My wife and I have been the parents of a now-adult child with a developmental disability for many years (and for the majority of my legal career).
We have experienced many joys in seeing him grow into the outstanding young man, Eagle Scout, and employee that he has grown into.
But that is probably no different than the experience of parents of neurotypical children without a disability.
I am writing, instead, to share how being a parent to a child with a disability has helped me become a better attorney.
Those who practice mindfulness will find my story familiar.
I recently stated my most important lesson in a Facebook post (which was the inspiration for this story).
I responded to a question on a restricted access group for family members of persons with a disability.
“If you had to offer one piece of advice to parents who’ve just learned their child has a disability, what would it be?”
I replied:
I learned long ago that a “Mom” or “Dad” degree often means as much as an M.D.
This was nothing new - I have said the same things for many years to parents of the newly diagnosed.
I like to remind parents of their unique role that no physician or therapist can replace.
They are raising a human child, not an abstract “diagnosis.”
In other words, I appreciate the life my family and I actually have with our children rather than mourn the “loss” of an imagined alternative.
The same lesson applies to a career in the law.
We can speculate endlessly about the many alternative paths we might have followed.
More granularly, I apply the same approach to alternative strategies for handling a matter (in my case, usually transactional rather than litigation).
But we can only live with the choices we have made (or that were thrust upon us).
Having chosen a legal strategy, we must make the best decisions under those circumstances.
Let me suggest another legal analogy.
As an attorney, you represent human beings, whether as direct clients or as agents of an entity.
The client is aggrieved enough to contact counsel and has a story to tell – and you are the audience.
Your advice and representation must recognize that humanity.
You must first listen to what the client feels compelled to tell you before you can provide advice.
An anecdote from my life illustrates another point: always try to understand the perspective of others, whether a client or opposing counsel.
(This is not unique to the law – this principle of human nature applies to all of your interactions, whether with a clerk at the supermarket, the receptionist at your doctor’s office, or opposing counsel.)
I had served on the board of a local nonprofit food cupboard for many years.
As both a director and an attorney (I was not counsel to the entity), I often drew on my disability advocacy and parenting experiences as we planned how to fund and deliver the organization’s services for the working poor.
Sometimes, my interactions became quite personal.
After one meeting, a fellow board member informed me that her grandson had just been diagnosed with autism. Her tears told me that she considered the disability diagnosis a tragedy.
I disagreed.
Instead of crying with her, I asked if she had loved her grandchild the day before the diagnosis.
When she replied, “Of course,” I immediately asked, “What changed?”
In other words, her grandson was still the same child she had always loved without question, who still deserved that same care and attention.
Rather than perceiving him as “broken,” I hoped she could view her grandson as he was, as his own person, rather than as a “diagnosis.”
I felt she needed to realize that he had strengths and weaknesses, like any of us.
Most importantly, she had to understand how much he would need his grandmother’s (and family’s) unconditional love as the family learned how to help him.
Certainly, her family’s future would likely be different from what everyone had expected—but “different” is not “worse.”
But it will still be full of love and enjoyment - if she allows it to be.
The lesson for lawyers? Don’t assume a conclusion from an apparent setback. Here, the mistaken assumption that the child’s disability would diminish his and his family’s life might block them from the joys of that life.
I was recently reminded of another lesson: helping my son with his communication challenges, that arise from his autism, has also improved my own verbal skills, in particular when gathering information at the start of a case.
In speaking with my son over the years, I have learned to quickly recognize when he does not understand what I am trying to communicate – and rephrase my words to try to help him.
I often have the same recognition when speaking to others, such as during a recent visit to the local hospital ER after an auto accident.
In that stressful situation, I quickly recognized that the physicians attending my son – who might be expected to understand how to talk to a person with a disability – did not realize that my son was not responding to the questions they asked him.
Even worse, I could see that the physicians perceived his lack of an expected response as bad behavior or as a refusal to cooperate.
From parenting my son, I understood that their questions contained implicit assumptions based on typical social interactions – which assumptions simply did not apply to a person with autism who has struggled with social conventions.
When I rephrased the doctors’ questions more simply and directly with an explanation (and without idioms), my son was able to provide clear, helpful answers.
In fact, I was proud that one physician even asked if I were a teacher. I think he was impressed that I could elicit the needed medical responses from my son that he and his medical colleagues could not.
Similarly, many years earlier, another ER physician had been abrupt with my son during an examination after he had fallen while climbing a tree in our front yard.
At the time, he was still a largely nonverbal infant.
The physician grew impatient with my son’s brief replies to his questions and even adopted a brusque tone - until I asked if he had seen the autism diagnosis in the chart.
He admitted that he had not and immediately changed his attitude.
It is not surprising that a young child, in extreme pain that he probably did not associate with his fall was unable to hold a complex conversation with the doctor.
With the information my son provided to his friendlier questions, the physician quickly diagnosed a broken arm and prescribed a cast and pain medicine.
He had never considered the possibility that my son’s “bad behavior” was the result of how he perceived that extreme pain, through the filter of his disability.
My “perspective of taking perspective” transformed the physician’s view of my son from a petulant, crying, willfully ill-behaved child to a seriously injured boy who did not have the capacity to understand or explain his pain in the stressful ER environment.
I think I have often employed it, unconsciously, in speaking to clients who feel aggrieved, but can’t explain why. My son has helped me internalize an ability to listen empathetically for the client’s intended message (rather than the literal words the client happens to say).
I have also learned the importance of developing relationships with both our client and opposing counsel before trying to accomplish anything.
Without a relationship, it is hard to have a real discussion of important topics, whether legal issues or the underlying facts.
For example, I ran a Challenger Little League for disabled players (adults and children alike) of all ages for ten years.
I always tried to give each new player an immediate success experience, such as a smiling “high five,” or a short light toss game of catch.
If a player wakes up on game day anticipating having fun with coaches who interact with her, not only will she look forward to the game, but she will also be much more likely to have fun.
For many persons with a disability, a game can be just another imposition on the day if the player does not expect to have fun.
In the same way, I prefer to build on successful, small projects with a new client before tackling large matters (such as a major transaction).
As parents, we tried not to present our son with major, multi-step tasks.
I have written in the past about how we prepared him for First Communion step by step, over the course of a year.
We also prepared him to eat out by visiting a local snack stand for a hot dog or pizza slice and milk.
In addition to being a fun, weekly outing that he eagerly anticipated, those meals taught him how to eat away from home in a low-key environment much less stressful than a “nice” restaurant.
(To this day, he prefers to “eat out” at lunch in his workplace cafeteria.)
These personal success stories have a direct analogy to my practice of law.
As an attorney, I would rather succeed on a “one-off” contract to build a client’s confidence, than to jump into a major transaction requiring judgment decisions – especially when a client may not yet feel comfortable relying upon my judgment, and that of my colleagues.
Explaining a complex matter to a client in terms of a prior, successful representation will build the client’s confidence in counsel.
Don’t underestimate the importance of persistence and “out of the box” thinking, whether in advocating for disability accommodations or a client’s position in negotiating an agreement.
Some of my best negotiations required that refusal to accept an apparent rejection – from convincing my son’s school district to start a new program for his class when he moved from elementary to middle school, or negotiating settlements of disputes with non-traditional terms.
In the school matter, the “normal” procedure for children in special education classrooms was to return to their home school after completing a defined program.
In our case, my son knew no one at our home school – all of his classroom friends, and even his Scouting friends, attended the school outside the area where we lived, and which he had attended for four years for a special education communication skills program.
However, our state’s Supreme Court decision shortly before the time of this transition had mandated education in the “least restrictive environment,” alongside a student’s peers.
I successfully argued that for my son, losing the relationships he had built with typical students at his elementary school would be a loss of his least restrictive environment.
Another aspect of disabilities parenting that helped me at work was, paradoxically, forcing me to lead a more balanced lifestyle than that of a typical corporate attorney (especially during the go-go days of the dot-com boom).
Regardless of a deal’s demands, I frequently had to leave work “early” to attend a school meeting or an educational program or simply to give my wife a break.
On Challenger game days, I left even earlier to get to the field first, allowing for any delays on public transit.
Today, we recognize such choices as a sound mental health strategy.
However, at that time, it was not always well received by clients expecting a “24/7” commitment.
Finally, I would be remiss if I did not point out a counter-example of how my legal skills were critical to my disabilities and medical advocacy.
But it was nothing I learned formally in law school or my job.
Instead, it was knowing how to build and maintain a file.
In my corporate law practice, I learned to keep a well-organized, easily accessible file of drafts and correspondence, first on paper and now on a document management system.
Whether in an IEP meeting or working with a family member’s physicians, having a complete, organized file has been essential.
On more than one occasion, my “low tech” handwritten legal pad of notes from each encounter proved a more useful resource than a physician’s high tech EHR system.
(It was certainly easier to access during a brief medical appointment.)
One doctor who could not find her notes from an earlier appointment even asked me, in frustration, what I had written on my legal pad.
Summing up, I apologize if I perhaps have “said too much”. R.E.M. - Losing My Religion (Official HD Music Video)
But I have learned that disability advocacy and legal representation are both “long games,” whether in K -12 education or key contractual or regulatory relationships.
When the relationship matters, I have learned, both professionally and from my family, that cooperation usually works better than conflict.
I just hope that I have “said enough” to convince you to try it.
Most importantly, I have included links to websites of authors and advocates who have inspired us, even in difficult times.
(Please feel free to contact me if you want links to help your grandchild with a disability. An excellent resource for education-related information is WrightsLaw, created by an attorney with a disability.)
As parents of an adult with a disability, we have long relied on online resources for information about his condition and, more importantly, how to help him.
The law calls these “accommodations” – reasonable modifications required to “assure equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for” a person with a disability,” to quote the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Here are a few of my favorite general reference sites on disability resources.
However, since resources vary depending on each person’s needs, I suggest you use these as examples of what to look for online to find information specific to a particular disability and in your particular jurisdiction.
Welcome to Temple Grandin's Official Autism Website
John Elder Robison - Psychology Today
John Elder Robison | The Neurodiversity Initiative | William & Mary
Many websites about disability advocacy focus on K – 12 and secondary education.
However, for a resource list on disabilities in a Senior Law Division publication, I have focused instead on self-advocacy for adults.
