There's an article today in the Oregonian about Barbara Roberts and her autistic 48-year-old son written by Karen Briggs. The son, Mike Sanders, lives independently and has a job moving mail around the Mt. Hood Community College.
Barbara Sanders was 19 when he was born and she knew there was something wrong from the start. She could see that he was smart but he had some huge behavioral problems. He was kicked out of first grade for being too disabled. At that time mothers were blamed for autistic kids. She sent as a live-in student to the Parry Center for Children for three years, which he hated. When he was nine his school district got a grant to try to teach more disabled kids and she got him in that program. When the grant ran out she started worked on getting the state legislature to provide funding for educating disabled kids.
That was how she met her future husband, Frank Roberts, a college professor and state legislator. The legislation that they got passed was the first in the nation to put money and regulations in place to educate disabled children.
The last paragraph is particularly good:
When Mike Sanders talks about autism he usually explains how his mother's belief in him -- long before the experts offered hope -- helped him exceed everyone's expecations. "Science," he said, "finally caught up with my mother's intuition."
What a story. What a woman. I heard her talk at the 21st Century Democrats course this summer and was as impressed as always -- but I didn't know this backstory.
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