News & Press

Community Wellness: Lost 'Autistic Child' and lesson from the 'Blind Guy'

By Robert Lathers, LMSW    CEO, The Right Door for Hope, Recovery and Wellness

This week major media outlets announced that a search was on for an “Autistic Teen” who had wandered off from a camp in New York. He was found safe after he walked into a pizza shop. How great that must have been for his parents. Their child found! It is not uncommon for children with autism to have episodes of “wandering off.” In fact, it is not uncommon for any child to “wander off” temporarily. When it happens it can be cause for major panic for the parents.

As they look for their child they almost always ask, “Have you seen my son?” or “a little boy?” or “my daughter” or “my little girl?” They don’t ask passersby if they have seen their “autistic” child, or their “overweight child” or their “highly active” child. No. They are looking for their child, not a disability. The fact that a disability exists will in no way help locate the child. When found, the parents are relieved that their “child” is safe. When I hear the labels placed on children and people, I am always reminded of my friend, Tom.

Tom was blinded in a hunting accident when he was 19. Accidently shot in the face by his hunting companion. The most remarkable thing to me about Tom is that he refused to respond when someone referred to him as the Blind Guy or the Blind Man. But it happened often. Tom’s favorite story was when he went into a restaurant and the waitress whispered to his wife, “What will he have?” Tom responded in a loud voice to his wife, “Tell her I’ll have the lasagna!” Tom insisted he was “a man.”

“I am a person first,” he would say, “not a disability. Everything about me is a man. It’s just that I can’t see with my eyes. But trust me ... I see plenty. I see unkindness, I see judgment, I see pity, and I see through people who feel superior because they are not blind.”

“They have eyes,” he would say, “that can’t see beyond their own prejudice and their feeble attempts to make me less.” From Tom’s point of view, the fact that he couldn’t see was no more a disability than somebody in a wheel chair, or who could not hear, or someone who did not have empathy for others. Tom insisted he was a person first, and seeing him as a blind man was other people’s disability, not his.

Tom had another amazing gift. He was a long-time foster parent to adolescents who were suffering traumatizing emotional damage. And he was a very good foster parent. He used to say he could hear what was not so clear to others and then act on it. He was determined about encouraging the individual value of those less fortunate. Many of his foster children struggled in school. Some of them seemed always on the brink of failure, but Tom would always assure them that they were not “failing students” but students who were challenged to the “point of failure.” Yet, just about every one of them eventually succeeded in school.

Tom and his wife lived on top of a hill that overlooked beautiful Lake Leelanau. He had never physically seen the lake, but he assured me he could feel it, smell it, hear it and love it. Tom taught me that he was a person first, a husband next, a dad third, and a man who was blind last. “But,” he would say, “I am not truly blind.” He convinced me that he could see beyond what most of us can and he definitely taught me that people are never their disabilities or the labels that we put on them. They are people first and are made up mostly of their dreams and their relationships.

I lost touch with Tom, years ago when I moved from Traverse City, but I am sure Tom would have something to say about the lost “autistic child.” I can feel Tom saying “a child is lost.” Whenever I hear a person referred to as “developmentally disabled” I can feel Tom saying, “a person with a developmental disability.”

Tom believed that if you put the person first it makes ALL the difference in how they see themselves and how we see them. Tom was a full human being. A person who was blind, but he was so much more than that. He was a PERSON first. He was never a disability.

What a better world it can be if we see the person and not the disability. Tom was full proof of that.

Robert Lathers, LMSW, is the CEO of The Right Door for Hope, Recovery and Wellness, formerly Ionia County Community Mental Health. His email address is rlathers@rightdoor.org. He welcomes your comments and questions. If you have a mental health emergency, call 911 or our 24-hour crisis line at 1-888- 527-1790. Visit The Right Door online at www.rightdoor.org and find us on Facebook. The Right Door in Ionia is now open every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.