I wasn't going to write about this because it seemed to be the flavor of the month(or at least the week) in disability culture blogging,and I'm nothing if not freakish and weird within my own subculture(s), But I've seen it so much, from every corner of our wired blue marble, that I started to have some opinions, almost against my will:

To Wit:

1. Let's think about a middle ground.

Parents, just because you buy this toy doesn't mean that the work of assimilating disability/chronic illness into your child's identity will be done any faster. It's just not easy to find out who you are, and there's no accelerated program for it. My mother totally praised people like Itzak Perlman and missing-arm Senator Inouye to me and I still came to adulthood with the dispiriting revelation that being grown with a disability is often a frustrating, government-grovelling pain in the ass. Sometimes it can be pretty sweet, too, though.

However, there is no way, the current climate being what it is, for a bright child with a significant disability to continually and constantly exist in Just Like Everyone Else-land, however much we all wish she could be so untroubled and unscarred. Life will hurt us sometimes, as they say on The Wire "It's all in the game," but it's how we respond that defines us as women and men.

Conversely, you can buy this toy without there being some kind of official edict saying that's the only toy she can play with. Personally, I'd like a compromise, such as a mobility aid package designed to fit most standard dolls and action figures so that kids can still play with the toys many different ways, or even play Phony Oral Roberts Healing, if they want. "It's a miracle!"(Yes, I would have done this. I was always this snarky and obnoxious.)

2. Your kids know they are different. Really.

I wonder how much good families do by telling reporters that "We don't see Phoebe's disability and we try to treat her like any other kid." Yeah, I get what they mean, that they aren't in the hothouse-prima-donna business, and Phoebe still has to do her science report. That's a good thing. But there are things that happen to us that aren't like what happens to the kids on TV, our non-disabled siblings, or kids at school, and one of the things my parents didn't give me growing up was a space to talk about that where it was okay to talk about. Because they were so wedded to Like Everyone Else, I hid those things, and my early teens were a cruel shock.

There is even more media than when I was coming up...there's no way an "exceptional" child has missed the memo. Parents, if you do nothing else from reading this, purge this myth from your head. They might not take it inside like I did. They might be completely getting down with their bad disabled selves, but it's horrible to act like if you don't mention it, it will affect them less. Be honest. Encourage them to talk about how they really feel about their impairments without putting words in their mouths. Maybe having a doll would help with this.

(My brother and I frequently played "Han and Leia Get Divorced", complete with one or both slamming their communicators down with mumbled expletives throughout the summer of '84, to help us deal with our current reality. That's what playing is for kids, however much we just remember the sweet and fanciful parts.)