I am Matt Roloff and I’m father of four children and husband to my wife Amy. We have a show on TV that’s called Little People, Big World. Why? Because my wife and I and one of our four children are little people, meaning that we have various forms of dwarfism.

We have been sharing our lives in a reality/docu-drama format where we’re able to help educate and change societal misperceptions with little people. Little people were the objects of humor for many years – many centuries, actually – and still today, radio DJs, television personalities and particularly comedians will spend time making fun of little people.

So, we have this opportunity to help educate society and make people aware that we’re people. We’re in little bodies, but we’re real people out there doing real things and living real lives, making the same mistakes, loving and hurting, succeeding and failing and doing all the things that everybody else is doing.

DEALING WITH BEING DIFFERENT

I have one of the more physically-limiting types of dwarfism, called diastrophic dwarfism. With some forms of dwarfism, you have very few physical complications, but with diastrophic dwarfism, your joints are bad (the joints don’t go straight and the ball and sockets are deformed) and there are lots of cartilage issues which limits range of motion dramatically.

That means most diastrophics have to walk with the use of aids or use a little scooter to get around, like me. You’re pretty stiff and have a little trouble getting around, but most diastrophics have a good head on their shoulders and are able to go out and work.

I grew a real thick skin many, many years ago. My parents used to buy me those mad magazines, the “Snappy Answers To Stupid Questions” type-thing. I used to gobble that stuff up. There was a time when somebody would say “why are you so short?” and I would come back with ”Why are you so ugly?” or whatever.

I did that for a period of time, but then I became much more interested in educating people. Even if they asked a relatively stupid question, I would always try to spend a moment educating that person in a warm and friendly way.

Now, with the show, we’re able to get the right word out to millions of people. And the right word isn’t that we’re the perfect family or the perfect example of dwarfism, because we’re absolutely not.

We are just one example of a family that has lots of problems and challenges going on everyday and at the same time, we have some successes. We’re doing things people don’t typically think little people might do – raising families and having the farm.

KEEPING UP WITH MATT

There are times when you just wish you could get up and do things yourself. But I’ve long since become really good at getting other people to do things.

Sometimes it’s frustrating when the kids don’t do something – you either do it yourself or show them how to do it. There is that sense of wanting to punch out of your body at times and have a regular life, but I frequently realize there are a lot of people who feel that way.

There are a lot of kids at school that can’t seem to get that basketball in the hoop – no matter how hard they try they’re just not a good enough athlete. They wish they had a different set of arms or more athletic prowess. There’s always that feeling that somebody has something better going on.

IGNITING CHANGE, SEEING RESULTS

In my lifetime, there has been more appreciation that little people are regular people. Here’s a story that I think is fascinating: Some friends of ours, who are little people, were on a cruise recently. They had been on the cruise for three or four days, had gotten to know people, and people were very friendly.

Then one night they went to the comedy show. There were about 1,000 people in the room, and the comedian, who didn’t necessarily know they were on the boat, got into a couple jokes about little people, tossing around the “m” word (“midget”) pretty generously. The room went silent. Dead silent.

Not one single person laughed at his jokes. Not a peep. It was so awkward for the comedian that he had to say something so he said, “Wow, that’s different.” And then he moved on.

Little people have been the objects of humor for a long time. On the surface that may not sound so bad, but when you start thinking about our kids and the youngsters, it can be really be detrimental for them.

When they go into a classroom, they’re dealing with their size issues and everything that comes along with adjusting to the fact that they’re going to be living very different lives than your friends. To then have people come in and mock them with something they heard a comedian or adult say, is tough.

These DJs who make fun of little people – I’m talking about owning “midgets” and that every “midget” should be in a cage – those are the people we really have to get to. Literally, it’s hate-speak when you start talking about putting people in cages and owning them.

We’re teaching our community of little people to hold your head high and be proud. There are still some youngsters who hire themselves out because there’s so much discrimination in the work force against people who are so short.

Sometimes the only thing you can do is do something that makes fun of yourself. And that’s a defense mechanism because when you rent yourself out to bachelor parties, it’s because you can pick up a couple of hundreds bucks much easier that way than you can in the work force, where you face constant rejection.

We’re trying to combat this as well, because the average-sized person or the DJ or the person that hired the little person says, ‘it must be okay because this one little person hired himself out and put diapers on and made fun of himself and laughed with us’. Well, yeah, he’s putting food on the table.

AMY AND THE KIDS

Amy and I met back in 1986 at a national little people’s conference. Little people get together once a year on a national level, and in this case, it was back in Michigan, Amy’s hometown and her first national conference.

We hit it off and kept a correspondence going and phone calls for a while, and eventually decided we were right for each other.

We have four kids. Jeremy, Molly and Jacob are average size, and Jeremy’s twin, Zachary, is a little person.

Our kids are very proud of us even though we’re small. None of the kids have any qualms about leaning over and giving us a big hug in front of all their friends or in the middle of a stadium with everybody watching.

I think a lot of kids would have a problem hugging their parents in public, regardless of their height, whereas our kids will lean over and give us affection or get on their knee. Jeremy’s always jumping out and helping me with my scooter – whatever it takes.

I think our family dynamics have reinforced and galvanized their sense of forgetting about the physical. And it’s given them an opportunity to grow up with a lot of diversity and adversity in their midst.

If there is such as thing as good activity and bad activity, you guys do see all the bad stuff the kids do on the show. There are lots of good things they do that you don’t see, but not very many bad things that you don’t see (laughs).

They are very caring and very considerate, evidenced by the huge number of friends they all have and have had before the show. All kids have their moments but these kids are very, very good, and Amy works very hard keeping their heads on straight!

THE BUSINESSES JUST KEEP GROWING …

The farm is something we’ve been working on for 18 years, and it had been getting very popular just because of the things I’ve built. The farm has been on a nice trajectory for the last 18 years.

We’re more and more focused on the crops now, and pretty much exclusively focused on pumpkins. We’re open to the public during weekends in October, so people can come out, pick pumpkins and get a tour of the farm. It’s a very successful enterprise now.

People don’t believe this, but Discovery and TLC don’t pay a lot for these reality shows. They treat you well and take you on vacations and sometimes companies give you things to balance the compensation, but for the most part, you’re left to your own income.

I also have a stool business that sells in hotels, which has done very well, and the show has definitely helped raise the awareness of both of those endeavors. I’m still very actively running the farm and the stool business and I do a considerable amount of motivational speaking. I also do some software consulting, which is the profession I had for many years.

REALITY TV: THIS IS MY LIFE, COME ON IN

Being on TV has made life more difficult – you’re living your life under a microscope and people want to criticize particular things. But I think it’s made the family stronger. We’ve taught all the kids to ignore things and keep focused on who you are.

For the most part, viewers are very positive, but it’s difficult because we don’t want to be celebrities. It’s not like a movie star where that’s the role they want to be - we have a different mission.

For example, when we went to Disneyland not long ago, we couldn’t enjoy it at all because we were constantly stopping for photos and for people. That’s the downside – Amy looked at me and said “You’ve ruined our life forever!” She said it in an okay way, but there’s some truth to it. The show is really a mixed blessing because the family has had to make sacrifices in ways we never could have predicted.

A lot of people say “you’ve changed – you’ve got the celebrity head going on.” But we haven’t changed a bit, I can promise you. It’s the way people react to us that’s different. We haven’t changed one iota.

At one point, some lady wrote a letter saying that she saw Zachery driving in the car next to her and when she tried to get out and get him to do an autograph, he said no. Then she wrote this nasty letter about how Zachary has changed and in the past he would have gotten out and done an autograph.

No, nobody would have jumped out in an intersection and tried to get him to do an autograph a year ago! (laughs) We’re very thankful for our fans and very appreciative of the people who are around us. We’re just going to continue to be who we are and people can either enjoy what they see on the show or not.

A WORD TO THE WISE …

My attitude on an earthly level is to go out and do things. Get off your butt, regardless of the circumstances that were put in front of you. I always had a life philosophy of three things: learning, building and serving, giving back.

I overlay those three principles with the term resiliency. When things don’t go well or the way you want them to, be resilient and be tough. Don’t shy away from your challenges and struggles; find a way to face them and you’ll become a stronger person in the process.

*****

If you enjoyed this story, you may also enjoy Naptime Musings From Jon & Kate Plus 8 [1] and It's "Short Person", Not "Shortie" [2]

Little People, Big World airs Monday nights at 8 p.m. on TLC. Check out Little People, Big World on TLC [3] or MattRoloff.com [4]