Raise Expectations

Dohn Hoyle, Partners in Policymaking Faculty Member, Activist and Organizer
33. Raise Expectations
And I, estimated back then that it took a good percentage of my time to just talk to people about having dreams and expectations and hopes for the future. And then I could do my work the other half the time. I don't think it's quite that bad anymore but I still hear it and see it. I no longer, I haven't heard now for seven or eight years of anybody telling somebody to put their child in an institution and forget that they ever had the child. But I did hear that before.
I have had experiences of a parent finally confessing that they've been hiding their child and showing me under a trap door where they've been hiding their child under their kitchen floor whenever anybody visited because they were afraid their child was gonna be taken and put in an institution. I haven't heard, I haven't heard that in more years than I haven't heard that in lots of years. But I have no, I have heard in the last well maybe it's eight years ago now somebody being told by a doctor that they should, forget they ever had that child.
So it is getting somewhat better but it's certainly not where it ought to be. And don't think, I don't know how to get people to understand what the possibilities are. Parents, professionals, doctors they don't understand what the possibilities are yet because we still have examples of the crap out there. We still have examples of separate schools and separate classrooms. We still have people talking in negative terms. We still have day programs, day wasting programs and workshops and those kinds of things.
And that's just sad because people see those. And not only that, but they're the ones putting out the pity message and clamoring for money to keep themselves afloat and to build their brick edifices. So the world gets a picture that's still valid, that's still a possibility because it is, it's still there.