Some years ago I was delighted to hear about a relative of mine who had found employment as a stockboy at a gift shop. Why was I so thrilled about that position? My relative was born with intellectual disabilities and had the functional capabilities of a 5 year old, despite being a grown man. The store that employed him knew his parents, knew he would be a great employee, and took a chance -- a highly unusual move in the 1970's. He held that job for many years, until the store closed.
A new business in Montrose Colorado, Buckaroos Slices and Scoops, deserves similar praise. The owners of the business adopted 5 children from Kazakhstan and Kyrgstan and realized only after the children came home that most were affected, to varying degrees, by FAE [Fetal Alcohol Effects]. Their birthmoms drank while pregnant, causing permanent brain damage. [It is never safe to drink ANY amount of alcohol while pregnant, in case you were wondering.]
One of the children, Angela, was in my son's orphanage. Her mom Cindy and I have been online friends for many years.
Cindy quit work and stayed home to homeschool her children because the local school system couldn't educate her children as effectively as she could, giving them the one-on-one attention they needed, and tailoring lesson plans to each child's particular limitations. It took some time, nonetheless, for Cindy to discover that many of the issues she was seeing were related to in-utero alcohol exposure. One of her kids simply cannot remember math facts from one day to the next. Another one of her children is so severely affected he cannot remember, from day to day, to take a shower.
The myth, though, about Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is that it's one-size-fits-all. Nope, it's more like autism - a spectrum of issues, some minor, some major. Cindy writes candidly about her children's struggles in her blog.
Buckaroos Slices and Scoops is a little cafe serving pizza and ice cream. More importantly, it employs the LaJoy children and others in their town who struggle with a variety of intellectual limitations.
Check out a local news story about it here.
Most of us parents of neurotypical kids will never go through the heart-wrenchingly scary worry of wondering how our kids will ever support themselves. If you are the parent of a child with intellectual issues, it's a constant source of stress after a child grows up. Buckaroos and similar businesses lead the way in addressing that very real concern.
Thankfully, places like Buckaroos will likely not remain unique for much longer. Here in the south [Wilmington NC, Charleston SC, and Savannah GA] we have Bitty and Beau's Coffee Shops. They employ folks with intellectual disabilities too. There may be other places, too - if you know of them, drop me a comment.
I have been reading Cindy's blog for years, and I always finish each post in awe of her ability to write beautifully, and movingly, about topics you rarely see written about publicly. Her courage in handling her kids' issues is awe-inspiring. Excerpt below:
"People with cognitive or developmental delay are FAR more courageous than the world ever wants to give them credit for. For some reason, we tend to apply that thinking to those who "overcome" physical disabilities, and we are dismissive as a society of those with differently functioning brains. We seldom see them as being brave, we infantalize them, we talk over them rather than with them, we don't know what to do with them. People with invisible disabilities face a world in which they will never fit, and they know it. They are bullied regularly, are scared of the impatience they experience from others on a daily basis, and they tackle life with great hope when things are far more challenging for them than they ever are for the average person.
In two heartbreaking conversations, I have already had to reassure two of our employees who approached me privately and haltingly said they were scared because they had been bullied or treated very rudely in the past. I told them that no one was going to bully them or be unkind to them, and if they were, they would no longer be welcome in our store and we would protect them. I was honest, saying that we might not be able to stop someone from saying something initially, but they would always have us to protect them the best we could."
My hope is that one day there will be places like Buckaroos and Bitty and Beaus all over America, and anyone who wants to work will be able to find a job where they can excel.
