“Special Needs” Do Not Exist
If I hear one more person refer to people with disabilities as those with “special needs,” I might scream.
Not in anyone’s face, of course, but on the inside. I was born with Cerebral Palsy and, for the past 28 years, have made use of a walker to navigate my environment. The necessity of my device inevitably has led to encountering people who have used, or are continuing to use, the phrase “special needs” in both physical and digital space.
And while I cannot pinpoint a time where “special needs” was used to reference me specifically, I do have recent memories of people using the phrase as a moniker for the whole group. Just the other day, while researching local access organizations, I came across a school that referred to themselves as a “special school.” Additionally, I’ve been to a few educational conferences where classroom teachers have questioned how to adapt to “those with special needs.”
Granted the rise of disability pride parades, as well as disability studies courses in academic institutions, has made some headway in increasing awareness. Slowly but surely, higher education professionals, as well as those in a number of other private and public institutions, have replaced “special needs” with “accommodations” or opted to use person-first language in lieu of outdated terms like “handicapped.”
However, there are still days when that phrase, “special needs” creeps in, sneaky little bugger.
People without disabilities who use this phrase mean well. I know they do. After all, the whole point of its creation was to account for the fact that those with disabilities face challenges that those without disabilities do not. The word special is meant to honor, not offend.
But let’s be real. It does offend.
It offends because it perpetuates this “us vs. them” idea that most, if not all, people with disabilities, hate. People with disabilities are not special. We are not inspirational. We do not deserve an award for doing things that people without disabilities do every day.
It is not amazing that we get out of bed, that we go to work, that we have relationships. These are all things that we just do, (or should be able to do). No award necessary.
Additionally, the phrase “special needs” does not make sense. Think about it.
The phrase “special needs,” really means “needs that are different from everyone else’s,” right? And, if that’s the case, wouldn’t everyone’s needs be “special needs,” because everyone’s needs are specific to the individual and what is happening for them at a given moment?
I can tell you that individual needs are different, and specific. My mother needs to sleep with a fan on every night. I need to listen to music as I get ready for the day. If the fan isn’t on, my mom can’t sleep. If I don’t have music, I feel unprepared.
Those are specific, yet different needs. But no one would call them special.
In fact, I would go as far as to say that “special needs” do not exist. There is no such thing.
In March 2017, actress Lauren Potter, best known for her role as Becky on Glee, released a video where she publicly denounced the use of the phrase special needs. In the video, Potter, who has Down Syndrome, asserts that it would be special if people like her needed to “eat dinosaur eggs,” be “massaged by a cat,” or be “woken up by a celebrity.”
Potter’s point is that “special needs” would be those things that are unique, those that absolutely no one else, from any other group, would need. But the fact is, our needs aren’t unique. They are taken for granted and less obvious.
We need love, support, opportunities to work and showcase our skills, places where we can tell our stories, people who value us and see us as human beings. These needs aren’t special for those without disabilities, so why would they be special for us?
When someone uses the phrase “special needs”, without necessarily meaning to, they reinforce the idea that people with disabilities are unlike those without, that our desire for supportive and caring environments that value us, is unwarranted.
But people without disabilities don’t get to decide what does and does not matter to us. We do.
So, the next time that people without disabilities have the opportunity to interact with those who do have them, I hope they won’t use the phrase “special needs.” Instead, I hope they ask, “What are your needs?” They may find that we have more in common than they think.
After all, as Potter says, “our needs are the same as everyone else.”
