Am I a bad mother because my son misses the morning register sometimes? The odds that I find myself up against certainly make it seem so, as I am being taken to court by my local authority. While I was taught to be respectful of other people’s time and would like to teach my son the same, sometimes it’s not that easy.
I have a condition called pseudoachondroplasia. This means I have restricted growth. Standing at 3ft 6in, I have misalignments of my knee and hip joints and a curvature of the spine. All of this significantly affects my mobility.
Sadly, the lateness doesn’t reflect my efforts. Some mornings I limp from my bed to the car, push through the pain and apologetically arrive flustered and anxious at my son’s school gate at 9:15am. The resulting late marks from missing the morning register have added up and my attempts at an appeal have been turned down.
A £410 fine later, I will find myself in front of a magistrate next week for an expensive slap on the wrist. Despite his being about 10-15 minutes late some days, my son’s attendance is very good and he is achieving well. I am a single mother with no support network and the little family we do have all work full-time.
The fine feels extremely unfair. Is it going to alleviate me of my physical limitations? It is far more likely to drag us further away from a solution by infringing considerably on my mobility costs.
I am not arguing that there should be one rule for me and another for everybody else, nor am I wanting sympathy. This is simply the reality for many single parents who live with a disability. For many, this topic is dangerous territory for fear of being accused of “playing the card” and for fear of the assumption we’re not “coping”. After all, much of our battle for equality has been based around the insistence that wider society acknowledges our abilities.
But sometimes it just takes one person to drop their pride and admit they are struggling, before others come forward too. Maybe it will take something like this to open that difficult dialogue, to reaffirm it’s OK to admit you’re finding something difficult, to in turn effect change instead of judgment.
Is equality achieved by treating disabled people like everybody else? In many circumstances, yes. But equality is not achieved by ignoring someone’s limitations. I’d like policymakers to consider disabled parents. Like many solutions, this one costs money. Schools can only do so much. At present, there is funding which provides respite for parents of disabled children. It doesn’t factor in that one day these children will grow up and have families of their own, like me.
Disabled parents deserve to have equal rights to access services. Not be fined and told to get on with it.
Publicising my story attracted a backlash. Many asked why I didn’t “just get up earlier”. Presumably they’ve not experienced what it is like to live with chronic pain. It is sporadic and unpredictable, not something you can plan around.
Each of us can make a difference. There’s a mother and dear friend who goes out of her way to drop my son home when I’m physically depleted. There’s my neighbour who has started scraping the ice off my windscreen in these winter months because you noticed I cannot reach and that it sets me back a further 10 minutes, thank you. Thank you for being part of the solution and not the problem.
We have a long way to go before disability is really understood. It’s time we started empowering disabled parents, so that we can continue doing one of the hardest jobs in the world: raising our children without judgment. Schools, educational welfare officers and voluntary services should all work together towards a common goal: ensuring our disability doesn’t impact negatively on our young before it is too late. After all it takes a village to raise a child.