Mail on Sunday Magazine

[lottiejenkins]

I found this article today..........I thought it was very moving,,,, what a decision that lady made... dont think i could do it though!
www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/you/article.html?in_article_id=522925&in_page_id=1908

I would have thought so as that is emergency medication. mine took 5 mins and that was rectal pharaldhyde

That JH thought of her child in that fashion is a reflection of societies attitude to disability.

That she was placed in a situation where there was no support even when it was clear she was not coping is not acceptable either.

I wonder if, from day one she had been surrounded by people who had positive views of disabled children, who were committed to helping her cope, things might have gone altogether a diferent way.

Now dont get too excited but i am almost in agreeement.
I dont think anything could have prevented Jh from allowing her selfishness to win over her maternal instinct.

BUT i do worry that it seems easier to get a child placed into care than it is to access support to keep a disabled child at home.

to constantly be told we are special or strong for continuing to care for our children is patronising. but it does explain societies view on dealing with children with SN.

If we are extra ordinary to care for our children it means that the "normal" thing to do would be to give them up.

now that truley is a terrifying thought

Yurt1

I am not saying you need to be a martyr to look after SN children, far from it.

What i do say is that it is wholy unfair that carers of kids with SN do not allways get the help they need as an automatic right but have to fight the "system" to get it. And that fight can at times be harder for carers than meeting the children's needs.

Had JH been offered a decent package of help, from day one. provided by people who were looking for the positives in Immie and not permanently focussed on what was "wrong".

Had she then decided, for purely hedonistic reasons to walk away from Immie then I feel it might even be OK to condemn her.

In the current situation, the real world out there, if a parent choses to keep their disabled child - good on them I say, I hold such parents in high regard.

Should they also say that given the dearth of services, the negative attitudes in society, they cannot cope and walk away, I will not condemn them.

Talies
I don't actually recall anyone posting that their relationship with their NT child has broken down because of their SN child. Have they? You say this was said by others on here. Almost all of the parents of both SN and NT children that I know would say that the juggling is difficult but that their NT children gain a great deal from being around their SN sib.That is certainly the case in my home.
The only people advocating the opposite were you and JH.
Relationships do get placed under pressure when an SN child turns up. But does that really mean that giving the child away is the answer? That seems to be what you are propaosing. i think it is a highly dangerous position to take as it will endanger more relationships if partners are encouraged to believe that ditching the SN child so we can smooch back to happyville is a reasonable demand to make.

The fact that society may choose to view a child with SN as a disposal element is morally repugnant. To have JH parading this view is not helping anyone. To have her applauded for it is worse.

A parent giving up a child they cannot cope with is understandable. Sad but understandable. To use gross intellectual summersaults to make that a great idea and somehow admirable is terrible.

Mamazon,

I am terrified.....

I agree with your last post.

Perhaps that is one of the points I have been trying to make all along and it took your eloquence to make it properly.

The uninteligence in the system scares me.

Finding a hundred pounds of support a week to enable a carer to meet a child's needs and not go insane, is something the system cannot deliver.

Fast forwards 9 months and thousands of pounds for inpatient care for the parent who has had a nervous breakdown and yet more thousands for specialist residential for the child is there the instant it is needed.

I don't have a child with sn, but...

even if, as you say, it is harder to access the services yourself than it is to place a child into care that isn't really relevant here is it? Because the moment that jh was told that Immie had brain damage, she threw away her breast pump so that she wouldn't be needed by her. As soon as Immie went into hospital she stopped visiting, and then she and Beardy gathered up all her stuff and took it all to the dump.

Those are not the actions of someone at breaking point because of their inability to access the best possible care for their child.

Ah well I agree about the pointlessness of fighting and of course the system should just deliver and it almost always fails in that.

From the things I've seen JH write about Immie- from the safe distance of not being ground down by daily care I don't believe that she would have stayed. She says on her blog she found Immie's life 'too lacking in consciousness to be worth celebrating' and that in some ways she still believes this. It's the repeated painting of profound disability as worthless that I cannot forgive.

Not sure PipinJo,

I wasn't there, neither were any of us.

That was my point, I cannot say what she meant by getting rid of the breast pump and dumping the child's stuff. If I said it meant XYZ I would be speculating.

It doesn't sound like the actions of a commited loving parent but without being there I cannot say that for sure.

All I have refused to do in this situation is take part in what is coming to sound more and more like a witch hunt.

Whilst everyone is knocking JH as an individual, society gets away with having a general "second best" attitude to children with extra needs and think it's OK not to give their parents the help they need.

but jh is contributing to that. by writing a book telling about how she did all that, how she had another child who is now the bubbly child that they hoped that Immie would have been, she is reinforcing the belief that it is ok to treat people (because it is not just children, many of these children will mature into adults) with disabilities as second class citizens.

In the main, attitudes to disability have changed. When I left school the visually impaired were generally expected to become telephonists and piano tuners, with the odd inteligent one going on to become a physio therapist, and then you would hear people saying how "wonderful it is that they can do these things" . But a lot of that has changed, and the physically disabled, although still finding it difficult, esp if you are in a wheelchair, are a lot more accepted than they were 20 years ago.

But the problem lies with those who have more than a physical disability, who do not have the capasity to stand up for themselves and show the world that they are equals and deserve to be treated as such.

While the likes of Julia Hollander publish books to justify the iradication of children with such complex needs from their lives, who is going to stand up and shout to the world that it's wrong? Who other than the parents of these children is going to tell the world that their children are every bit as important as anyone else?

But JH is peddling the idea of SN = second best in her writings and interviews.

Hello,

I've been stunned by what seems to me to be an awful lot of vilification of Julia based on nothing more than newspaper articles or reviews of a book.

I should say something about myself.

I know Immie
I know Tania
I have met Julia
I have met both her other girls
I have met her husband
I foster children
I have 2 SN children who have been with me for 15 years

So I claim to have a little knowledge of the situation and what I say does not stem from judgmental attitudes of authors.

Firstly, Tania did not drop from heaven on wings sometime after Julia came to her couragous decision in admitting her limitations to herself. Tania was around in the background and discussions going on for a good while before Julia left the hospital. The assumptions that it was nothing more than luck that Immie found Tania are simply untrue, good careful planning was what was involved; although I do not know how much Julia knew about this side of things at the time.

Julia's recognition that for all of them a family of 3 and a half (in terms of the houshold only - that's NOT a judgment of Immie) was better for them all than a family of 3 with, perhaps, the 4th member dead or a fatherless family of 3 took huge courage and total desperation.

Rather than just looking to critises Julia is it not possible to look at the outcome, the situation as it really is ?

One very happy family of 4 still very much involved with Immie.
One very happy Immie - who is just gorgeous.

Given that Julia was unable to cope and brave enough to admit it, can anyone here suggest a better outcome for everyone involved ?

I agree with Talliesintraction on the fundamntal point that SS services arrive with too little too late. Had those services fallen into place as Julia left the delivery suit who knows what might have transpoired, but they didn't, don't and wont unless the truth gets published.

I also agree with Talliesintraction that it does no one any credit at all to judge anyone else.

Jonkat

But, why did she sell her story? That's the bit I find the absolute hardest to understand, that she is making money out of her daughter.

I don;t think people are criticising the outcome. I think everyone can see the outcome is better than could have been wished for. Nor are people criticising her inability to cope. And certainly not her wish to run. Or her fear.

It's comments like this:

"Elinor has regained the privelige of a normal childhood. She now has another sister, little Beatrice, who is the lively, challenging companion we hoped Immie would be."

Those (imo) are not comments (and there are too many in that vein) that should go unchallenged.

It's not about what she did as such, it's about what she is saying now.

good point yurt1

BUT she had an "expert" paediatrician telling her that Immie would never have any inteligence and thats the guy who is supposed to know.

No one else seems to have a problem with that, I know I do.

What chance did she have?

She was being invited to view Immie as less than human and told it was OK to do so.

You or I might have known better, but we speak from better knowledge.

Then again neither of us has ever met JH either.

Jonkat has and s/he did not come away with a negative view.

Maybe those who want to sell books have rewriten her words for her.

Ah, so it was Professor Plum in the library .
People are not judging the decison or the outcome.
People are judging the attitudes that she perpetuautes by write a book portraying herself as a brave and courageous person. The word courageous is used in your post jonkat.
what she did may have been for the best but it was not brave.

And touting a book anywhere you can is really exposing yourself to the assessment of the world . If she is being judged it is her choice. She chose to write a book to make some money out of this whole affair.
I will judge someone who lives a few days of my life and gives up and then affects to portray that experience as equal to - or in fact braver -than mine.

Incidently had a very interesting conversation with DS1 over supper this evening. Asked him how he would feel if we had decided to get a foster carer for DS2 . He siad he would hate us because it would be an abdication of our parenting . He said if we had done that we would have taught him that perfect is everything and that if things don't go to plan just give up. He said he loves his brother as much as his (nt) sister and that he values what having such a brother has taught him - patience, kindness, consideration - and the truth that life does not always go to plan but if it doesn't then you just get the hell on with it.