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Every so often on different on-line support groups some pretty heated discussions can take place over what people call their kids. A parent may refer to their child as their RADish or RADlet or their Aspie.
These are meant to be ways to distinguish the child they are talking about from their other children. The debate and argument comes from other parents feeling that the first parent is distinguishing their child as their disability.
Personally, these “names” don’t bother me because I know that the parents involved love their kids and that these things are not said in anger. OK, sometimes they are angry with the child they are discussing, but it’s not meant to be a damaging thing and it’s not said in front of or to the child.
I think it’s also a matter of whether or not we see our kids as their disability alone. Here is an example. I worked for an independent insurance agency for about six years before I left to be a full time mom when our third child joined our family. We had about six weeks warning that our foster daughter, Mackenzie, was coming as a newborn and we already had our son who was 9 at the time, another foster son who was 4 and then this new baby was coming. I liked my boss and we have remained friends, even though I have been gone from the agency for six years now. Mackenzie was born blind in one eye and the eye itself was deformed.
A few months after Mackenzie arrived I was visiting the office and had the kids with me. My former boss was looking for something and couldn’t find it. I helped him and found it very quickly and easily. He made a comment of “I must be blind.” He quickly apologized for his comment, but I didn’t really notice what he said. I have said something along these lines many times myself but the most important thing was that I didn’t see Mackenzie was my partially blind daughter, but rather she was my daughter who has a disability that we are treating. The daughter part came first. The comment bothered my former boss far more than it bothered me.
With some of our kids, the disabilities or special needs that we deal with are not visible to the general public. My son’s mental health issues cannot be seen by the average person. Only those who truly know him or spend a significant amount of time with him get the full grasp of what we deal with. Our labels may be the only way we can convey information to the people we need to. In other cases, such as on the support groups, we are talking to people we don’t know and trying to convey as much information in as few words as possible. If I talk about my RAD child, the people I am speaking with can immediately identify the types of things I might be dealing with, or where his behaviors might be coming from.
When the labels or disabilities are used to degrade a child, that’s when the line is crossed.
