Nude at the Museum

I wear the dual hats of being a parent of a child with special needs and of being a professional who works with families such as our own. In both of these roles, I’ve often found myself wanting to push people past thinking about inclusion as a practice that benefits individuals with special needs toward seeing what benefits inclusion can bring to society as a whole. This is hard, sometimes for all of us. Today I experienced an exchange with my own son that highlighted this very issue for me, and perhaps will provide others with useful food for thought.

Today our local Autism Network sponsored ‘Morning at the Museum,’ an event for which the local children’s museum opened at special hours for children with disabilities and their families. While attending the event,

my nine-year-old son Nate (who is not diagnosed with a disability), came over to tell me, somewhat aghast, that one of the children in the other room had started taking off his own clothes. Having worked with children with sensory challenges, including my other son, I shrugged, “Sometimes clothes are annoying.”

To which Nate replied, “Well he should have known better.”

I felt the need to remind Nate (or perhaps I had failed to mention it to him in the first place) that we were at an event for children with special needs, and that some children with special needs find wearing clothes painful, and some are not aware (or don’t care) about the social stigma associated with not wearing them.

This led us to a rather insightful discussion about the differences in cultural views toward public display of various body parts: from hemlines and necklines to kimonos and burkas. By the end of the discussion, which had been weighed into by various others in the room, Nate concluded with the question, “So why do people get so hung up over seeing something like a nude body, which all of us have to begin with?”

Why indeed, Nate? Why indeed?

To the little boy in the adjoining room who had the gall (or the absentmindedness) to take off his clothes in the middle of the children’s museum: thank you. It took your uniqueness to help us glimpse our own limitations, our own misconceptions, and our own beautiful potential for change.