Disability Disapears When You Look at the Whole Person

Image by: Chrisjfry

When I talk to people about working with kids with disabilities, I’m often asked if it makes me uncomfortable, or how I deal with it, or if it makes me sad. It doesn’t make me uncomfortable at all anymore, though it used to.

I’ve thought about it a good bit, and to be honest, I remember being in college and being VERY uncomfortable with working with people with cognitive disabilities, blindness never really bothered me.

At the university where I also teach, I’ve found many of my students feel this way also. When I’ve talked to them about this, and looked into my own mind about it, I think there are a couple of reasons for this feeling. Understanding these reasons can help people to get passed the negative feelings, it seems to help my college students anyway.

First, the reasons for the discomfort I’ve found is that it’s really scary, its hard not to imagine yourself in that same situation, and you feel very funny about it. Its unnerving. Of course we can’t step out of ourselves and truly into the mind of someone else, so we don’t really know what it would be like to have a cognitive impairment, but, we often try. I can say this with confidence, most the kids with disabilities I work with are very happy people. I’d say proportionately much happier than your “typical” person in society.

What I’ve discovered over time is that I don’t see the disability so much anymore. There is more to the kid, or person than the disability. It doesn’t scream out to me like it did when I started in this field. I came to realize that everybody has their own characteristics, some folks are quite stubborn, or happy, or silly, or arrogant, or fearful. It’s a part of their nature, as is that they are tall, skinny, chunky, white, black, purple, etc. The disability has become just a piece of the whole kid for me. Joey is just Joey to me, all of him. I know his likes, his dislikes, I can categorize him as a high school student, or a guy, he doesn’t have to fit into one category, and  “disabled” doesn’t knock him out of any of the other categories. In fact, the easiest way to describe Joey, I’ve found is to just say “Joey”. If you’ve ever met him, you would get Joey-ness just by hearing his name, because Joey identifies the whole kid, where those other labels don’t even begin to tell his story.

None of us fit into any one category, we’re all infinitely complex, and my kids with disabilities are the same way. Even the ones with the same label are completely different from each other. So now, when I work with my students, I’m working with a person, with their personality, and all their ins and outs. I’m not working with a disability, I’m seeing the whole kid, and I encourage you to also.

It’s not unlike how I see anyone, the woman down the hall who is really happy, but a little on the obnoxious side, but bakes some mean brownies. Or the principal at that one school who would do ANYTHING for a student, but is quite overbearing to his staff. Or the classroom assistant that seems to drive everyone crazy, but is never late for a day at work, and would never scoff at a request for help from anyone. Then there’s Joey, a happy guy, who loves running, and meeting people, is always eager to try something new, and who is also blind with significant cognitive delays.

All people, all here on the planet with us. All deserving of respect, caring, dignity, and expectations of ability within their potential, and if we’re not sure of their potential, it never hurts to raise the bar, just to see. None of us are alike, we all have disabilities somewhere, some stand out more than others, but it doesn’t change the fact that we’re all people.

So now, when I work with my students, I’m working with the WHOLE student, not the disability, I can see the WHOLE person, and I can by example, and my expectations, lead the way for others to see everyone as people first, and maybe eventually, not label by disability, but maybe just by a name, like Lisa, or John, or Kelly. I’m not sure when this changed from when I was in college, but I’m glad it did.

Have you had similar experiences? Does disability make you uncomfortable? Have you ever asked yourself why? Please share in the comments.

Tags: Blindness, Disabilities, Disability, Education, Parenting, special education