ableism – Page 6 – Real Social Skills

When people with legitimate grievances express them in ableist ways

January 5, 2015June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

Content note: This post is about effective ways to contradict ableist statements. It talks about contexts in which doing so might not be a good idea. It also talks about people using social justice language in mean and unjustified ways. Proceed with caution.

A reader asked:

Sometimes people mess up and people get mad about it, they yell about it but also gross things- like this guy is a creep, and they say gross stuff, like “he lives in his parents’ basement” or calling them autistic in a bad way.

A lot of the time, if you bring up how that’s wrong, they accuse you of defending them and their bad actions. What do you do when people are being mean about stuff when mad at people who have done awful things and they think you’re defending them if you say anything?

realsocialskills said:

That gets complicated.

Sometimes I think it’s a matter of picking the right time. Like, if someone just got hit on by a creep in a threatening way and they’re freaking out, it’s probably not the best time to explain to them that some of the way they’re thinking about creepiness is ableist. When someone is freaking out in the immediate aftermath of an incident. You don’t have to (and shouldn’t) validate the ableist aspects of what they’re saying, but it’s probably not a good time to actively contradict it either. When people are actively freaking out, all they are likely to hear is support or contradiction.

After the point where they’re so afraid that the most important thing is supporting them passes, it’s ok and good to contradict ableism. It’s ok to do this even if they’re mad and ranting or upset. Being upset is not always an emergency.

I think the best way to contradict it is to make it explicit that you agree that the guy is creepy and unacceptable, and that what you’re objecting to is the comparison, for instance:

“I’m autistic and I don’t appreciate being compared to creeps like that guy.”
“I have a lot of autistic friends, and it really hurts them when everyone compares them to creeps like that.”
“Hey, can we not conflate poor and creepy? That just lets rich charismatic creepy dudes off the hook.”
“I’m not comfortable with the direction this is taking – it seems like we’re starting to mock guys for being disabled or poor instead of talking about how creepy they’re being. Let’s talk about creepiness?”
“Autism really isn’t the issue here; it’s the creepy and awful things that guy does.”

Another factor: People will probably get mad at you. No matter how well you phrase this, no matter how considerate and respectful you are, people you contradict will probably get mad at you at least some of the time. People don’t like to be told that they’re doing things wrong, and they especially don’t like to be told that they’re wronging someone they’re justified in complaining about. If you contradict people who are complaining about real injustice, they’re likely to get mad at you even if what you are saying is entirely correct. That doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong, but it can be emotionally very difficult to handle.

It’s likely that, at least some of the time, people will come down on you really hard in social justice terms.

People will probably tell you that you don’t care about female victims, that you have internalized misogyny, that you’re a gross man who needs to shut up, that you’re an MRA, that you need to go away and learn feminism 101, or other similar things. That might be very hard to bear, especially if you are scrupulous about trying to avoid oppressive speech. It doesn’t mean that you are wrong, though. Sometimes people will yell at you in social justice terms and be wrong. It’s important to learn how to figure out what you think even when people are yelling at you that you’re being oppressive. If you want to do the work of pointing out the ableism in some reactions to creepy dudes, it’s really important to work on having perspective in the face of other people’s anger.

It’s also important to pay attention to what you are and aren’t up for. You don’t have to challenge every piece of ableism you ever see. It’s not ok to validate that kind of ableism; it’s not ok to reblog it uncritically; it’s not ok to agree with or participate in it. But it’s perfectly ok to not always proactively contradict it. You matter, and that kind of work is draining.

Disability and risk

January 2, 2015June 10, 2021 Real Social Skills

As people with disabilities, we generally have to adopt a different attitude towards risk than nondisabled peers. Most of us have to take more risks than most other people, and that can be very confusing. Sometimes it can feel like being more reckless, when it’s actually just a consequence of having fewer options.

For instance:

Housing:

People with disabilities often have far fewer options for housing than people who aren’t disabled
Accessible housing is limited
(Eg: if you need a flat entrance, that excludes most apartments. If you need to live alone, that excludes most affordable apartments.)
People without disabilities are generally in a much better position to say no to things that seem sketchy or unreasonable.
When there are only three apartments in a city that you can both get into and afford, it’s much harder to say no to the roommate with a loud parrot who wakes you up every night
Or the landlord who wants an unreasonably large deposit, or who want to insist that you go to church with them as a condition of living there, or who obviously have no intention of keeping everything in working order
If things go bad, it can feel like it was your fault and that you should have known better than to get into this situation
Especially if most of your friends wouldn’t ever take that kind of a risk (which is likely to be the case if most of them aren’t disabled or poor)
It might not be your fault though
It might just be that you only had risky options, you had to choose from among them, and you were unlucky this time
That’s in the nature of only having high-risk options: sometimes bad things will happen. It’s not your fault if you’re in that situation.

Similar considerations apply to equipment, travel, employment, and any number of other things. Being disabled (and/or poor) often involves having to take much higher risks than most other people have to take. Sometimes, this will even involve taking life-threatening risks to do things like go to a conference. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re reckless. It can just mean that you’re trying to live your life and that you have things to do that can’t be done completely safely.

Short version: People with disabilities often have to take more risks than people without disabilities. That isn’t a matter of recklessness; it’s a matter of necessity.

A way people with disabilities are often wrongly percieved as angry

December 29, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

Sometimes disabled people are wrong perceived as angry or hostile when they move like disabled people. It works something like this:

The most efficient way to do things is often not the socially accepted way to do things
People with disabilities often have to do things in an efficient way to be able to do them
In order to be perceived as calm and polite, people are often expected to move in a slow, careful way without making sudden or loud motions
That’s easy for most people without disabilities, and can be difficult or impossible for people with disabilities
Sometimes people with disabilities don’t have the motor coordination or strength to move in expected ways. Sometimes pain or illness makes them too exhausted to have the energy to move in expected ways. Sometimes, they have to move efficiently to be able to move at all.
People with disabilities who have to move in loud, sudden, forceful, or jerky ways are often wrongfully perceived as expressing anger, frustration, or aggression.
When people make loud, jerky, or sudden motions, they tend to be perceived as rude, angry, or aggressive
People with disabilities don’t always have the coordination to make the movements in expected ways
Sometimes, they have to be efficient in order to do the thing.
This often gets perceived as angry when it isn’t
This can lead to people with disabilities who are just trying to live their lives being perceived as hostile and excluded
When a person with a disability is moving in a jerky, sudden, or loud way, it’s important to consider the possibility that it’s disability-related rather than angry

Some concrete examples:

Dropping things:

In most social contexts, it’s socially expected that people who need things to be on the ground put them there without making a sudden noise
This generally means using your arms to slowly lower the thing to the ground
People with disabilities often do not have the strength or motor coordination needed to lower things this way
Sometimes, people who can’t rely on muscles to lower things need to drop them and rely on gravity
(And some people have to rely on gravity some of the time, eg: when they’re tired, at the end of a long day, when they’re in a particularly draining environment, when they’ve already had to lift and drop the thing several times that day.)
Gravity only goes one speed, and dropped objects tend to make noise
Dropping a heavy object rather than lowering it slowly is usually perceived as a sign of anger (and for people without disabilities, it’s generally intended as one).
People with disabilities who drop things are often not intending it as an expression of anger.
Often, they drop things because they need them to be on the ground and have no other realistic way of getting them there.
If a person with a disability is dropping heavy things rather than lowering them, it’s important not to automatically assume that they are doing this out of a show of emotions
Consider seriously the possibility that they’re dropping things because they need to lower them, and due to disability are not able to do so in the socially expected way.

Another example: Plugging things in:

The socially expected way to plug things in is to slowly push the plug into the outlet using a steady pressure
That requires a particular kind of strength and muscle control
Some people with disabilities can’t do that
Some people with disabilities have to rely on momentum.
Relying on momentum involves one sudden forceful movement.
That can look like punching, and can be perceived as excessive force
Most people without disabilities only plug things in with that kind of force when they are angry or frustrated
People with disabilities often plug things in that way because it’s the only way they can do it
If a person with a disability uses a lot of force to plug things in, don’t assume it’s a display of emotion.
Consider seriously the possibility that they’re doing it that way because that’s how their body works

In general:

Some socially expected movements are complicated and difficult
Sometimes people with disabilities can’t do it in the polite way
Sometimes, we have to do it in a way that’s more efficient
That’s often perceived as rude, inconsiderate, or threatening, when it’s really just limited ability to move in expected ways
No amount of social skills training or knowledge of socially expected behavior will make it physically possible to move in all expected ways
This can result in people with disabilities being perceived as angry or displaying rage when all they’re doing is moving
It’s important not to automatically assume that people with disabilities who move oddly are doing it to display anger. It might just be that that’s the only reasonable way for them to do something.
If you understand this, you’ll be much more able to relate to people with disabilities and include people
(People with disabilities, like everyone else, sometimes display anger and frustration in physical ways. But they are routinely wrongly perceived as doing so. It is possible, and important, to learn to tell the difference).

Short version: People with disabilities are often perceived as displaying rage or aggression when they’re just moving. This is because socially expected ways of moving are often very inefficient in ways that aren’t too difficult for most nondisabled people, but can be difficult or impossible for people with disabilities. It’s important to learn to tell the difference between people with disabilities moving efficiently and people with disabilities displaying anger. Scroll up for details and examples.

Use the microphone

December 16, 2014June 10, 2021 Real Social Skills

Microphones are important.

Not everyone can hear and understand lectures without amplification. Microphones and sound systems allow many people to listen to talks they would otherwise be unable to understand.

For some reason, many people who have loud voices try to avoid using the microphones. They will say that their ability to project makes the microphone unnecessary. Often, they refuse to use the microphone, and many members of the audience can’t hear what they are saying.

Do not be that guy. The sound system is there for a reason. The event organizers decided that it was needed in order to make the lecture accessible to others. Don’t unilaterally undo that. Use the microphone, unless you’ve agreed in advance on an alternative way to make the lecture accessible.

Some concrete reasons that people who refuse to use microphones make their talks inaccessible:

No matter how loud your voice is, it only comes from one point in the room. Speakers can distribute it and make it more understandable in other parts of the room
Loop systems project sounds from the microphone into people’s hearing aides, and they only work if you speak into the microphone. No matter how good you are at projecting, people who need the sound to be right by their ear will not be able to understand you if you don’t use the microphone.
Your voice may not be as loud as you think it is; that’s hard to judge from the inside, and it’s very easy to overestimate your skill at projecting.

In particular, do not start your talk without a microphone and ask if everyone can hear you:

People who can’t hear you without the microphone probably can’t hear you and react quickly when you ask a question like that.
Asking if everyone can hear you as a way to check whether you need a microphone is like saying “raise your hand if you don’t understand English”. It’s not going to get you a useful response
It’s also really uncomfortable to contradict a speaker at the beginning of their talk. No one is likely to want to say “actually, no, I can’t hear you and you need to use the microphone even though you obviously don’t want to”.
Similarly, many people with disabilities don’t like drawing attention to their access needs. If you refuse to use a microphone, you’re effectively saying that some people have to choose between their right to access your lecture and their right to privacy. Don’t do that to people.
Your audience probably contains people who need you to use the microphone.
That’s why it’s there.
Use the microphone.

If there is a good reason that using a microphone is a problem for you, talk to the organizers ahead of time. Sometimes there are competing access needs, and that’s not your fault. People who have an access need that makes microphone use complicated or impossible also have the right to speak publicly. (Eg: If you can’t hold a microphone; it hurts to hold it; it makes you unable to speak coherently; etc) It’s just not ok to decide to ignore other people’s access needs on the spur of the moment. It’s important to either work out another solution with the organizers (eg: maybe a wireless clip-on microphone would work?), or else warn people ahead of time so that people won’t come to a lecture that they won’t be able to understand.

If you are an event organizer – be aware that some speakers will probably try to refuse to use the microphone. It’s important to insist that they use it anyway. It helps to have an explicit microphone policy and explain it to speakers, but some people will still probably try to give their talks without microphones. It’s possible, and important, to be firm about this and insist that everyone use the microphone unless they’ve made an alternative arrangement ahead of time.

Short version: Microphones are important even if you have a loud voice and know how to project. If you refuse to use the microphone, it makes the talk inaccessible to some people who want to listen to you. Asking a room full of people if everyone can hear you without the microphone doesn’t solve this problem. (If you have an access need that complicates microphone use, it’s important to either find a solution or warn people that a microphone will not be used. This should not be decided on the spur of the moment.) If you’re running an event, it’s important to be assertive about insisting that speakers use the microphone.

Dwarfism awareness – thoughts on doing right by adult little people

November 14, 2014June 11, 2021 Real Social Skills

I wrote this post for Dwarfism Awareness Month (which was in October) in collaboration with a friend who is a little person. It wasn’t ready until now, so I am posting it now.

Here are some things worth knowing:

Adult little people are adults, but people often treat them like children. You might be doing this too, and it’s important to get over that. Many people strongly associate being a certain size with being a young child. It’s important to be aware that not everyone that size is actually a child, and to act to mitigate any reactions you might be having that lead you to see an adult little person as a young child.

For instance, at work:

If you’re in a professional setting and someone is wearing professional clothing and acting like a professional adult, they’re not ten years old.
If you keep viscerally responding as though they are a child, it’s important to realize that it’s not ok and get over it. Don’t express that reaction, and don’t try to justify it.
Treat them as an adult
Respect their professional competence
If they are above you in the hierarchy, do not treat them as junior
If they are at your level in the hierarchy, do not treat them as junior
If they are actually junior, do not treat them like a visiting child or a teenager getting work experience. Respect them as an adult professional.

Another example: bars:

If you are in a bar, and someone is wearing adult clothing, acting like an adult, and drinking beer, they are not ten years old
They are an adult drinking beer in a bar
This is not a problem. This is something that many adults choose to do.
Do not look around for a caregiver. Adults do not have to bring minders to bars.
Do not ask them if they are ok unless you have an actual reason to think they might not be. Being a little person in a bar is not cause for concern in itself
If they are flirting with someone, this is not cause for concern either
Many adults flirt with people in bars. This is a thing that people do.
(Also, do not make jokes about tossing them, ask to toss them, or in any other way treat them as a toy. Adults have the right to drink beer in bars without being treated as a novelty attraction.)

And when you’re setting up an environment, remember that some adults are less than 4’10” and some are much shorter than that. Adult little people need access to anything that other adults need access to.

More specifically:

Adult little people need to be able to get through doors:

If you use a latch high on the door to prevent children from entering or exiting, you’re also making it impossible for adults of the same height to enter or exist
Latches need to be in places that adult little people can reach
Adults with disabilities should not be locked in like little children
If for some reason this kind of safety system is unavoidable, there needs to be an alternative way in and out that is reliably available
And you need to make it clear what that is

Keep this in mind when you put things on shelves:

If you’re putting things on shelves that a four foot tall person could not reach, you need an alternative way of reaching the thing
Or to put the thing in a lower place.
Keep in mind that if you put something on a high shelf in order to prevent children from reaching it, you’re also preventing adult little people from reaching it
Consider alternatives such as using child locks or supervising children more closely
(Or reconsidering whether the thing actually needs to be restricted. Eg: It might not actually be so terrible if your 7 year old students can reach the copier paper. You might not actually need an adults-only candy jar (and if you do, it’s not so nice to keep it where kids can see it anyway.))
If putting things on high shelves for safety reasons is truly unavoidable, make sure that there is an alternative way for adult little people to access them *and that you make it known what that way is*.

More generally:

Do not simplify your language the way you might when talking to a young child.
Do not assume that an adult little person is unemployed or only employed in a sheltered workshop or in jobs that can be done by children and teenagers.
Do treat adult little people as the age they actually are. (Eg: if they are elderly, don’t treat them as though they’re 20).
Do not ask invasive medical questions.

Short version: Adult little people are adults. Since many of them are the same height as young children, a lot of people treat them like children. Don’t do that. Also, make sure that you’re configuring things so that short adults can do the things that adults need to do.

Self-diagnosed people

August 16, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

A reader asked:

How do you feel about self-diagnosed autistics?

realsocialskills said:

I think that autistic people are autistic whether or not that they have been diagnosed.

I think people often know that they are autistic without a doctor telling them that they are. I have absolutely zero problems with someone thinking that they are autistic or wanting help. Even if it turns out that they are mistaken and not actually autistic. That happens sometimes, but I don’t think that’s hurting anyone, and I don’t think it’s a legitimate reason to object to self-diagnosis.

I think that people with disabilities need support, coping methods, and accommodations whether or not they’re diagnosed with anything.

I think we should move towards a world in which accessibility is seen as routine and normal rather than something people have to beg for access to. As it stands now, support resources for people with disabilities are often drastically limited. That is not the fault of people who identify their problems and support needs without medical diagnosis. Resources are scarce because our culture doesn’t value people with disabilities enough to make support readily available, or to routinely make accessibility and inclusion part of planning in schools, organizations, architecture, workplaces, or anywhere else. That’s the problem. Self-diagnosers who want help are not the problem.

There’s this notion that people with disabilities who need to do things differently are somehow trying to get away with something, and that they need to pass an extremely high bar to prove that they can’t help it. That attitude hurts all of us. Hating people who self-diagnose plays into that attitude, and it doesn’t help anyone.

Nice Lady Therapists

August 6, 2014June 11, 2021 Real Social Skills

Content warning: this post is about physical and emotional harm done to people (especially children) with disabilities by (mostly) female therapists. Proceed with caution.

This is a hard post to write. It’s about abuse. It’s about a kind of abuse I haven’t seen described much. I think abuse is the right word, even though a lot of abusers probably genuinely think they’re doing the right thing.

Anyway, here goes:

Many, many people with disabilities I know have been harmed or even outright abused by Nice Lady Therapists. (Usual caveat: not all therapists are abusive, and this post is not opposition to childhood therapy. I’m saying that therapists need to stop hurting kids and other vulnerable people, not that therapy is evil. Pointing out that therapy is often important and that many therapists are good is not an answer to what I am describing.)

Nice Lady Therapists tell us that, whatever they do to us is by definition nice, and good for us. And that we like it, and that they love us, and that they are rescuing us, and that we are grateful.

They have a brightly-decorated therapy room full of toys, and assure every adult they come across that ~their kids~ love therapy. They use a lot of praise and enthusiastic affect, and maybe positive reinforcement with stickers and prizes. They might call the things they have kids do games. Some of them really do play games.

And every interaction with them is degrading in a way that’s hard to pinpoint, and hard to recover from. They do all kinds of things to kids with disabilities that typically developing kids would never be expected to tolerate. And they do it with a smile, and expect the kids they’re doing it to to smile back.

Sometimes it hurts physically, sometimes it hurts emotionally. Sometimes it’s a matter of being 12 years old and expected to trace a picture for toddlers for the zillionth time. And being told “This is fun! I used to do this all the time when I was a kid!”.

Sometimes it’s a matter of being forced to do a frightening or physically painful exercise, and being forbidden to express pain or fear. It hurts their feelings if a kid is upset. Don’t we know how much she cares? Don’t we know that she’d never do anything to hurt us? Don’t we want to learn and grow up to be independent?

Sometimes it’s a matter of being expected to accept intensely bad advice as though it’s insight. For instance, getting sent to therapy because you’re not making friends. And being told “We are all friends in this school! You have to give the other kids a chance.” And, if you try to explain otherwise, she patiently and lovingly explains to you why your thinking is distorted and you’ll have lots of friends if you just let yourself try.

Sometimes it’s – crossing a physical line. Touching in a way they have no good reason to be touching. Or touching over the objections of the kid in a way that is in no way justified by therapy goals. Sometimes sexually, sometimes not. Sometimes in ways that are against ethical standards of practice, sometimes not. But intimately, invasively. And if you say no, she patiently, lovingly, explains that you have nothing to be afraid of and that everything is ok. And that if you just trust her, you will have fun and get better. And when her profession has professional training about boundaries and appropriate touch, she thinks or even says “women don’t do that.”

Some male therapists do many of these things too, but there’s a gendered version of it that usually comes from women. And that can cause a problem for people with disabilities who are recovering from this. Most things about trauma and abuse of power are about misogyny in some way. They’re about men hurting women, and taking advantage of power dynamics that favor men to do so. Those descriptions are important because that pattern is common. But it is not the only abuse pattern, and it is not the only gendered abuse pattern.

Female therapists are subjected to misogyny and the power of men just as much as any other women. But they also have tremendous power over people with disabilities, many of whom are deeply dehumanized. The assumption that women have neither the power nor the ability to hurt anyone gets really dangerous really quickly for children with disabilities receiving therapy.

And it also means that people with disabilities often have a different relationship to gender than most nondisabled people. If you’ve been harmed by women over and over and assured that you liked it, it complicates things. If you’re a girl, it can make it hard to see a group of women as a Safe Space, especially if they think the thing making it safe is keeping the men out. If you’re a boy who has been repeatedly harmed by women who believed they were powerless, it can be hard to understand that the gender hierarchies that feminists and others talk about actually do exist. And it complicates things in any number of other ways.

But if you have been hurt by Nice Lady Therapists, you are not alone. If it has affected your relationship to gender, you are not alone. If it has left scars that others say you shouldn’t have because she was nice and meant well, you are not alone.

You don’t have to think someone is nice because she says she is. It’s ok to think that someone is hurting you even if that upsets them. You don’t have to think someone is safe or loving just because they are a woman or a therapist or smiling. Women can be abusive too. In human services, it is common. You are not alone, and it was wrong to treat you that way. The harm done to you was not because of your disability, and it’s not something that you could have fixed by being more cooperative or working harder or having a better attitude. It’s not your fault, and it’s not because of anything wrong with you. And it’s not your fault if it still hurts.

Listening to people who have disability accents

July 24, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

People with certain disabilities often have heavy disability accents. Their speech can sound very different from the way most nondisabled people speak.

People with disabilities that affect communication are often pushed into separate programs, particularly in adulthood. Even when they are in the same classes in the same schools, there isn’t much of an expectation that any peers listen to them. This was even more true a generation ago. As a result, most people without disabilities are lousy at understanding people with disability accents, and don’t understand that this is a glaring hole in their social skills.

Many unskilled people tend to maybe ask people with disability accents to repeat themselves once, and then they get frustrated and start ignoring them. Sometimes they pretend to understand, and smile and nod rather than actually listening. Sometimes they hang up on them. Sometimes they pass them off to another person, who also doesn’t bother to actually listen. Sometimes they hang up. If they are medical workers, sometimes they write on a chart that someone is impossible to understand or has no communication (particularly if that person also has an intellectual disability.)

Do not be this person. If you can’t understand someone with a disability accent, the problem is your skills, not their voice. (If you have a receptive language disability that prevents you from learning to understand accents, then it’s no one’s fault and you need an interpreter to communicate. Neither their voice nor your brain is wrong. In that situation, the skill you need to develop is finding an interpreter.)

If you listen, and make it clear that you are listening, you will learn to understand, and you will be able to communicate successfully with more people.

An important phrase for this is “I’m having trouble understanding what you’re saying, but I care what you are saying.”

Make sure it’s true, and keep listening. The more you listen, the easier it will be to understand. Understanding . And practice. You get better with practice.

Too many people are ignored because others can’t be bothered to understand their accents. You can make this better by listening (and by insisting that people you supervise listen.)

Restraint is violent

July 8, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

Content warning: This post is about violent physical restraint of kids. Proceed with caution.

Anonymous said:

In what cases is it okay to restrain a kid? Is it okay to pin a kid on the floor if they try to hit you or throw something at you?

realsocialskills said:

I’m guessing that you are not a police officer or emergency responder, and that you’re asking this in the context of either parenting, childcare, or education.

In those settings, it is never ok. (Edited to add: it’s never ok in the context of mental health treatment either.) Sometimes it’s the least bad response when things go very badly wrong, but it’s never ok, and it can’t be part of someone’s plan.

I asked a friend who has more experience than I do caring for disabled children (I’m assuming the kids in this scenario are disabled because people generally assume as a matter of course that it’s not ok to treat nondisabled children this way), and she said this:

Sometimes mistakes are made and situations escalate to a point where a restraint is the least harmful option. That doesn’t mean it’s not harmful. That doesn’t mean it’s okay. When that happens, it is really important to acknowledge the harm that has transpired and to go back over the incident and events leading up to it and figure out what went wrong and how we can prevent it happening again. (quote ends here)

In the same way that, if a kid pinned another kid to the floor, you’d consider that unacceptable and plan to make sure it doesn’t happen again. It’s even more serious when an adult does that.

It is never ok to put restraint into someone’s care plan. It is never ok to see it as a solution. Restraint is a failure, not a solution.

Restraining someone is an act of physical violence. Pinning someone to the floor is a particularly invasive kind of physical violence. It’s a brutal and physically dangerous act.

Violence against kids counts as violence. Violence against people who can’t talk counts as violence. Violence against people who are physically aggressive counts as violence.

It is never ok to restrain someone as a punishment. Or a consequence. Or to teach them a lesson. Or to prevent them from getting away with something. Or to send the message that their actions are unacceptable. Or to make them calm down. Or anything remotely like that.

If you’re coming here looking for absolution, I’m not giving it to you. If you’ve pinned someone to the floor and you’re wondering if it was ok, no, it wasn’t, and you need to figure out a way to solve the problem so that you don’t do that again. It doesn’t mean you’re a terrible person or incapable of supporting the children in your care, but it does mean there’s a problem and you need to find a better solution.

If you’re a teenager or a kid, and an adult responsible for taking care of you pinned you to the floor and you’re trying to figure out if it was ok, no, it wasn’t. I’m sorry that happened to you. It shouldn’t have. No one should do that to you. No matter what you did, that wasn’t ok. If you’re violent and you hurt other kids or adults, that’s a problem you need to work on solving, but it doesn’t mean it’s ok for adults to pin you to the floor. They should be finding better ways to help you.

For more information, check out Stop Hurting Kids: Join the campaign to end restraint and seclusion abuse in schools. In particular, this fact sheet about restraint and seclusion is a good place to start.