Josh changed the
kids around him. The teacher suspected, and he turned out to be right,
that if Josh was in his class, the students would become kinder and
gentler.
For Ted too, life
with Josh has been a transforming experience. "One of the most powerful
things I've learned is acceptance," says Ted. For the first years
of Joshua's life, he relates, he was focused on finding a cure so
Josh would get better. Then one day it struck him that when Josh looked
at him, he saw a father who was afraid of who his son was. "I made
a decision that day to accept the son that I have," says Ted, "And
that was a very powerful lesson for me around accepting life instead
of resisting it. I realized that so much of my pain was around resisting
what was already there. I was resisting reality and as soon as I accepted
reality, my suffering went away."
Ted was in the
first wave of younger parents to join PLAN and credits the organization
with helping parents see that there is a place for their children
in the community. "PLAN helps to give parents a different kind of
a dream," says Ted, "because you have to relearn, you have to develop
a different dream when you have a child with a disability." He talks
about how everyone has a gift to give, though in many cases these
gifts are not the ones our society usually recognizes. "Honoring the
contributions that our sons and daughters can make helps them to find
their place in society," he says.
While Josh has
a natural network around him, they are looking to build an intentional
one that will include relationships developed during his school years.
In this fast-paced individualistic society, Ted says, we've lost our
natural sense of community and we need the vision that PLAN provides
to give us something to aspire towards. "That's the gift of disability,"
says Ted, "that it is forcing us to recreate community."
In his dreams
for the future, Ted looks to the past. "I'm told there are some native
communities where the hierarchy is reversed to ours. The people with
disabilities are considered to be the wise people in the community.
I would like to see us get to that place and begin to recognize that
the people we call disabled are actually our wise elders. They are
here to teach us about community, about humanity, and about living
with heart. And to me it's already happening."
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