Oh, wow, I have a bunch of feelings about that attitude. I also hear "the world isn't going to adapt to you, so you have to adapt yourself to the world." I first heard it in the context of a person whose parents didn't allow them to use a stool when they couldn't reach something, which blew my mind. I also seem to encounter a lot of parents who refuse to ask for accommodations for their child because "then they will be labeled." Meanwhile, the child fails in school. I don't get that.
I've also some very confusing interactions with people, where for example someone said to me, "why aren't you participating in this martial arts class?" and I said, "because I'm disabled" and they got really aggressive with me like, "don't say that about yourself! Labels just limit you!"
Anyway, I like labels, but I'm not someone who's ever been able to pass as "normal."
Changing the world is hard, but it is more possible than changing people's bodies and brains in a way that is more convenient for the world. Labels don't limit people, but they can describe actual limits that actually exist. It's a less discussed form of ableism that refuses to believe that not everybody can do everything.
I've never passed as normal but I have passed (or a term I've heard and prefer, been passed off as) non-disabled. Disabled is a much better label than any that were applied to me for all those years.
Why ever did they not allow you to use a stool when you couldn't reach something?
(My mom never allowed me to use a footstool or stepladder -- nor to climb onto the counters, which was the next thing I tried -- but hers was because she was bulimic and had to control all the food. She used to put extra stuff in locked closets to which only she had the key, and a bunch of other unusual behaviors. She treated me as if I were evil somehow. I had no idea how unusual all this was until I started spending the night at friend's houses when I was older)
Speaking as a high-school teacher - please, label your children. Don't make a teacher spend four months trying to figure out how and why a child is struggling, if you know right at the beginning what kinds of help they need. We have a lot of students to juggle and are not always as quick to figure things out as we should be. It can be the difference between passing and failing a class, and between succeeding at school and getting completely demoralized.
And by the time students get to high school, chances are high they have had prior experience struggling without knowing why and developed all sorts of compensatory mechanisms that can take years to dismantle.
Anyone who wants to take away my labels can do it OVER MY DEAD BODY--oh wow, I'm one of those people now.
Without labels I might be homeless now, or at least living with my parents and being constantly nagged to get a job in a place where there are no jobs or public transit.
We can be one of those people (two of those people?) together. I'm glad you have your labels. There are a lot of problems they don't solve, but that doesn't mean they don't have their uses.
The problem with this method is that it does not leave children unlabeled. They get labels and plenty of them.
Yes, THIS. My unofficially!aspie tutee now thinks that he is "bad at English/writing" rather than dyspraxic, because he can't get his thoughts out on paper fast enough in class or organised easily. Using a computer largely solves this issue for him, but the teachers forced the students to write by hand in the mistaken belief that this would magically make them better at writing legibly under time-pressure in exams. God knows what other labels he and other people have attached to himself that would be better covered by "ASD".
Even "dyspraxic" (or possibly, from your description, "dysgraphic" would be an improvement over "bad at."
Magical teacher thinking is something, isn't it? Yes, practice helps some problems. But at some point, it should become clear when the problem isn't lack of practice.
I was born in 1980 in the midwest US and had to deal with a lot of this "don't label your kid" BS. I really wish someone would have explained to me *what* was wrong with me and how we can figure out how to compensate.
I'm sitting in an undergrad community & therapeutic recreation course this semester as part of my sociology of physical activity PhD program and I'm struck by the condescending tone about "labels"...it's weird to be a disabled person & have pieces of my identity chipped at like that...
Uh huh. I find when I attend professional conferences about disability, it takes an average of 90 minutes before something insulting is said. Recently I attended a training about diagnosing autism, and they started talking about how children with certain disabilities "couldn't play properly" with toys. I was like, if they are having fun with the toy and no one is getting hurt, isn't that play?
And they have no idea they are chipping away at identity because they can't conceptualize disability as part of an identity. I have a colleague who identifies as feminist who keeps telling me not to label myself as disabled because she doesn't see me that way. I keep saying, well I'm labeled as a woman, if she sees me that way she should also see me as a disabled person, both parts of my identity. It just doesn't compute. And these are people who work in a disability field, some of them for years.
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I've also some very confusing interactions with people, where for example someone said to me, "why aren't you participating in this martial arts class?" and I said, "because I'm disabled" and they got really aggressive with me like, "don't say that about yourself! Labels just limit you!"
Anyway, I like labels, but I'm not someone who's ever been able to pass as "normal."
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I've never passed as normal but I have passed (or a term I've heard and prefer, been passed off as) non-disabled. Disabled is a much better label than any that were applied to me for all those years.
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This sentence is completely excellent and I'm going to try to remember it.
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(My mom never allowed me to use a footstool or stepladder -- nor to climb onto the counters, which was the next thing I tried -- but hers was because she was bulimic and had to control all the food. She used to put extra stuff in locked closets to which only she had the key, and a bunch of other unusual behaviors. She treated me as if I were evil somehow. I had no idea how unusual all this was until I started spending the night at friend's houses when I was older)
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Speaking as a high-school teacher - please, label your children. Don't make a teacher spend four months trying to figure out how and why a child is struggling, if you know right at the beginning what kinds of help they need. We have a lot of students to juggle and are not always as quick to figure things out as we should be. It can be the difference between passing and failing a class, and between succeeding at school and getting completely demoralized.
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And by the time students get to high school, chances are high they have had prior experience struggling without knowing why and developed all sorts of compensatory mechanisms that can take years to dismantle.
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Without labels I might be homeless now, or at least living with my parents and being constantly nagged to get a job in a place where there are no jobs or public transit.
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Yes, THIS. My unofficially!aspie tutee now thinks that he is "bad at English/writing" rather than dyspraxic, because he can't get his thoughts out on paper fast enough in class or organised easily. Using a computer largely solves this issue for him, but the teachers forced the students to write by hand in the mistaken belief that this would magically make them better at writing legibly under time-pressure in exams. God knows what other labels he and other people have attached to himself that would be better covered by "ASD".
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Magical teacher thinking is something, isn't it? Yes, practice helps some problems. But at some point, it should become clear when the problem isn't lack of practice.
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I'm sitting in an undergrad community & therapeutic recreation course this semester as part of my sociology of physical activity PhD program and I'm struck by the condescending tone about "labels"...it's weird to be a disabled person & have pieces of my identity chipped at like that...
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And they have no idea they are chipping away at identity because they can't conceptualize disability as part of an identity. I have a colleague who identifies as feminist who keeps telling me not to label myself as disabled because she doesn't see me that way. I keep saying, well I'm labeled as a woman, if she sees me that way she should also see me as a disabled person, both parts of my identity. It just doesn't compute. And these are people who work in a disability field, some of them for years.
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