So on Tuesdays I always sit down and watch a couple of shows.. I'll admit it, I still LOVE One Tree Hill.. mindless entertainment and I've watched it for years, so I'm invested in the characters.. My new favorite of the last year or so has become a show called "Parenthood".. they have a child on there that has Asperger's Syndrome. I have really enjoyed (for the most part) following "Max" and how the show has been portraying his character on here.. Max Burkholder does a FANTASTIC job portraying a child who has Autism. I've really enjoyed watching how the show has been portraying the character and the syndrome itself until this week. Now, I was overly excited about this show this week from the previews: it featured Adam, the father of Max, being told by a customer in front of them in line to "train your kid better" and that he feels sorry for him and that his kid was a (I hate to even say this word.. it's NOT in my vocabulary and NEVER has been..) Enter the "R" word here... Next thing you know Adam decks the guy. Now.. that was within the first three minutes of the show. Great! I was excited to see how they played this out.. Cops showing up, jail time, having to call someone to come bail him out of jail, maybe showing him going to court to explain his reasoning.. or at least a preview to next week including a court date.. I mean, in the real world if someone punched you in the face you are more than likely going to at least call the cops right?! file charges? press the issue that you were just beat down in the corner market? right!? well in THIS world someone would have. Not so in the land of T.V. No cops showed up, they didn't even stay on the scene to see what the man was going to do. All he did was look up at Adam appalled. Fade scene. Open to the next scene of someone else on the show doing something else. Nothing was discussed. They didn't show anything of what SHOULD of happened.
I sat through the whole show waiting... waiting... waiting for them to really "deal" with what just happened. Nothing.. The parents of Adam talked about how he was becoming more and more like the dad of the family and that maybe HE should go and talk to him about it. That was it. starts at 3:11, ends at 5:03.. that's less than two minutes.. and only 3 minutes in and this is what we get? The previews showed pretty much the whole scene... it drew you in. Parents of children who have autism were sitting there thinking,"That could be me one day.. I don't ever want to be there but NO ONE is going to call MY child an "R" word EVER!" The scene drew us in. Made us want more. Made us want to watch the whole hour show to see where the writers were going to take this. I know
I was intrigued.
Now, don't get me wrong.. I know there are 15 characters altogether on this show and that they all need screen time.. but you don't just have a scene so intense like this in the first 3 minutes of the show and then not address it at all... 38:15.. he finally tells his wife what happened.. a little earlier in the show they all came home from the supermarket and she asked how things went and he said they were fine. That was all that was mentioned... at 38:15 he tells her that he hit a guy THE OTHER DAY at the supermarket. "Wait a minute, you hit a guy?" "Yeah, we were are the store in the express lane. Max counted that the guy in front of us had 17 items instead of 10. Words were exchanged. He called Max a "R" and I hit him" "Wait a minute, he called Max a "R"? "YES!" "Well then I'm glad you hit him!" end scene for the most part.. the went on to talk about how he doesn't want to end up like his dad.. but NOTHING about what happened, how it affected anyone, no consequences... honestly I am very disappointed in how they handled this.. it was a serious missed opportunity! There was so much that could have been said, so many things that could have been done to make this a better show ABOUT Autism and what it does to the parents... I honestly felt like they threw this situation in because #1 it draws in an audience and helps with ratings and #2because they already have an established story line with Max and they felt like the needed to have something in this episode about him. I was not impressed. Had this happened in the real world, and let's face it I'm sure it has, the cops would have been called almost immediately and Adam's character would have been hauled off to jail because trust me that man who was hit was FURIOUS and would have pressed charges..
Us parents of children who have Autism deal with this kind of feeling on a daily basis. The feeling that if someone looks at us or our child for throwing a temper tantrum or for doing the little quirky things that most of our children do at one point or another.. or snickering behind our backs about "Oh I would spank my child if they tried to pull that out in public" or "That mom/dad needs to train their child better" that we might just loose it like Adam did. How many of us parents have tried to take our child out to the mall, or the movies, or out to dinner to try and do something that others would consider normal and take for granted and get treated like we have leprosy or something worse? Being a parent is hard enough as it is.. throw in a little special needs to the mix and it's down right impossible on some days... Can I see myself in Adam's shoes punching out someone for calling my child that filthy word? you bet your bottom dollar. That's just me though. When I showed the part of the episode in the supermarket to my wonderful husband he looked at me and said,"I hope I don't have to do that someday for Natalie!" but truth is: HE MIGHT! People in this world are cruel. That's old news. I'm actually better at it today then I was when she was younger right after her diagnosis. I admit there were days, mostly in Meijer of all places, that people felt the need to put in their two cents on how I "SHOULD" raise MY child. And I will openly admit I had a few choice words for them that weren't very nice. I can remember there was a time where I would have probably hauled off and hit this one lady but I held tight to the thought of "not in front of my child because I don't ever want her to be in that situation!" So, like I said, I know how it feels as I'm sure a lot of my mom friends that have kids who have Autism. We all go through it. I'm much wiser now then I used to be but I have to admit that I think I might "pull an Adam" if someone called my beautiful daughter an "R"!!! wouldn't you at least
think about it?! I know I would.
So, after the episode I set out on a mission to find out
if the writer's of this show were affected in their lives with someone who has autism. I wanted to know the purpose of
why they chose to put this character in here... there is usually a reason. And don't fool yourself, if you aren't touched by Autism yet, you will be, trust me on that. 1 in 91 children a year. I wanted to know
why the chose to add a character into the mix and what their intentions were for the character. And who did their research on the subject for them. I came across this article:
http://blog.autismspeaks.org/2010/03/24/katims/ (sorry for it coming from an Autism Speaks blog my friends who do not support them.. I myself am also one that does not support that organization for many, many reasons) and also in my search I found this article as well that I thought was well written:
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/health/2010/09/nbcs_parenthood_offers_look_in_1.html
So, apparently to answer my question: YES, the writer and executive producer of the show, Jason Katims has a 13 year old son that has Asperger's. So, even though they try to not parallel it to his son's life to "protect his innocence and privacy" he is in "tune" with living the life of a parent with a child who has Autism. While that makes me a little more "at ease" that someone actually has personal experience in this field and that they aren't just basing it off of reading a book about it or hearing second hand from someone how their life is, I still feel as though they missed a great opportunity to share/spread knowledge of the life parents lead every day while dealing with their children. Being the parent of a special needs child is overwhelming at best, and on sometimes a daily basis I feel like "putting someone in their place" for prejudging the situation. I remember a post on MLM's website a year or so ago that was talking about how you can't really prejudge someone without knowing the whole situation. Like seeing a five year old child with a pacifier in their mouth... Don't tell me you don't look at that child and think, "My goodness, that mother needs to take that thing and throw it away!" come on, admit it. You've seen this very thing and you've thought that very thing. But what you don't know is that
most children who have Autism have some sort of sensory issues as well.. and sometimes the pacifier is the only way that that mother is going to get her shopping done that day because it's the only thing that soothes that child enough to be able to even be in that store on that particular day. The situation on the show could have been handled so much better. There was an opportunity for the parents to sit down and talk about it, there was an opportunity for the father to sit down with Max and explain how sometimes things in life just "aren't fair" and that there are some people that just feel like they do not have to follow the rules, there was an opportunity for Adam to sit down with his dad and talk about what happened and how it affected him.. Somewhere in the middle of the show there is a very small part where he and his father are on his brother's boat and they talk about it very briefly. That lasted like seriously less than two minutes.
I really hope that this show "shapes up" and really shows what life is like on a daily basis for a family who is dealing with this. It really
is one of my guilty pleasures but I have to admit
this particular week I was HIGHLY disappointed.
here is the full episode if you want to watch and see what I'm writing about:
http://www.nbc.com/parenthood/video/if-this-boat-is-a-rockin/1259033/
and for what it's worth: we as parents of children with special needs do not
want your sympathy as the man in the episode so eloquently put it "I feel sorry for you, your kid is a burden!" What we do want is your patience and your understanding and for you to not judge our children. We would like for you to maybe offer HELP when you see us struggling or just a kind gesture of some sort, NOT your jugdgement or your pity! My child is not
sick, she HAS Autism!
