Special Olympics in Greece 2011

by Kristina Chew

categories: Recreation, social justice

Published July 30, 2009 @ 02:15PM PT

We've had an occasional series of international guest bloggers here from Australia, the Netherlands, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Brazil. My own understanding about autism and disability took on a focus beyond the US after I went on a trip to Greece with some of my students back in March. While there, I met two mothers: Emma's son Dimitri has Angelman Syndrome and she blogs at The Iron Chicken. Marilena's son is Ρίκος and she blogs at Τι λέει το πρόγραμμα?, which I have been doing my best to follow (with the happy side-effect of helping me to learn Modern Greek). Emma has a post on the Special Olympics, whose World Summer Games will be hosted in Athens in 2011.

Emma notes that she feels "irritated, and occasionally out-right angry" about this and for reasons that I share, and have somewhat expressed in two of my own posts on the Special Olympics. It's not the ideas and the philosophy the Special Olympics that irk but, as Emma cogently writes:

The irritation stems from the knowledge that Greek politicians are going to being doing their photo opportunities and making their postive statements about inclusion and acceptance and the progress that Greece has made etc, etc, etc, when in fact they are doing pretty much.....nothing towards inclusion and acceptance or anything else regarding disability.

And while I'm sure that every country which participates in the Special Olympics also have incidents of discrimination, neglect and abuse towards people with disabilites, I can't help but wonder where Nikos, a boy with Down Syndrome who is currently living in an institution in appalling conditions, will be.

Add to that a comment I read on facebook group Mental Disability - Eimai diaforetikos... e, kai? about children with autism being excuded from the Special Olympics in Kastoria because "the children with autism are particularly aggressive and have the tendency to be distant", I'm left asking myself whether Greece is ready to host the Special Olympics?

I hope...I hope many things. I hope the Special Olympics will help to dispell some of the myths and stigma which still surround intellectual disability, I hope that people will be encouraged to take more of an interest in what is going on around them, to people in the their own country. And of course I hope that the athletes participating in the Special Olympics have a great time.

I hope my feelings of confusion and irritation are misplaced.

I'm completely with Emma here. Charlie loves being active and excels at bike-riding and swimming, and we've been hopeful about Charlie participating in the Special Olympics. The reality of having him be on a team and/or participate in activities has been much more of a challenge in itself. I remain hopeful that Charlie might one day participate but I also want to make sure that has indeed has a "great time" and that the focus isn't on the competition, but his participating.

Like Emma, I hope indeed that my own "feelings of confusion and irritation are misplaced."