The Lies We Believe About Our Children with Special Labels
Why Nothing Will change Until We Speak the Truth
It takes a great deal of bravery to see our children’s diagnoses as incidental to who they are when advocating for real opportunities for wellness, development, and education. Yet that is exactly the view we must take.
Buying into the notion a child is somehow less worthy of high expectations, equal opportunities, and basic civil rights because limiting systems have labeled him as “low functioning,” “profoundly cognitively delayed,” or “non-verbal,” keeps parents quiet.
We are kept silent from asking why our 8-year-old can not yet add when we sit in school meetings listening to a rambling list of stories of our child being resistive, aggressive, and disruptive.
We are embarrassed to ask why our child with Down Syndrome is gaining weight, or chronically ill, or not yet speaking, when we are sent to the “Down Syndrome Clinic” and given sheets of “facts” which indicate the conditions are “Just Down Syndrome.”
We believe it is crazy to teach history or science to a child who can not even prove they know the ABC’s. And, we are punished for believing in our child’s abilities only to have the standardized tests, which test nothing but our children’s ability to…
