Do You Watch Parenthood?

Parenthood gets what it's like to parent a child with special needs like Asperger's Syndrome: the grief, joy, awkwardness, fear, hope, and sadness.

For about a year, I couldn’t figure out why people, when they learned I write about special needs, would ask, “Do you watch Parenthood?”

“No,” I would tell them, “thanks to the government mandated the switch to bigger, better, digital TV, we only get one channel. And that’s with the converter box. So we don’t watch much TV.”

The Public Library Is my Superhero

But the question kept coming.
Do you watch Parenthood?
Do you watch Parenthood?
Do you watch Parenthood?

Finally, I checked with our public library to see if they carried the DVDs of the first two seasons. Lo and behold they did! Once again, the library is my superhero!

Yes, I Watch Parenthood

Now, when people ask if I watch Parenthood, the answer is, “Yes, and I totally understand why you are asking that question.” This is a show that gets what it’s like to be the parent of a child with special needs, in this case Asperger’s Syndrome. The writers get the grief. They get the joy. They get the awkwardness and the fear and the hope and the sadness.

Why Does Parenthood Get It?

Now, thanks to blogger Mari-Jane Williams at the Washington Post, I understand why this show gets it. Because the executive producer, Jason Katims has a son with Asperger’s. He talks about that and much more, thanks to the questions Williams asked when she interviewed him. To read the interview click on this link. You’ll read about Jason’s story and about Max Burkholder, the young actor who plays Max Braverman, the character who lives with Asperger’s. And you can watch a video clip of him on the show. It’s good stuff.