Diagnosis Musings and an Interview with the Frowners

by Dora Raymaker · 2009-02-02 16:00:00 UTC
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head and shoulders photo portrait of Emanuel Frowner, a young African American man with short hairAn interview with change.org member Emanuel Frowner and his family aired on WNYC's Radiolab in December. The radio interview is embedded below; to play the broadcast from its source page, see The Frowners about half way down the page. (I was not able to find a transcript for this broadcast and suspect one may not exist--boo for lousy accessibility!)

This is a sweet little interview that's just neat to listen to, and I smiled more than once during it. It also brings up some (to me anyway) really interesting questions about diagnosis--how it can hurt, how it can help, and how it can change lives for the better.

I confess to feeling more than a little kinship with Emanuel's story; my own story is in some ways similar. And because of that, I too have explored many of the same questions that were brought up in the interview. What did I gain from not being diagnosed as a child (back when dirt was young)--and what did I lose? Considering when I was a child, if I'd been diagnosed at the time I most certainly would have at the very least been denied an education, and, well, that would have been that. But a lot of bad came from not knowing too, both psychological damage and real survival risks that would have been avoided if I'd had proper support. It would have been good for me if I'd been able to find "my people" sooner too.

Today some things are different from when I was a child, or from when Emanuel was a child. Today there are some better educational opportunities for people on the spectrum (including options for school from home). But there are a lot of the same old problems too. Diagnostic labels can be used to crush our potential just as easily as they can be used to help us realize our potential. The world is still not very safe for those of us who are very different. Let's keep working together to fix those problems.

Thank you to Emanuel for alerting me to the interview, and to Emanuel and his family for sharing their story.

Photo from the WNYC Radiolab source page

Dora Raymaker
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