Spill the beans then…  

We set up this site to help make the world a bit of a better place for our two sons, the youngest of which has Achondroplasia (a form of dwarfism), and the oldest who has to deal with a changed upbringing around his little brother’s needs and other peoples attitudes.

Seven years into the journey…

It’s now seven years since our youngest son was born. We’re living a life we couldn’t have imagined before this but guess what? We genuinely would not change it for the world. Our sons are both amazing. Our youngest son has introduced us to a community of truly wonderful people. Our eldest son, still an junior himself, is a caring superhero lookout spy little brother protecter from planet awesome! Our road in life has forked spontaneously and what it’s introduced to us is life affirming in its greatness. We have a beautiful family. We have supportive friends and family. For the moment, we have everything and we’re grateful. 

Hang on, wait a minute… if it’s all so good, why the agro? 

Our approach to life and the upbringing our our children is to embrace difference and celebrate it. Unfortunately, it turns out that not all of us human beings think that other humans should be able to live in peace, free from bullying, prejudice, abuse and ridicule. In-fact, there are some people who think that poking fun at someone else affirms their place in life as being accepted. 

It turns out that dwarfism is an easy target for people and it is still acceptable to ridicule. 

Dwarves are still the butt of jokes. It’s one of the last bastions of acceptable prejudice.
– Peter Dinklage.   

Our son is only severn years old. The recognisable signs of Achondroplasia are already apparent. He attracts stares, sometimes innocent children trying to comprehend why he may be different to every other child they’ve seen in there young lives, sometimes more sinister and dark, from adults who should know better. 

A while ago, we went on holiday. After a couple of days a member of staff asked us if they could take a picture of our son. Not both of them, just the one with dwarfism. Think about that for a moment. How would that make you feel as a parent. How would it make his older brother who never gets any attention because ‘it’s always about his younger brother’ feel? Would you ever ask to take a picture of someone elses child who you’ve only just randomly met? It’s a pretty strange thing to do.

We’ve learned that people with dwarfism are subject to people taking their picture and being filmed without consent on a daily basis. That’s not all…

We encounter issues fairly regularly and as our youngest son becomes older and his differences become more apparent, these events become more frequent. As we meet more people within his community including parents in a similar position to us, it becomes apparent just how much prejudice and ridicule people with dwarfism are subject to. Why should this be? Why is it acceptable to ridicule this group of people? We believe it shouldn’t be, whether it’s about our son or not.

Sticks and stones… And the seed that started this.

You know the saying, yet we all know that it’s not true that names will never hurt. In what life would you like your child to be referred to as ‘an abortion that made it’ in the name of a cheap joke? We’re pretty sure you wouldn’t. Material like that isn’t just lazy, it’s destructive.

When Jimmy Carr made his tasteless ‘joke’ at the expense of a long suffering minority disabled group, he did so in venues around the country repeatedly. He and his team ignore any outrage caused or reasoning as to why the material may be in poor taste and instead reveled in the publicity. We had no chance of having our voices heard. So our attention turned to the venue who accommodated him most local to us. We felt that we’d have more impact raising our concerns with this venue and hopefully remove this comedian’s platform locally. Our idea was that it could set a precedent that actually, this kind of ‘comedian’ is like a dinosaur in this day and age and would have to raise their game. We hoped the venue would be supportive of us and the general concept of it not being great to ridicule people. It turns out the venue did not take on board our comments and chose to ignore our concerns.

*UPDATE:

• We have asked Buxton Opera House 37 questions since 2019 – they have answered none.
• Buxton Opera House claim that no-one (other than us) complained to them about Jimmy Carr previously. We know that’s not true as many of you have shown us the response that Buxton Opera House sent you in response to your complaints. They are trying to cover up the issues here from their funding partners.
• Buxton Opera House have sought to silence us at every step of the way despite us trying to engage them in a profesional manner. Although they deny they have been arrogant and dismissive, we have everything evidenced in emails.
• Buxton Opera House’s last letter to us could be described as intimadtory. It ended by them claiming that ‘this matter is now closed’. We disagree. A charitable organisation such as this cannot just ignore a sizable portion of the community which it is serving.

Together, we are stronger.

So that’s where this site comes in. It’s a place where we can direct friends, family, supporters, or indeed anyone with a conscience to, and hopefully enable them to act and help add to our voice. The idea being the the more voices there are, the more people need to take notice.

Think we’re just parents who are angry that someone has dared to slur our son?

Think again. There’s evidence from a study demonstrating the effects of prejudice and the acts of others on those living with dwarfism. You can read it here. It also doesn’t take much searching online to find anecdotal evidence, especially on social media, of people with dwarfism suffering everyday intrusion and abuse. Take a look at Jonathan Novick’s video of him going about his life in New York, that’s just a little taste of what’s going on. Or maybe the Twitter updates of @MrEugeneGrant who documents his encounters and thoughts on an almost daily basis.

We don’t think anyone should face prejudice or abuse yet here we are, dealing with it.

If we can change these prejudices even slightly and make this world a little bit of a kinder place for our sons to grow up in, then we’ll have achieved something. As parents, the least we can do is try.

If you’ve read this far, thanks 🙂