Outraged Family

That's what the little tagline on the news item read: "outraged family demands answers", just under the larger bolded heading that read: "Disabled girl, 4, barred from school field trip". A four-year -old child, now that's certain to attract anyone's attention, a four-year-old child who has been "barred" from a school field trip. That's pretty low-down, poor kid.

And there's the photograph of her mother, wiping away a tear, so upset is she that her small girl has been short-changed. And this child really has been short-changed. By life's roulette wheel if nothing else. The child has a dreadful physical condition. She suffers from what is called a syrinx, a cyst that forms within the spinal cord and which can result in paralysis.

The little girl, a blonde-haired cutie is mostly wheelchair-bound, but she can walk for very short distances. She has scoliosis (curvature of the spine) and hypotonia (low muscle tone, affecting muscle strength), and she wears a hearing aid. The child is also losing sensation in her hands and feet. It is obvious that this little girl hasn't been genetically blessed.

But her mother and father, are outraged that their little girl was not able to accompany the rest of her class on a trip put on for their junior kindergarten class in Windsor to a local pumpkin farm. It would be very nice and a good experience for the child to go along with her peers to any kind of field trip, circumstances permitting.

But because neither parent was available to accompany their child on the trip, the child was unable to go along with her classmates. "I told them straight out, she was up before the boys were. She was ready to go. She had all the energy. She's having an awesome day today. We have a lot of bad days with her but today was a really awesome day. She was really excited. I was mad, very mad", said her father.

The onus, one swiftly determines, is placed on the school itself to make all arrangements for someone to focus on the child's needs which are quite special, in lieu of parental presence. There does happen to be an educational assistant at the school - one of whose assignments is to be of assistance to the child - but that day she was otherwise engaged.

It would appear that the school board and the school administration are doing what they can to ensure this child has a normal school experience, at her tender age. The mother laments that her child has been "centered out" whatever that means. "It's unfair", she repeatedly asserted. "I feel like my daughter just got discriminated against."

Good grief! Not really...! There is obvious concern for the physical well-being of that child, just as there is for the well-being of her other classmates, all of whom would share the same very young age, and who would require the close attention of attendants on an outing. This singular child with her exceptional physical needs would require very special attention.

Is this not what parents provide for their children? Since when has it become imperative that society provide every last little detail to satisfy the demands of every individual? If the parents themselves are not prepared to be present when they are required to do so, why must it fall upon the larger society to fill the gap?

If it is difficult for the parents to be present, consider how much more difficult it is for an adequate number of parent-volunteers to commit to these trips to ensure the safety and security of all the children? People become just too invested in their own sense of entitlements and forget that they too have obligations to fulfill toward their own needs.