The Power within Each of Us: An Exploration of the Importance of Parental Love
Dee Russell
Report on a session from the 2003 LLLI Conference
From: NEW BEGINNINGS, Vol. 20 No. 5, September-October 2003, pp. 176
In the early 1960s, long
before warning labels began to appear on drugs, 7,000 women were given
the drug, thalidomide, to ease their morning sickness. Unfortunately,
this drug turned out to be nothing more than a sedative and ended up
causing severe birth defects in children whose mothers had taken the
drug in their first trimester of pregnancy.
At the LLLI Conference, motivational
speaker Alvin Law presented his session "The Power within Each
of Us: An Exploration of the Importance of Parental Love." Those
of us in the audience were both inspired and entertained by his presentation.
Alvin was born in Saskatchewan,
Canada without arms. His birth mother, who had taken thalidomide, was
persuaded that the Canadian government could better care for her armless
child than she, and so relinquished parental rights, and he was given
up for adoption. Adoptive parents Hilda and Jack Law encouraged Alvin
to do everything for himself, and instilled in him the motto "There's
no such word as can't" as a motivational trigger for him. With
that attitude, he was able to make seemingly impossible things possible.
One day, after baby Alvin's
propped bottle slipped out of his mouth in his crib, Hilda discovered
him holding it himself using his toes to grasp it! From then on, little
Alvin learned to do almost everything with his feet, from coloring with
crayons, threading a needle and sewing on buttons, to screwing and unscrewing
nuts and bolts. As he got older, his tasks included mowing the lawn
(pushing with his chest), shoveling snow, taking out the garbage (grasping
it with his mouth), washing the dishes, and becoming an award winning
trombonist.
Alvin impressed us with his
attitude and explained why he doesn't believe in terms such as "handicapped."
It was a joy to share in his excitement when as a child, he "made"
the Little League team. We believed him when he said how proud he was
to go to every game and sit on the bench, as he relived his childhood
dream with us.
He entertained us on the
piano with his rendition of "Chopsticks" with one mistake
("hard to play the piano with chunky toes"), to his second
flawless piece at the end "Ode to the Old Bag Who Said My Toes
Weren't Long Enough to Play the Piano," when we realized that the
mistake in "Chopsticks" was deliberate.
We were also given an exercise
in perception. While we closed our eyes, he played the snare drum. When
we opened them, he had us think about how when our eyes were closed,
he sounded like any other drummer who we would assume to be playing
with hands. It was only when we saw him actually performing that our
minds had to readjust what we were actually seeing to what we "thought"
we had been hearing.
Alvin helped us see how supportive
parents can encourage their children to do anything. It's a matter of
being persistent and willing to make mistakes before the answer is found.
Alvin now speaks professionally to over 150,000 people a year. Those
of us who heard him at the LLLI Conference were surely motivated, awed,
and left with a new realization of the power each of us has within ourselves
to overcome life's obstacles, and to encourage our families.
Last updated Tuesday, October 24, 2006 by njb.
Page last edited Sun Oct 14 09:29:34 UTC 2007.
