Reflection Assignment: I am Sam Movie Information 2022

Reflection Assignment: I am Sam Movie
“It’s about listening even when you don’t want to, and it’s about love,” explains Sam to the
Court when he is asked to share his thoughts on good parenting. Sam gives a moving speech
on loving children, not judging them, spending time with them, creating a life with them, and
it is extremely appealing till we realize he says the name and gender of his kid incorrectly.
And then we realize, he is quoting a moving speech from another movie. My eyes welled up
with tears for Sam Dawson, an intellectually challenged single father to an 8 year old
daughter, Lucy. The movie ‘I am Sam’ is a very hard look at the reality of the challenges of
parenting through the eyes and mind of an intellectually challenged yet very doting father.
The movie shows how society labels Sam as an unfit parent because of his stunted
intellectual development while his lawyer, Rita, is accepted as a parent because she is smart,
educated, and successful albeit absent from her son’s daily life. I understand that Sam is not
a “normal” parent, but his intellectual disability has not stunted his love for his daughter. He,
like many others like him, can raise a child to be a well-functioning adult with the help of
others around him (Jamieson, Theodore, & Raczka, 2016). The movie is an imperfect but
perceptive portrayal of how it takes a village to raise a child, whose parent may be someone
like Sam with intellectual disabilities or someone like Rita with emotional misgivings
(“Parents with intellectual disabilities,” 2016).