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HANDICAPPED CHILDREN IN BOOKS

It is important for handicapped children to meat themselves in children's books, to see pictures and read about children like themselves, their lives, problems, feelings, circumstances. And it is important for other children to get acquainted with handicapped children. As mentioned earlier, an unfortunate segregation policy in many of our countries has for decades placed many handicapped children outside our neighborhoods. It is thus all the more necessary that we meet them in books to prepare the soil for integration.

Our "ego" undergoes its richest development in interaction with a "you", registering other people's reactions to us. Mentally retarded, physically handicapped or other disabled children almost never see children like themselves on television or in films, unless the programme specifically concerns handicapped children. They almost never belong to their environments in mass media as naturally as other children do. If one never reads about anyone like oneself or meets anyone like that in television or on the radio, it is a sort of affirmation that one is not good enough or does not belong anywhere or has no value.

During the last decade quite a few books have appeared about handicapped children, but many of them are not good enough. They often activate our mechanisms of rejection and make integration even more difficult. Because literature influences us for better or for worse, especially when we are children, it is important to evaluate it critically. So many books are well-intentioned and the author has surely tried to encourage understanding, and yet the results are disappointing. The most important questions concerning these books will be: Do they good information and possibilities for identification in addiction to valuable literary experiences? Do they broaden our understanding of the handicapped person and his situation, or do they confirm or strengthen our mechanisms or rejection?

There is the hidden rejection found in many well-intentioned books where healthy young people who meet handicapped persons are filled with gratitude for their own good health. The underlying attitude is that the normal thing is to be is a kind of punishment for our sins.

In yesterday's books we often met wealthy children who gave poor children alms. In contemporary books in western cultures, handicapped children have replaced poverty-stricken children and the lesson is that one should be kind to handicapped children. We have a good many books about children who collect money for the benefit of mentally handicapped children. And the mentally handicapped are for ever children, happy an trusting and so grateful for so little. There is no room for individuality - in spite of the fact that mentally handicapped people are, as individuals as different from one another as we are who are not mentally handicapped.

In children's books about handicapped children we frequently find a certain principle of compensation so heavily stressed that it constitutes a hidden sort of rejection: blind people who automatically, almost by virtue of their blindness, are so exceptionally kind and good and have such a good ear for music: or the brave boy in a wheel-chair. The blind characters in children's books are mostly girls - it seems so suitable that girls should be sweet and gentle and play the piano. The characters in wheel-chairs are mostly boys, extraordinarily brave and clever boys, the best companion anyone can think of and such excellent referees in a football or baseball game. The handicap is compensated far beyond reasonable limits.

One might say that such books give a certain degree of information about the handicapped. But on the whole they give a false picture. A handicap does not automatically make any one into an extraordinarily fine person. Obviously most of these books are well-intentioned. But good intentions are not enough. The opposite pattern of rejection is heavily utilized in cheap serial literature, spread across the frontiers in an enormous number of copies, in which most frequently the villain is physically handicapped. This kind of reading is a hothouse for discrimination against the handicapped.

An author has to write about what he, in some way or other, has experienced in his own life, his environment, his fantasy, his dreams. He must know something about handicapped people before he writes. There are so many misleading books about mentally handicapped children. Some typical examples: many authors use the description ill when they tell about mentally retarded children. They are not ill, no more than other children unless they have measles or colds or something like that. They are not ill, they are retarded in their mental development. Other authors tell that an autistic child can suddenly become normal if his brother is kind to him, or a girl stops stuttering if she gets a pet, and another boy starts talking when he gets a friend, although he has never been able to talk before. Such things may happen, but very rarely. Handicapped children do not become normal, they just become grown-ups. Most books for young people obviously presuppose that a handicapped young person has no sexual life, not even a sexual urge and they do not even dream about such things. They are featured as neuters. Naturally, this is not true.

Some decades ago parents were often advised to place their mentally handicapped children in institutions at a very early age. In many books the authors still prefer this solution, even if the child is only one or two years old. No responsible person would recommend this today. It shows that the authors know too little about what they are writing. The most common pitfall is to concentrate only on the handicap and make handicapped children very special. The truth is of course that a child with handicap is first and foremost a child.

Because there are so many pitfalls, it is extremely important that only the best books cross language frontiers. Book-lists registering uncritically all books about handicapped children may to more harm than good, as they confirm our prejudices and spread false information. It is necessary to be critical and reject bad and unsuitable books.

We need books containing good psychological descriptions of the handicapped person as one of the main characters and books where handicapped children belong to their environment as naturally as do other people. Happily, there books exist where the author shows both insight and poetic power. Typical of many of these books is that the author himself states that his books are written both for children and for adults. Many of these authors have experienced a handicap, either personally or among their children, friends or neighbors.

Most children's books about the handicapped tell us about children with physical or sensory handicaps, and the authors' intention is quite obviously to make the readers identify themselves with these children. Books about mentally handicapped children are fewer in number and mostly written from the point of view of a sister or brother.

During the last decade we have seen a number of photographic picture books about handicapped children. Children who read them are usually as fascinated by this documentary material as by fiction. It acquaints them with handicapped children in their daily life. Such books are often excellent for handicapped children as well; they can look at pictures of and read about children who look like themselves and have to struggle with some of the same frustrations.

Especially interesting are picture books made by authors or artists who are themselves parents or siblings of handicapped children using their personal experience and love trying to tell other children how it can be for a family to have a handicapped son or daughter, sister or brother.

In addition to all these books we have those books mentioned earlier: tactile books for the blind and books with sign language for the deaf. These are also fine books for other children. They give them some understanding of how it is to experience pictures through your fingertips, or to understand words by means of signs rather than by listening.

Books which give handicapped children opportunities for identification are also useful sources of information to other children about what it is like to by handicapped.

In many cases it is a relief to read about the experiences of others. It can be a help towards seeing one's own situation in a wider perspective. There is a comfort in knowing that others have been through the same experience, even if their conditions and situations in life are utterly different. For some people fiction can be an inspiration towards giving new insight, awareness and acceptance.