Categories
Awareness

Shine Blue on Autism in April

Visual communication board

“People with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are like salt-water fish who are forced to live in freshwater. They are fine if you just put them into the right environment. When the person with ASD and the environment match, the problems go away and they even thrive. When the environments don’t match, they seem disabled.” Humphrey (2008).

Language impairment, social deficits, repetitive behaviors, sleep issues, gastrointestinal disorders, and anxiety are characteristics of ASD: 40% are nonverbal; 70% have average to above average IQ scores.

Want to subscribe to receive blog updates sign up today!

For the families affected by autism, each day can be an adventure in uncertainty:

  • Will Johnny have a meltdown at school forcing mom to take off work again?
  • Will Max make it through a quick stop at the grocery store or will he scream down the aisles?
  • Should we pay for Suzie’s therapy or buy Christmas presents?

The Hope Center for Autism in Stuart, Florida is a public charter school that helps families navigate these adventures. Parents entrust their children to staff dedicated to supporting sensory, communication, and self-management needs in preparation for a successful life.

“Children with autism are colorful, they are often very beautiful, and like the rainbow they stand out.” Adele Devine

One Hope Center staff member dreamed of working with ASD kids as far back as eighth grade, others saw it as a stepping stone to gain pediatric experience before graduating to working with adults. But after several years at the Hope Center, staff no longer see their jobs as temporary. They fell in love with the children, found their calling, and can’t imagine doing anything else. Excited to go to work every morning, they leave every day feeling part of a big, connected community.

“If they can’t learn the way we teach, we teach them the way they learn.” O. Ivar Lovaas

“Autism makes you listen louder. It makes you pay attention to an emotional level as well as an intellectual level.” Jace King

“Adapting our own perception, following rather than leading and building bridges are all keys to helping the child with Autism learn.” Adele Devine

Hope Center days are filled with learning, fun, and energy. Staff do things a little differently and adapt to change in unique ways:

  • Incorporate blue, the favorite color.
  • Use a picture symbol vocabulary board with every lesson.
  • Use fidget toys.
  • Sing skip counting songs.
  • Bond with and earn student trust.

“Cherish the children marching to the beat of their own music. They play the most beautiful heart song.” Fiona  Goldsworthy

“If we strive for the love, joy, and happiness the students have, the world would be a much BETTER place.” Gina Williamson

Special thanks to several staff at the Hope Center for Autism, https://www.hopecenterforautism.org,  who contributed to this post: ESE Teachers Natalie Rzeznik and Alexis Matonti; paraprofessionals Maria Gutierrez, Sandy Jerrells, Gina Williamson, and Sarah Zeilinga; Tundra, Jungle, and behavior staff; Theodore Hassel, PE Coach; Laura Drake, Aftercare Provider; Katarina Suarez, Speech-Language Pathologist; and Joanne Sweazey, Executive Director.

This post first appeared on Angela Muir Van Etten’s blog on April 5, 2021 at https://angelamuirvanetten.com/. Readers are encouraged to share the post, but are asked to include the website link.

Categories
Open

YOU’RE INVITED: Apply for Book Launch Team Membership

Application Form
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Be on the team that launches—ALWAYS AN ADVOCATE: Champions of Change for People with Dwarfism and Disabilities—a book documenting radical changes in organization, respect, and equal access for thousands of people with dwarfism and disabilities.

Find out  (1) what it takes to lead a charity that changes lives; (2) how laws were passed to stop a morally bankrupt practice; and (3) who knocked down barriers to equal access in buildings and facilities, public transit, schools, and so many more?

Want to subscribe to receive blog updates sign up today!

As a book launch team member, share the answers found in the third book of my trilogy and show how positive changes are possible in our chaotic world.

Apply now and through April 29, the day wrecking cranes began tearing down the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate in 1990. Be active in the disability movement that continues to break down environmental, attitudinal and system barriers.

Consider the benefits of being a team member:

  • Receive a complimentary autographed copy of Always An Advocate.
  • Exclusive, private, and direct communication with me as the Author and other team members.
  • FUN! Contests with prizes reserved for book launch team members!

Never been on a book launch team before? No worries. If you agree to do the following, you can do it:

  • Subscribe to my weekly blog (if not already a subscriber).
  • Accept Angela’s invitation to join the book launch team’s secret FaceBook group.
  • Agree to visit the team’s group at least once a week to support book marketing.
  • Read a pdf copy of the book prior to the release date. 
  • Post a favorable book review on amazon.com when requested by Angela at the beginning of the book launch month. (If you can’t recommend it to others, no hard feelings, but please agree not to post a negative review.)
  • Share book news on your social media platforms; consider posting a selfie reading the book.
  •  Share your enthusiasm for the book with your LPA chapter, district and any disability organizations that you belong to.

Other book launch team contributions include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Recommend Always An Advocate to family, friends, coworkers and anyone else who will listen.
  • Post a favorable online book review on retail outlets where books are sold, such as Barnes and Noble and Books A Million.
  • Post a favorable book review on Goodreads.
  • If you have a blog, post a book review or interview with Angela.
  • Ask your local library to order copies of Always An Advocate.
  • Gift a copy to family and friends.
  • If you belong to a book club, suggest they read Always An Advocate.
  • Write and submit a book review for your local paper.
  • Anything else the team recommends.

To apply for membership on this book launch team, please text me at 772-834-3951 or private message me on FaceBook with your email address and I’ll send you the link to my website where you’ll find the simple, one page application form. Remember to submit your application on or before April 29th.

Categories
Guest Inclusion

Celebrate People Blessed With Down Syndrome

Faith & mother

World Down Syndrome Day is 3-21-21. Down syndrome (Ds), named for Dr. Langdon Down, is the diagnosis for those blessed with a triplicate of the 21st chromosome. We celebrate this amazing group of people every March 21st because God doesn’t make mistakes; the triplicate didn’t slip his attention. In fact some people with Down syndrome will tell those of us with a typical duplicate #21 that we are the ones missing something.

That missing bit of genetic material may be why the world is such a cruel and serious place. People with Ds are vanishing at an alarming rate.

Want to subscribe to receive blog updates sign up today!

Just as life expectancy for people with Ds has expanded to 60-70 years old, babies are being terminated just because they have Ds. Iceland has virtually eliminated births of babies with Ds through abortion. Norway is close behind.

Personally, I was not expecting to have a child with Ds. I wasn’t expecting a baby at all at 42 years old. But 23 years ago, Faith burst into our family and nothing has been the same since. She survived a C-section five weeks premature, weighing just three pounds, and was born with a serious heart defect. We were quickly thrust into the medical world: Faith had closed heart surgery at four months and open heart surgery at eight months, all before hitting the ten pound mark.

When things looked up medically (our fighter would survive!), I learned about physical therapy, speech therapy, feeding therapy, occupational therapy, early intervention, and play therapy. As school age approached, I educated myself on inclusion and decided Faith should be included in a general classroom instead of being segregated in a special classroom. When no Christian schools in our area would accept Faith in kindergarten, which hurt deeply, she enrolled in the public school. What a mission she had there! She touched so many lives of students, teachers, and administrators, and continues to be somewhat of a local celebrity because of all the people she impacted. I’m proud to announce that Faith was the first student with Down syndrome to graduate with a standard diploma in our county!

All of this has been a huge trial to my faith. A lifelong Christian, I was hurt and felt God was punishing me when I thought I had been doing His will. It took some time to get over the hurt, anger, and loss of trust. When the church school our older children attended refused to admit Faith, we left after over 20 years there. But we didn’t leave our faith, and found a church preschool willing to try.

As a young woman, Faith has a boyfriend, she loves her dance classes and voice lessons and has performed in many recitals and plays. With the support of her big sister and brother-in-law, Faith got involved in our original church where she joined the praise team, altar guild, and Bible study (we ended up following her back there). The isolation of the past year has been difficult for this social young woman, but she will bounce back because she’s a fighter.

This post first appeared on Angela Muir Van Etten’s blog on March 22, 2021 at https://angelamuirvanetten.com/. Readers are encouraged to share the post, but are asked to include the website link.

Categories
Celebrations International

Presidents Meet on St. Pat’s Day

Lincoln Monument

When Bobby walked towards my desk in the New Zealand Embassy library in Washington, DC 40 years ago, for some inexplicable reason my heart beat faster. I was unnerved by the proximity of his brown eyes gazing directly into mine at the same exact height. I don’t remember a thing he said.

Bobby was all smiles as he came closer to me, a petite 27-year-old with a rare type of dwarfism. I looked nothing like the four feet tall, plump, middle-aged woman he had imagined.

Want to subscribe to receive blog updates sign up today!

As president of Little People of America, Bobby was on official business meeting me, the president of Little People of New Zealand. I was visiting America on a Winston Churchill Fellowship from the NZ government to research disability civil rights laws and public relations programs designed to improve attitudes towards people with disabilities. My intention was to interview Bobby as part of my research, but it became much more than that.

Our talks began with a three-mile trip to the Lincoln Memorial. Not so easy for this 32-year-old man raised in the small town of Jupiter, Florida. His two months living in the DC area was not enough for him to adjust to driving his over-sized car, that barely fit in traffic lanes, around the confusing DC road system. He got lost and flustered. And the more lost he got, the faster he drove. He even asked me for directions—someone who had been in DC for less than 24 hours and couldn’t see out the car window. He relaxed when we finally pulled into the Memorial parking lot.

We walked across the street and Bobby extended his hand to help me up a curb. However, he continued holding my hand after both my feet were set on the sidewalk. Not ready for such a bold move, I let go of his hand. After all, this could hardly be called a date.

I didn’t need his hand as we rode the elevator to avoid the 57 step climb to President Lincoln’s statue that towered above us at more than six times our height. Like millions before us, we were inspired by the display of Lincoln’s words from the Gettysburg address: all men are created equal. We knew what it was like to be treated as second-class citizens and shared a life mission to achieve equality for people with dwarfism and other disabilities.

Pizza was our choice for the evening meal. Corned beef and cabbage never crossed our minds until a drunken Irishman saw the arrival of two little people as good luck. He invited himself to our table to share Irish jokes. I was impressed with Bobby’s diplomacy when he persuaded him to move along and declined the offer to join him at the Saint Patrick’s Day parade.

Instead, Bobby returned me to my guesthouse where he was more interested in kissing me good night on the cheek than kissing any blarney stone.

And no, it wasn’t love at first sight; that took two weeks.

This post is a condensed excerpt from chapter 1, My Heart Beat Faster, in Pass Me Your Shoes: A Couple with Dwarfism Navigates Life’s Detours with Love and Faith. The book is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Books a Million.

Categories
Dignity

Dwarf Tossing Throwback

Prohibited
Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Dwarf tossing masquerades as a ‘sport’ when barroom bullies compete for prize money awarded to whoever throws a dwarf the farthest. From 1985 to 2012, it was like a perennial weed and you never knew who would sow the seeds—a newspaper columnist, a bar owner, a business promoter, a dwarf wanting to be tossed, a radio station seeking publicity, a dwarf challenging the constitutionality of a state law ban, or a state representative filing a bill to repeal the ban as obsolete.

From the beginning, Little People of America (LPA) successfully advocated against dwarf tossing in establishments licensed to serve alcohol as a morally bankrupt practice offensive by any standard of human decency.

Want to subscribe to receive blog updates sign up today!

The debacle was grounded in Chicago with a public relations campaign and with legislative bans in Florida and New York in 1989 and 1990, respectively.

So when Representative Workman sought to repeal the Florida law during Dwarfism Awareness Month in 2011, he was deluged with resistance. LPA demanded that the bill be withdrawn and bombarded him with:

  1. protest letters from little people, family and friends, and disability organizations;
  2. negative media attention; and 
  3. 4,834 signatures on a change.org petition that each triggered a ping when landing in his email inbox.

Prior to his bill, Workman had never met anyone with dwarfism! But after four weeks of relentless advocacy, he became acutely aware of all that is wrong with dwarf tossing:

  • It generates harmful stereotypes that often marginalize even the most highly qualified and educated people with dwarfism as they try to enter the mainstream employment market. LPA President, Gary Arnold, and American Association of People with Disabilities President, Mark Perriello
  • It objectifies the dwarf community making the individual who is tossed like a shot put or a javelin thrown in a track and field event. LPA President, Gary Arnold
  • In a day and age when society is confronting bullying, it is a shame that this bill takes us backwards. It enables bullying. LPA Vice President of Public Relations, Leah Smith
  • We feel the pain all the way down deep in our bones when we have to fight for our basic dignity as human beings. LPA Advocacy Director, Joe Stramondo
  • Civil liberties are not put at risk by upholding the ban, but are supported by it.Reality TV Star, Bill Klein
  • A career in dwarf tossing is likely to secure the tossee a check from the Social Security Administration or a plot in the cemetery. LPA Advocate, Angela Van Etten
  • It creates an environment so toxic that little people fear ‘copycat’ behavior and being thrown against their will. LPA Advocate, Angela Van Etten

When two past LPA Presidents—Robert and Angela Van Etten—confronted Workman in his office, he acknowledged that his bill set back little people decades with ‘freak show’ imagery and a return to the 1930s era of circus show entertainment. Although he refused to withdraw the bill, he agreed not to promote it. And the bill died in committee on March 9, 2012.

This post is a condensed version of chapter 13, A Perennial Weed, in “ALWAYS AN ADVOCATE: Champions of Change for People with Dwarfism and Disabilities” coming in Fall 2121.

To read more of my writings, please visit my website at https://angelamuirvanetten.com.

Categories
Transportation

Tired of Waiting In Airports?

Waiting at Airports

The average person spends about an hour a day waiting. But if you have a disability, waiting only one hour in an airport would be miraculous.

Waiting begins at check-in. Although seat assignments, boarding passes and baggage tags can be issued in advance, mobility devices require in person check-ins to  answer safety questions and make departure and arrival arrangements for riding the device to and from the airplane door.

Waiting continues at the airport security checkpoint. Typical passengers reportedly wait 28 minutes in security lines, but people with physical disabilities often wait longer.

Want to subscribe to receive blog updates sign up today?

We wait for someone to lift our carry-on bag onto the conveyor belt and pass a bin in which to place items for scanning or examination. And then we wait for an agent to direct a bypass from the metal detector for a personal pat-down and test for any trace of explosives on our hands or mobility device.

The Transportation Safety Administration (TSA), TSA PreCheck™ program, expedites security inspections with removal exemptions for shoes, belts, light jackets, laptops and 3-1-1 compliant liquids, but travelers and their medical equipment are still subject to imaging and inspection. Plus the TSA PreCheck™ background check, fingerprinting and personal interview are conducted off-site prior to traveling and cost at least $85. Not worth the effort for occasional travelers and definitely a problem for people like me whose fingerprints are no longer legible.

After security clearance, there’s waiting in line for a cup of coffee or a restaurant table. Despite the generous number of stalls, there’s often a line in the bathroom. It’s especially annoying when waiting outside the accessible stall occupied by a nondisabled person changing their clothes and doing hair and makeup. Transit layovers involve lots of waiting in gate lounges and restaurants. Media, meditating/praying in the chapel, people watching, reading, shopping, writing cards and emails, and sleeping fill the time.

People mistake our priority boarding status for less waiting. But when deplaning, they learn we’re last off. We wait for baggage handlers to bring our scooters to the jetway. On a good day, the scooters are brought to us; on a bad day, instructions are ignored, the scooters are delivered to baggage claim, and we must wait for a skycap. Arriving early in the morning or during peak hours means a long wait. For example, when our plane arrived at Heathrow airport in the UK at 5:00 a.m. we had to wait one hour before any transport staff came on duty. The upside is that by the time we make it to baggage claim our bags are either circulating on the carousel or have been off-loaded. The downside is that off-loaded bags are often taken to a storage area where we wait for staff to retrieve them.

Yet those who wait for the Lord Will gain new strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles, They will run and not get tired, They will walk and not become weary.

Isaiah 40:31

To read more, go to my website at  https://angelamuirvanetten.com where you can subscribe to my weekly blog and find several retail links to my book, “Pass Me Your Shoes: A Couple with Dwarfism Navigates Life’s Detours with Love and Faith.”

Categories
Medical

Replacing Body Parts

Hip scar

Pain, joint deterioration and hairline fractures in both hips dictated Robert’s use of crutches. For months, the morning sound of his crutches clip-clopping around the house substituted for my alarm clock, except for the inability to set the time for when I was ready to get up. But clearly it was time to schedule hip replacement surgery.

Although we lived in Rochester, New York, Robert scheduled surgery at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio given their hip replacement expertise and dwarfism experience. But our gratitude for health insurance that covered out-of-state surgeries dissolved when my employer switched to an HMO health plan that favored in network surgery. Our prayers of desperation were answered favorably when the HMO agreed that going out-of-state was medically necessary.

Want to subscribe to receive blog updates sign up today!

Robert prepared himself mentally for surgery by snorkeling at John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park in Key Largo, Florida. Although immediately surrounded by a fearsome school of barracudas, he blew extra bubbles when they didn’t mistake him for a meal! Robert’s spirits were lifted when he found the 16-foot underwater statue, Christ of the Abyss, with Jesus’s arms reaching out to remind Robert of His presence.

In physical preparation, Robert donated two units of his own blood. He also shared a medical article on anesthesia and dwarfism and refused any anesthetic until the anesthesiologist assured him she had read the article. In spiritual preparation, I found strength in Scripture:

Some boast in chariots and
some in horses,
But we will boast in the name
of the LORD, our God.

Psalm 20:6-7

Twenty-four years ago today, God answered our prayers. Robert returned to his hospital room after the surgery high as a kite tanked up on three pints of blood and morphine. He repeatedly shared God’s blessing with the transporter and greeted me with enthusiasm.

On his way to his first physical therapy session, a disheveled, unshaven Robert asked me, “How do I look?” I answered, “Wonderful. You look better and better every day.” A single male nurse overheard the conversation and said, “Every man should have a wife like you.”

When the medical social worker was making discharge plans, she asked about arrangements for airlifting Robert from Cleveland to Rochester. She was dumbfounded to learn that our plan was for me to drive the 250 miles with Robert reclined on the back seat with pillows, a water bottle, and urinal. No problem. Robert’s 40 inches in length easily fit across the back seat, hospital staff helped him into the vehicle in Cleveland, and church friends helped him out in Rochester. These friends also set up bathroom accommodations—a handgrip, support rails, and a platform around the toilet so that his legs didn’t dangle.

Once Robert recovered from the shock of a two-week house arrest, he made good use of his computer working at home and doing our taxes online between therapy and nurse visits. We thanked God then and now as his prosthesis remains stable.

What is your experience with body part replacements?

This is a condensed version from chapter 15 in “Pass Me Your Shoes.” For a full account, go to https://angelamuirvanetten.com for several retail links to the book and subscribe to my weekly blog.

Categories
Character

“If You Can Be Anything, Be Kind”

Kindness
Image by Prawny from Pixabay

For 13 years, I lived in a city that was twice designated as “the kindest city in America,” first in 1940 and then in 1992. Rochester, New York earned this moniker in 1992 when university students pretended to accidentally drop something, need change, or be disabled and needing assistance. The title went to Rochester because more people went out of their way to help than in 35 other cities studied.

When Readers Digest reported this story in July 1994, the kindness trait was attributed to the transformation of the city more than a century earlier when evangelist Charles G. Finney held religious revivals in Rochester in 1830, 1842, and 1856. When thousands, across all social classes and ages, converted to Christianity the moral character of the city changed for the better and people lived to do good.

Want to subscribe to receive blog updates sign up today!

I no longer live in Rochester or know the current character of the city, but I do know that God shows kindness to all people regardless of whether they follow Him: the sun comes up every morning, birds sing, flowers bloom, the list is endless. Likewise, God gave us all the capacity to be kind. Yes, everyone. Wherever we live, whatever our faith, we can be kind to one another. “Kindness is a gift everyone can afford to give.”

Kindness to a complete stranger, a family member, or a coworker makes the world less caustic and more caring. February 17th, #RandomActsOfKindnessDay, encourages kindness. According to actor Morgan Freeman, we can change the world one random act of kindness at a time. And the world surely needs changing!

We can all share examples of how a simple act of kindness made our day. I have certainly benefited from neighbors showing me kindness by bringing in my garbage bin from the end of the driveway, dragging fallen palm fronds to the vegetation pile for pick up, or helping to lift or carry something heavy. Church and family members have been kind in too many ways to count. Plus, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” This is true for me when grocery shopping, pumping gas, or retrieving luggage from an airport baggage carousel. But Tennessee Williams gets credit for the quote. 

So this February 17th how will we show kindness to people with disabilities? Sometimes a smile is all it takes. According to William Arthur Ward, “A warm smile is the universal language of kindness.” Other ideas include:

  • Allowing someone with a mobility impairment to jump ahead of you in the line
  • Helping someone in distress like the driver who pulled over to help a woman whose front wheel on her wheelchair slid off the sidewalk and got stuck in a garden
  • Calling someone who is staying safe at home during the pandemic
  • Donating to a thrift store that employs people with disabilities
  • Volunteering at a food bank serving people whose disability income does not put enough food on the table

For more of my writings, go to https://angelamuirvanetten.com where you can subscribe to my weekly blog, find several retail links to my book—“Pass Me Your Shoes”—and get updates on the Fall 2021 publication of the third book in my dwarfism trilogy, Always An Advocate.

Categories
Disability Rights

Vigilante Policing of Disabled Parking Spaces

Disabled Parking

My mouth was dry as I anticipated my name being called to appear before the traffic court magistrate. Even though a law school student at the time, this was no legal clinic assignment. Nope, I was there defending myself. My offense? Parking without a disability placard or license tag on my vehicle in a space reserved for people with disabilities. Hard to believe since I had a placard, but I was ticketed because it wasn’t on display. Thankfully, the magistrate took one look at my 40-inch stature, said “this has to be a mistake,” and dismissed the charge.

Want to subscribe to receive blog updates sign up today!

My experience is ironic given how many people violate disability parking laws without getting caught. So many without a placard or license tag block access aisles to an accessible parking space making it impossible to open doors wide enough to load a wheelchair or to put down a van lift. Others have all kind of excuses for parking in reserved spaces—”I’m just unloading, I’ll only be a few minutes, there’s nowhere else to park.” Some offenders are just plain obnoxious and park wherever they want maybe even to protect their flash car from getting scratched.

But what about the vehicles with placards and license tags driven by people who don’t appear disabled? When there’s no sign of a wheelchair or walker, vigilantes often challenge these drivers for illegal parking. This assumption is prejudicial to those with invisible disabilities that do qualify for disabled parking privileges due to breathing or heart conditions, pain, extreme fatigue, and/or impaired mobility. One woman reported getting two to four comments a week, people yelling at her, leaving notes on her windshield, knocking on her car window, or calling her a liar when she explained she had two prosthetic legs. Should she have pulled up her trouser leg to show them?

Nondisabled drivers who chauffeur a passenger who is eligible for disabled parking are also subjected to dirty looks and inappropriate challenges for lawfully using disabled parking.

So what does this mean for the vigilantes who police disability parking violations? Fair enough to confront those whose vehicle is missing a disabled parking placard or license tag, but unfair to accost a driver who doesn’t look disabled. It’s not our job to question whether the driver is disabled or to assume fraudulent use of a placard. Instead, when fraud is suspected, report the vehicle’s license plate and placard number to the police and/or your state’s Department of Motor Vehicles.

The police are equipped to investigate fraudulent cases where placards are borrowed from someone with a valid permit, issued based on false information, or counterfeited. The penalties for fraud are severe with fines as high as $10,000 for a felony, jail time up to six or 12 months for a misdemeanor, community service, and restrictions on professional licenses. 

So how do you handle those you perceive to be illegally parked in spaces reserved for people with disabilities?

For more of my writings, go to https://angelamuirvanetten.com where you can subscribe to my weekly blog, find several retail links to my book—“Pass Me Your Shoes”—and get updates on the Fall 2021 publication of the third book in my dwarfism trilogy, Always An Advocate.

Categories
Etiquette

Impact of Snow White’s Fictional Dwarfs on Actual Dwarfs

Snow White
Image by Ina Hall from Pixabay

More than 200 years have passed since the Grimm brothers were inspired by European folklore to write “Little Snow-White.” But it was Disney’s release of the first full-length animated feature film—“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”—on February 4, 1938 that etched this fairy tale into popular culture. Seventy years later, the American Film Institute ranked the movie among the 100 greatest American films and the greatest American animated film of all time.

So how does the film and its’ progeny rank among 21st century dwarfs? Thanks to members of the Dwarfism group on Facebook, my question—“if and how ‘Snow

Want to subscribe to receive blog updates sign up today!

White and the Seven Dwarfs’ has affected your life”— was answered with many comments that meshed with my own experience. For several little people who had seen the movie or a pantomime as a child, it was our first time seeing other dwarfs. Some of our parents explained that when we grew up we would be short just like the dwarfs in the play; others figured this out on their own. But we all felt like we weren’t alone in the world.

Several little people reported simply enjoying the movie for what it was—a fairy tale, a humorous cartoon. They never gave it another thought. My husband Robert enjoyed his kiss on the cheek from Snow White when she spotted him, a dwarf, in the crowd at a Disney parade. Another fellow has fun watching people’s reactions when he wears shirts that have Grumpy on them with various slogans.

For others, the movie has bad memories attached to it: ridicule; name-calling; singing or whistling “Heigh-Ho” as they walk by; being tagged with one of the dwarf names; or hearing smart remarks like, “I didn’t know Snow White had eight dwarfs.” When our average sized friend Carol walked into a restaurant with several little people including her husband and son, she overheard patrons saying, “Who does she think she is, Snow White?”

The stereotypes associated with the seven dwarfs is also damaging. The notion that true life dwarfs are destined to be cast as one of the dwarfs in a pantomime performance of Snow White is insulting. This is especially a problem in the United Kingdom where panto is hugely popular at Christmas and little people are told about this job opportunity. Many assume our size makes us suited to this role regardless of whether we can act, sing, or clown. My husband Robert and I experienced something similar when we met for lunch in a restaurant and the maître d’ assumed we were part of the traveling Muppet Show entourage. He was appropriately embarrassed when Robert informed him that he was an engineer and I was a lawyer.

Performance is a viable choice for talented dwarfs, but dwarfs who qualify in a profession, trade or some other business don’t belong on stage and should not bow to such pressure.

How does this compare with your experience?

For more of my writings, go to https://angelamuirvanetten.com where you can subscribe to my weekly blog, find several retail links to my book—“Pass Me Your Shoes”—and anticipate the summer 2021 publication of book III—Always An Advocate—in my dwarfism trilogy.