A Different Life Growing Up Learning Disabled and Other Adventures

Quinn Bradlee's memoir A Different Life: Growing Up Learning Disabled and Other Adventures is a sobering read that shows us a life with a disability from the person's perspective, a viewpoint seldom expressed with such candor. Quinn's book recounts his life with Velo-Cardio-Facial Syndrome and shares experiences from his social and cultural world that are quite different from most of our lives. Despite those differences, Quinn's story reminds us that inside we are more alike than different in a story that is at once irreverently funny, thought provoking, and full of universal truth.

Quinn Bradlee's memoir, A Different Life Growing Up Learning Disabled and Other Adventures is the complex story of the son of former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee and journalist Sally Quinn. Quinn is a writer an filmmaker who recently published his memoir and launched a new website called friendsofquinn.com.

I recently spoke with Quinn about his book and his website, and he had much to share. Before long, we settled into an easy conversation as if we were old friends. In a voice wise beyond his years, he said he decided to start his social networking site, Friends of Quinn, because he wanted to help others make friends. He had joined another online networking site, but he found that few of his friends designated him among their top friends.

People with disabilities just want to be heard and acknowledged like everyone else Quinn said. He was right of course. Unflinchingly honest in the way that makes us all re-examine ourselves to make sure we haven't inadvertently excluded people with disabilities in our own lives.

I asked Quinn what he would recommend to teachers of children with disabilities. He said he wanted to start a movement to stop using the term disabilities and begin using differences. Teachers need to really get to know the child. In some ways, they need to study the child as if he was the teacher. They need to love the child enough to care what makes him learn and use that to teach him. Sage advice, I told him.

Quinn feels that parents need to do the same. They need to love their kids enough to let them grow and give them the space they need to make mistakes. That was hard for his mother, he said. All moms are like that to some degree, I reminded him. It's because she cares. Yes, it is a paradox he agreed. You have to love them enough to let them go.