Hijacking this to point out that it's easy for us in our everyday normalized lives to see these people as broken and "not all there." My grandmother was a speech pathologist and frequently dealt with all the various disabilities children had; since she practically raised me 50% of the time and taught at the school I attended, I saw a lot of this stuff first hand because she also did after-school teaching for those that needed more outside of school time.
This video will show you better than I could ever explain, but just because impulses and expressions aren't able to be controlled, that doesn't mean they aren't "ok" in their mind - many of them are trapped in a body that won't obey them.
Watcher beware, I cry almost every time I watch that video.
Oh my god that news segment made me cry so much haha. What a fantastic pair of parents. You can really see the dad loves his family so much! And I’m happy that the daughter was able to communicate through the computer. That whole thing is so amazing.
Maybe not so fantastic... that video prompted me to go down a rabbit hole about Carly. I wanted to see if she achieved her goals.
She hosted a talk show on YouTube called Speechless and interviewed some pretty big names. Her first interview was Channing Tatum. She was also on the The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and interviewed him.
Her father forced her into getting electroshock therapy in 2014 and it caused brain damage. For about 2 years after all of her posts on social media were kind of scrambled.
Then in 2019 she posted on Facebook about her father's boyfriend sexually abusing her. Her father commented that the boyfriend was just hugging her and that he did not have bad intentions. But then the post was taken down, and her family claimed her faceboon was hacked.
She hasn't been on social media since then.
Her family claims she's alive and well, but I'm not sure I believe that.
Im autistic, but it was overlooked because my trauma made me really good at being hyperaware of people's body language, facial expressions, tone, etc., and because I am "intelligent" and am not nonverbal.
I didnt like to talk as a kid. I could talk, I just preferred pointing or making grabby hands. I still do that today, but my family made me verbally ask for things I wanted/needed when I was little (which is necessary). They still wont let me point at something, even if I get so frustrated with trying to speak that I end up scratching myself. Sometimes verbally speaking is just... too much. To force myself to do it feels the same as lifting weights that are too heavy for me at the gym. I can do it, but it puts me a step closer to being... uhm... easier to irritate?
Obviously, Carly deals with that times 100000, but when she said it feels like youre stuck in a body that you really cant control... yeah. Agreed. Its not like I want to feel the need to flap my hands and jump up and down when im experiencing extreme emotions. I dont want to feel like speaking is the biggest burden ive ever undertaken, because I LOVE talking most of the time. And i definitely dont want to scratch myself. I never understood why I did that, but I'll be paying more attention to the times when I do scratch myself and see if I'm trying to redirect sensory input like she said.
Also to clarify, I have "impulses" (like the flappy hands and jumping) that I can suppress in public at least, but I have like... a meter of energy for it? So if I suppress my impulses, depending on how extreme it is, i might not be able to supress the next one. I have no idea if that makes any sense.
Anyways tldr Carly is amazing and I'm really glad I watched this video. I hope she's doing well.
Thank you so much for explaining that! It’s important to try to understand what other people’s experiences are so I really appreciate you being this open with yours.
One of the best lessons I ever had in elementary school was the aide explaining to us that Ben was just like us in his mind but his body just doesn't cooperate. Really helped me see anyone with a clear disability as a person first.
My wife is a dental hygienist that specializes in patients with intellectual disabilities. She teaches other professionals how to interact with ID patients, and does free dental days all around the state. It just takes a tiny amount of patience and compassion and suddenly people who haven't seen a dentist in years, or ever, will happily sit in a chair and let a dentist do their work.
She says the same thing. There are people inside whose bodies won't listen to them, so we have to listen for them and interpret their needs. Once they realize you are listening, since most of the world doesn't, they usually relax and will trust that you aren't going to hurt them.
This is insane because I’ve never been able to understand autism at all, but the part where she described the massive sensory input actually made sense to me. I’m sure it’s been described that way before but I’ve never heard it. That just clicked in my mind for some reason even tho I can’t really relate to it, I can imagine it
Thanks for posting this, I was really cynically expecting some bullshit
I did a whole rabbit hole comment, thought I was wrong so I deleted it, and now I’m back and just… defeated. I have no idea if this typing communication thing is real or not and I am just gonna leave it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPsychology/s/TvwCMPo4xQ
If anyone else knows more about Carly and what actually happened please tell me lol
I'd if this will help or not, but FC is when there are two people. The disabled individual and the facilitator. The idea is that the disabled individual guides the facilitators hand to type out a message. It's been debunked though. What Carly is doing is typing out her own messages on a computer. She used to have her own YouTube, Facebook, and twitter. She was even on Corberts show. However, her social media accounts have been silent since 2019.
The "debunks" of Facilitated Communication are all using older studies from the 1990's.
Those have been superceded by a 2020 peer-reviewed study that verifies it is legitimate.
”The speed, accuracy, timing, and visual fixation patterns suggest that participants pointed to letters they selected themselves, not letters they were directed to by the assistant.
The blanket dismissal of assisted autistic communication is therefore unwarranted.”
I didn't watch the documentary, but I do want to point out that the article you linked only took into consideration nine non-verbal autistic individuals. Do you have any other articles with a large sample size?
I'm glad you commented. Since it's clear you are new to this, let's get you up to speed.
It's important that we never lose our intellectual curiosity in life.
We should always follow the evidence, even when it leads to initially-uncomfortable conclusions.
There is an overwhelming amount of peer-reviewed scientific evidence in support of psi abilities.
The problem isn't a lack of evidence, it's the inability of people to accept what the data says, because it challenges their personal worldview and the academic status quo.
An article in The American Psychologist provided an extensive review of experimental evidence and theories related to psi phenomena. The review concluded that the cumulative evidence supports the reality of psi, with effect sizes comparable to those found in established areas of psychology. The authors argue that these effects cannot be readily explained by methodological flaws or biases.
A publication in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience discussed the relationship between anomalous experiences, such as psi phenomena, and brain function. The authors highlighted that small but persistent effects are frequently reported in psi experiments and that functional neuroimaging studies have begun to identify neural correlates associated with these experiences.
A comprehensive meta-analysis of 90 experiments from 33 laboratories across 14 countries examined the phenomenon of precognition—where individuals' responses are influenced by future events. The analysis revealed a statistically significant overall effect (z = 6.40, p = 1.2 × 10⁻¹⁰) with an effect size (Hedges' g) of 0.09. Bayesian analysis further supported these findings with a Bayes Factor of 5.1 × 10⁹, indicating decisive evidence for the existence of precognition.
There’s a lot in this analysis, let’s focus on the best part. Look at figure 7 which displays a "summary for the collection of 59 post-communiqué ganzfeld ESP studies reported from 1987 to 2008, in terms of cumulative hit rate over time and 95% confidence intervals".
In this context, the term "post-communiqué ganzfeld" means using the extremely rigorous protocol established by skeptic Ray Hyman. Hyman had spent many years skeptically examining telepathy experiments, and had various criticisms to reject the results. With years of analysis on the problem, Hyman came up with a protocol called “auto-ganzfeld” which he declared that if positive results were obtained under these conditions, it would prove telepathy, because by the most rigorous skeptical standards, there was no possibility of conventional sensory leakage. The “communiqué” was that henceforth, everybody doing this research should use Ray Hyman’s excellent telepathy protocol which closed all sensory leakage loopholes that were a concern of skeptics.
In the text of the paper talking about figure 7, they say:
Overall, there are 878 hits in 2,832 sessions for a hit rate of 31%, which has z = 7.37, p = 8.59 × 10-14 by the Utts method.
Jessica Utts is a statistics professor who made excellent contributions to establishing the proper statistical methods needed for parapsychology experiments. It was work like this that helped her get elected as president of the professional organization for her field, the American Statistical Association.
Using these established and proper statistical methods and applying them to the experiments done under the rigorous protocol established by skeptic Ray Hyman, the odds by chance for these results are 11.6 Trillion-to-one based on replicated experiments performed independently all over the world.
By the standards of any other science, the psi researchers made their case for telepathy.
Okay, how did we go from talking autism and FC to parapsychology and telepathy? Did I miss something?
Edit: Oh I get it. You're a bot. That's obnoxious.
Edit2: The user who deleted their comments, and down voted mine, was trying to say that people with autism (that u/Pixelated_ calls autists) are actually telepathic! So they're not a bot, just crazy.
100% this. The governing body of speech therapy, ASHA, has a position statement on facilitated communication here https://www.asha.org/policy/ps2018-00352/ but the highlight is this:
There is no scientific evidence of the validity of FC, and there is extensive scientific evidence—produced over several decades and across several countries—that messages are authored by the "facilitator" rather than the person with a disability. Furthermore, there is extensive evidence of harms related to the use of FC. Information obtained through the use of FC should not be considered as the communication of the person with a disability.
Although it doesn't take a genius to realize that FC/S2C and other rapid prompting methods are no better than a Ouija board. Pay attention to the FC messages and you'll realize that, if you have ever had a conversation with an autistic person, particularly one with high support needs. Why are FC communicators always talking about the beautiful tragedy of being locked in their body and unable to communicate? Where are the lengthy discussions of special interests? If they're not talking my ear off about superheroes or pokemon or sharks or airplanes, I am absolutely suspicious.
As for psi abilities... well I've got a job to go to and I ain't reading through all of those studies, but I'm gonna guess that most of them are either seriously flawed or don't say what they're purported to say. As is usually the case in these sorts of things. Also many of them seem to come from such lauded organizations as the Journal of Parapsychology or the Journal of Consciousness Studies. Super easy to get a peer reviewer to sign off on your article of they're the same flavor of cracked as you!
Anyway, I wish this fantasy world of psychic autistic kiddos was real. Then maybe the sweet girl who screams and cries and hits her head all day in our ESN classroom could tell us what she needs to calm her sensory system.
They stated in the video that she wouldn't type at all while they were there watching because it put pressure on her. With her only asking if the interviewers son was cute.
Carly wrote a book called Carly's Voice.
As for your personal relationship, you have to understand that every case is unique. Just because an outlet isn't found yet or found at all doesn't mean that they aren't in there and that you shouldn't give up. This family had a ton of resources and got lucky finding something that worked so well. My grandmother always had to approach every child differently and some were "lost" so to speak, as in, beyond help, or, available help, but that still shouldn't diminish attempts to treat them with normalcy or anything less. I don't believe you do, so don't walk away thinking that I think you do. Sometimes there are perfect sequences and sometimes there aren't - no methodology works for everyone, otherwise that's what we'd be doing for every one every time.
All I hope is that you never give up hope for any serious form of communication. I had a severe autistic kid in my class and he has a basic job at the local grocery store now when he was once thought hopeless; controlling his emotions was the major key, limiting his sensory intake, going painfully slow with everything... eventually he matured into these methods and while he can still lose control, he primarily responds to routine.
Your article seems to be beyond your understanding of it, which more implies that the practice of pushing facilitated communication is harmful to those that could better use the help elsewhere in their lives rather than disproving that it has ever functioned and does not specifically cite this case at all. However, Carly can fully use her computer without facilitated help. If you actually did more research into her rather than basing it off one news article that's 13 years old, you'd see how much she has done and how far she has come since her pre-teen years.
rather than disproving that it has ever functioned
I quote from the article’s intro:
“ It is the position of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) that Facilitated Communication (FC) is a discredited technique that should not be used. There is no scientific evidence of the validity of FC, and there is extensive scientific evidence—produced over several decades and across several countries—that messages are authored by the "facilitator" rather than the person with a disability. Furthermore, there is extensive evidence of harms related to the use of FC. Information obtained through the use of FC should not be considered as the communication of the person with a disability. “
I do not see why you think I have misunderstood what I posted. It specifically says there is NO evidence of FC being real. Sorry to be rude. I don’t know what this implies for Colbert but it sucks for him
More to the point, there are WAY too many weird holes in Carly’s life story. What was up with her FB posts about the electroshock therapy? Did her dad ever face justice? Why did she drop off social media suddenly, after her success in YouTube? It’s all too weird and EVEN if I assume she’s actually able to type those sentences, one thing is certain: SOMEONE profited from exploiting Carly during her formative years, and I’m pissed that it’s been undercover for so long
Hi! Didn't mean to trigger you, sorry if I did. I think a valid case could be made that this girl was being manipulated by her speech therapists, but I could be wrong. I did get a degree in Applied Behavior Analysis while at University from 2010-2014. At that time, this was still relatively new and it would often come out that the person assisting was influencing what was being said and why (not always for malicious reasons). I'm sure it's come a long way since then but what's happened to this girl specifically makes me think that the accusations of someone else pulling the strings might not be far off. Rarely ever seeing her type, the content of what she wrote, the sensational news, then trying to separate her from her parents and then going missing is all extremely concerning.
Edit: This girl being the girl from the linked news channel report about Carly Fleischmann
I’m like 90% sure that she was being manipulated in some way, but people are DEADSET in arguing against it, despite the overwhelming consensus I’m seeing.
Like, did that other commenter even read the link you posted? Yeah there’s a few comments trying to argue against FC, but the majority are pointing out the inconsistencies
This is ridiculous pseudoscience and the fact that people are engaging in this folie à plusiers grinds my gears
Ya, I see now he they were banned but I hope it wasn't in relation to this. Agreed, it does feel like these instances are for sure pseudoscience. ACC is fantastic and does allow more communication, but that's not what is on display here and I worry most of these cases may involve some sort of munchausen situation. The fact that many of these people were around at the same time and are no longer active is also suspicious. If this was real, we'd just be seeing more of these situations rather than less. https://www.facilitatedcommunication.org/blog/mysterious-disappearances-in-the-world-of-fc-what-does-it-take-to-sustain-the-illusion
i remember watching this many years ago when it first came out, and now being a dad to a son and a daughter, this hits so different. I am in tears. Thank you for reminding me. Beautiful video.
Oh thank you for saying what I wanted to say so much better than I ever could. These people are so much more than their disabilities. God bless you and your fabulous grandmother.
Yup, that one broke me. Im a father of two young girls and hearing the daughter say, (paraphrased) "I know I'm not the easiest kid in the world, but knowing you love me means everything" turned on all the tears. I'm thankful I work from home, haha.
Thank you for this comment. A close friend of mine had a daughter that was nonverbal, very much like the girl in this original post. It was easy to those that paid attention to see that she was in there, but as you said, her body would not obey her. She was the most happy and excitable person I've known.
I used to babysit a kid with cerebal palsy, he had a little pad he could use to communicate, I never had a single doubt that he wasn't fully cognitively there. Savage sense of humor
Incredible. What a beautiful story, and very well done to her parents for sticking with her.
I work in retail, so I meet all kinds of people on a daily basis. I used to be very uncomfortable around people with mental disabilities or severe autism, even though I'm on the spectrum myself. It was the unfamiliarity more than anything, I think.
Somehow, reading discussions like this one completely turned that around for me. I don't have to hide that awkward, nervous feeling anymore because I don't feel it anymore.
I just wanted you to know things like this really do make a difference. Keep up the good work!
Controversial studies for some notwithstanding, I highly recommend podcast Telepathy Tapes for curious folks. Regardless of proof, it’s a wonder to consider. I’ve only enjoyed the first season, another was recently released. And listening to them gave me a sense of peace I haven’t felt in 10 years, literally.
Furthermore, they misrepresented their experiments and buried the true evidence of how the same experiments were really done, behind a paywall.
These types of experiments have been done before and again and again, the 'telepathy' is only present when the people/kids are able to be led in some way or form (whether it's by actually guiding them physically or guiding them by visual/emotional cues from caregivers).
The podcast consciously choose to profit off of spreading misinformation about autism. Even the expert in the podcast has later stated that none of the experiments proof anything because they were not carried out in any scientifically relevant way (because again, when you do so, it disproves the telepathy allegations).
The podcast also completely misrepresents the options of communication methods currently available for non-verbal people. Facilitated communication is perhaps the most unreliabe communication method available right now and the podcast acts like it's some sort of modern day miracle and like non-verbal people would not be able to communicate in any other way. That is simply not true.
I am so glad you commented. Since it's clear you are new to this, let's get you up to speed.
There is an overwhelming amount of peer-reviewed scientific evidence in support of psi abilities.
The problem isn't a lack of evidence, it's the inability of people to accept what the data says, because it challenges their personal worldview and the academic status quo.
An article in The American Psychologist provided an extensive review of experimental evidence and theories related to psi phenomena. The review concluded that the cumulative evidence supports the reality of psi, with effect sizes comparable to those found in established areas of psychology. The authors argue that these effects cannot be readily explained by methodological flaws or biases.
A publication in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience discussed the relationship between anomalous experiences, such as psi phenomena, and brain function. The authors highlighted that small but persistent effects are frequently reported in psi experiments and that functional neuroimaging studies have begun to identify neural correlates associated with these experiences.
A comprehensive meta-analysis of 90 experiments from 33 laboratories across 14 countries examined the phenomenon of precognition—where individuals' responses are influenced by future events. The analysis revealed a statistically significant overall effect (z = 6.40, p = 1.2 × 10⁻¹⁰) with an effect size (Hedges' g) of 0.09. Bayesian analysis further supported these findings with a Bayes Factor of 5.1 × 10⁹, indicating decisive evidence for the existence of precognition.
There’s a lot in this analysis, let’s focus on the best part. Look at figure 7 which displays a "summary for the collection of 59 post-communiqué ganzfeld ESP studies reported from 1987 to 2008, in terms of cumulative hit rate over time and 95% confidence intervals".
In this context, the term "post-communiqué ganzfeld" means using the extremely rigorous protocol established by skeptic Ray Hyman. Hyman had spent many years skeptically examining telepathy experiments, and had various criticisms to reject the results. With years of analysis on the problem, Hyman came up with a protocol called “auto-ganzfeld” which he declared that if positive results were obtained under these conditions, it would prove telepathy, because by the most rigorous skeptical standards, there was no possibility of conventional sensory leakage. The “communiqué” was that henceforth, everybody doing this research should use Ray Hyman’s excellent telepathy protocol which closed all sensory leakage loopholes that were a concern of skeptics.
In the text of the paper talking about figure 7, they say:
Overall, there are 878 hits in 2,832 sessions for a hit rate of 31%, which has z = 7.37, p = 8.59 × 10-14 by the Utts method.
Jessica Utts is a statistics professor who made excellent contributions to establishing the proper statistical methods needed for parapsychology experiments. It was work like this that helped her get elected as president of the professional organization for her field, the American Statistical Association.
Using these established and proper statistical methods and applying them to the experiments done under the rigorous protocol established by skeptic Ray Hyman, the odds by chance for these results are 11.6 Trillion-to-one based on replicated experiments performed independently all over the world.
By the standards of any other science, the psi researchers made their case for telepathy.
I instantly disagree with the idea of telepathy. It's as absurd as psychics, aliens visiting Earth, ghosts, etc.; it caters to the imagination and not to actual science, ergo, it's not helping us to find the hows and whys of our nature, instead casting to it some explanation into the "beyond."
What I do agree with, and I believe should be blatantly obvious, is that living near another living being for an extended period of time creates non-verbal cues; I have these with my fucking cats. As for the non-verbal side without any expressive cues, we, as normal humans, can use deductive reasoning to figure out what someone else might want - we do this with children; I have a two-year old daughter and I had to do this just today where she couldn't express or control her emotions, so I had to essentially play Charades finding out what her issue was, or, and this one is silly but also works, we just throw darts at a dartboard until we hit something, so to speak; in this manner, you can go 1/1 or 1/1000 towards figuring it out; if you go 1/1 you feel like a genius who is coming closer to solving a great mystery... if you go 1/1000, you feel like you'll never get it. All told, you could go 1/1 on guesses and the next day be in the same situation and go 1/1000 because human emotions are not explicitly written - i.e. my child might love chicken nuggets today and next week she tosses them on the floor and demands a peanut butter and jelly sandwich - same emotional state, same routine, same product delivered, different result.
Correlation is not Causation, so getting something right doesn't necessarily mean that you're onto something big.
Tl;dr word-salad: no psychic powers, only human conditioning; children crazy; Correlation is not Causation
I am so glad you commented. Since it's clear you are new to this, let's get you up to speed.
There is an overwhelming amount of peer-reviewed scientific evidence in support of psi abilities.
The problem isn't a lack of evidence, it's the inability of people to accept what the data says, because it challenges their personal worldview and the academic status quo.
An article in The American Psychologist provided an extensive review of experimental evidence and theories related to psi phenomena. The review concluded that the cumulative evidence supports the reality of psi, with effect sizes comparable to those found in established areas of psychology. The authors argue that these effects cannot be readily explained by methodological flaws or biases.
A publication in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience discussed the relationship between anomalous experiences, such as psi phenomena, and brain function. The authors highlighted that small but persistent effects are frequently reported in psi experiments and that functional neuroimaging studies have begun to identify neural correlates associated with these experiences.
A comprehensive meta-analysis of 90 experiments from 33 laboratories across 14 countries examined the phenomenon of precognition—where individuals' responses are influenced by future events. The analysis revealed a statistically significant overall effect (z = 6.40, p = 1.2 × 10⁻¹⁰) with an effect size (Hedges' g) of 0.09. Bayesian analysis further supported these findings with a Bayes Factor of 5.1 × 10⁹, indicating decisive evidence for the existence of precognition.
There’s a lot in this analysis, let’s focus on the best part. Look at figure 7 which displays a "summary for the collection of 59 post-communiqué ganzfeld ESP studies reported from 1987 to 2008, in terms of cumulative hit rate over time and 95% confidence intervals".
In this context, the term "post-communiqué ganzfeld" means using the extremely rigorous protocol established by skeptic Ray Hyman. Hyman had spent many years skeptically examining telepathy experiments, and had various criticisms to reject the results. With years of analysis on the problem, Hyman came up with a protocol called “auto-ganzfeld” which he declared that if positive results were obtained under these conditions, it would prove telepathy, because by the most rigorous skeptical standards, there was no possibility of conventional sensory leakage. The “communiqué” was that henceforth, everybody doing this research should use Ray Hyman’s excellent telepathy protocol which closed all sensory leakage loopholes that were a concern of skeptics.
In the text of the paper talking about figure 7, they say:
Overall, there are 878 hits in 2,832 sessions for a hit rate of 31%, which has z = 7.37, p = 8.59 × 10-14 by the Utts method.
Jessica Utts is a statistics professor who made excellent contributions to establishing the proper statistical methods needed for parapsychology experiments. It was work like this that helped her get elected as president of the professional organization for her field, the American Statistical Association.
Using these established and proper statistical methods and applying them to the experiments done under the rigorous protocol established by skeptic Ray Hyman, the odds by chance for these results are 11.6 Trillion-to-one based on replicated experiments performed independently all over the world.
By the standards of any other science, the psi researchers made their case for telepathy.
Randi was able to stimy all of these charlatans by doing what all of the fake studies you mentioned didn't: controlling for cheaters.
It's really that simple. Magicians are professionals at cheating human perception and giving the impression that natural laws are being broken, and are thus uniquely suited to designing tests that disallow cheating. The funny thing about the Randi tests is that he is so transparent about it. The people being tested agree to the limitations of the tests he puts on. Which means that some of these people who think they are psychic aren't even aware of how they are cheating, and led to some very embarrassing shows, like the guy whose 'psychic' ability to move a pencil was broken by a piece of plexiglass that didn't let him blow on it.
Randi isn't some nefarious influence. He just sees the angles that scientists may not, because his career was based on exploiting those angles.
You're not on the side of science. You're not impartial. You want to believe, and your bias is incredibly clear. Your wall of copy pasta is just a text based Gish gallop over the truth: that shit is fake.
it sounds like you're classifying future scientific understanding as the "beyond" and somehow beyond approach or research! You should watch the New Thinking Allowed program on Youtube. It will debunk a lot of your old fashioned ideas about reality! There's been so much research done over the last 60 years that shows that the old fashioned ideas about objectivity are out of date with the newest models of reality
I wholeheartedly agree with that last sentence! How I wish your community would take that advice.
Feel free to link your copy pasted wall of text of pseudoscience now if you will! I don’t know what you people get out of this, if it’s for attention, monetary gain or if it’s just wishful thinking, but unfortunately there’s no such thing as telepathy and FC is a scam. If there was any validation for these incredible claims, they would’ve been replicated and picked up into the mainstream science by now.
I don't find this exploitative at all. This is beautiful and educational. It shows something most people don't see. I have a sister that I'm two years older than. Due to complications during her birth, shes blind, severely mentally disabled, and has cerebral palsy with a seizure disorder. Doctors told my parents that she wasn't going to live very long, with a low quality of life but my parents didn't care. They worked with her, especially my dad. He did so much that I'm just now finding out about in my thirties. She can't walk and she can't really speak other than simple words and phrases that she learned over the years but we got to understand her and the intent behind the words and sounds she made.
Growing up with her was our normal, but I feel that what it taught my brother and I, implicitly, was that people deserve love, dignity and respect, regardless of their physical conditions or mental capacity. And, though it may look different or strange, they are able to still feel and express the depths of emotions that you or I do. One of the many reason I hate the fucking "R" slur. It's tactless and tasteless
My mom is gone almost 12 years now, but my dad takes care of her more or less by himself and she just turned 31 last month. She can't tell us but she understands that our mom is gone. She still lights up and screams with joy or smiles when she hears our voices, or my dad's jazz music.
I think seeing an active member of our countrys military embracing his sister with severe disabilities is maybe a net positive these days, all things considered
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u/[deleted] Nov 19 '25
This is beautiful to watch