developmental disability – Real Social Skills

Disability-affirming growth mindset

February 27, 2025 Real Social Skills

Children are often taught to think “I can’t do that *yet*” as a form of encouraging growth mindset. That’s a really useful strategy when it’s applicable, and it also needs some nuance in order to be more disability-affirming.

Growth mindset has to be grounded in reality.

Growth means that I am always learning new things and developing new skills and getting better at things. It doesn’t mean doubling down on pursuing impossible dreams; it means doing real things.

Sometimes growth mindset means thinking “I can’t do that *yet*,” and continuing to try until I can.

Sometimes it’s more like, “This isn’t working. Maybe I need to do it another way.”

Or: “This isn’t working, and maybe it’s not going to work. What else can I do?”

Or: “I can’t do *that*, but I can do the important part a different way.”

Or: “I can do that with help.” and/or “Let’s figure out what supports would make it possible to do that.”

Or: “We can do that collaboratively, together.”

Or: “I could do that with appropriate assistive technology. Let’s figure out if some exists and/or if there’s something we could invent.”

In those instances, realizing that something isn’t going to work is part of how we find out what *can* work.

There are also cases in which growth mindset means realizing that something may not be a good use of our time and effort and resources. A skill that is broadly useful to nondisabled people might not be worth it to me, even if I’m technically capable of doing it. (For instance, handwriting is a useful skill for most people, but it’s always been so hard for me that it’s not really worth it. Losing the ability to handwrite more than a few words at a time has freed up my abilities to do other things, like focus on typing words.)

There’s something powerful about seeing your body as it really is and working with it rather than against it. Sometimes figuring out what isn’t possible or what’s not worth the cost in time and effort is how we find areas where we can grow and flourish.

Growth mindset means that I *don’t sabotage my growth* by wasting time and effort pursuing impossible things. I don’t stand on a chair or a roof and expect believing in myself to make it possible to use my arms as wings and fly. If I want to fly, I need an airplane, and that’s ok.

At the same time, I think that claiming the power of “yet” is really important for disabled people, and especially for people with developmental disabilities.

Sometimes there can be a lot of pressure to see ourselves as incapable of doing things every time disability makes it harder or means we need to do things differently or it’s not obvious whether or how we could do the thing.

Sometimes we get pressure not to try things unless there’s some certainty that we will be able to do them. (And for something as complex and poorly understood as developmental disabilities, there’s rarely much certainty. Having other people’s doubts limit what we’re allowed to try makes the world very, very small.)

Sometimes disability-affirming growth mindset means saying “I can’t do that, let’s do something else,” and sometimes it means saying, “I might be able to do that, and I’d like to try.” Sometimes it means saying, “I want to keep trying even though it’s harder for me and I’m not catching on as quickly and no one seems to know how to teach me.” or “I don’t know if this is going to work but I think it could, and at this point, I’d like to keep trying.” Or, “I know most people learn this by the time they’re four, and I know I’m much older than that, but I’d like to try to learn this too.”

Sometimes it means an adult claiming the right to learn how to read, or finding a dance studio where they’re willing to slow down enough for them to learn. Sometimes it means practicing a new skill in private while you’re figuring out if it’s something that makes sense for you. Sometimes it means asking around to other disabled people to see what their strategies have been. Sometimes it means demanding your right to accessibility and accommodations even when others don’t think you belong and don’t see you as capable of doing things in the space you want to be in.

Disability-affirming growth mindset can look like a lot of things. We live with a lot of limitations that other people don’t have, and figuring out how to manage that can be complex. We learn a lot about what we can and can’t do, because we ultimately have to be the experts on our own bodies and abilities. At the same time, we often deal with a lot of uncertainty about what we will and won’t be able to do, and what effective strategies will look like. We have to make our own decisions about what risks to take and what to try.

No amount of growth mindset will make *everything* possible, there are always going to be real limitations. What disability-affirming growth mindset *can* do is support us in seeing ourselves as people who can do real things. (Even when a lot of the world doesn’t.) We are worth the effort it takes to teach and include us, and the things that we can do are worth doing.

When professionals assume that parents of disabled kids see ghosts

May 16, 2016June 9, 2021 Real Social Skills

In the special needs service provision community, there is a strongly held narrative about what happens when a kid turns out to be disabled. This narrative causes a lot of problems.

According to this narrative:

Professionals believe that parents have a strong emotional attachment to the typically developing kid they were expecting.
They are usually in denial even about obvious signs of disability, and will hold on to their fantasy for as long as possible.
At some point, the parents are forced to confront their child’s disability.
They lose their fantasy of the child they expected, and this is emotionally devastating.
In order to move on, they have to mourn the loss of the child they expected and the life they expected.
Parents need emotional validation and help working through that.
All of this is very widely believed, and I think this model causes a lot of problems.

I think the grief model is a problem on several levels:

When parents are grieving for the child they expected, it’s really hard on the child they already have:

Children want adults in their lives to see them, approve of them, and love them.
When parents are seeing ghosts, they’re not seeing their real child.
Children can tell when adults in their lives are looking past them. It hurts.
When parents are mourning for the child they expected, they are disappointed by the child they actually have.
Children can tell when adults in their lives are profoundly disappointed in them. It hurts.
And it especially hurts when the child has no control over the things that are disappointing their parents.
While parents struggle to accept their children as they are, their children struggle to cope with being parented by people who do not yet find them acceptable.
That hurts. And it leaves scars.

Kids need support in navigating this, and they don’t often get it:

There is often a tendency to pretend that kids don’t know.
But disabled kids aren’t a separate species. They’re kids, and kids are almost always very sensitive to how adults in their lives feel about them.
Kids need people in their lives who see them, and not ghosts.
Kids need people in their lives who can accept and value them as they are.
Sometimes that can’t be their parents. Or can’t (yet) be their parents.
But it needs to be someone. (And their parents need to understand that their attitude towards their child affects their child)
If you work with kids in any capacity, it is likely that this person needs to be you sometimes.
Looking at the real child and seeing a person matters. Seeing them and not a ghost of someone you expected matters. Making it clear that you’re not disappointed in them matters.
If you can do that for kids you work with, it can prevent a lot of pain. (And can likely help their parents to come to a point of acceptance sooner.)

Further, not all parents actually feel this way:

The professional narrative about grief and mourning does not accurately describe all parents.
Parents of disabled kids have all kinds of feelings about their kids for all kinds of reasons.
Not all of these feelings are negative.
Even when parents have negative feelings, they’re not always grief.
Sometimes parents feel overwhelmed and confused about how to support their child.
(Or worried about how to afford the things their child needs).
(Or repulsed by things professionals are telling them to do to their children as therapy.)
Sometimes parents feel ashamed about not having noticed sooner.
Sometimes parents feel concerned that they may have caused their child’s disability.
Or any number of things.
Not all parent feelings are grief, and the full reality needs to be acknowledged

Parents are sometimes pressured into mourning when they weren’t already grieving:

The grief and mourning narrative is strong and pervasive.
Parents are often expected to describe everything they’re feeling as grief.
Parents are often not given any support in working through the other feelings and doubts they are having.
This can result in parents being pushed into a mourning process that wasn’t actually necessary for them.
It is very damaging to both parents and children when this happens.
It is not good to grieve for the living. When it’s avoidable, it should be avoided.
It’s important to be careful to avoid pushing parents into adopting a grief narrative unnecessarily.
(Sometimes it’s not avoidable, for reasons that aren’t anyone’s fault. But it’s often more avoidable than people realize.)

Short version: There is a pervasive professional narrative that says parents of disabled kids need to mourn for the child they were expecting before they can accept their real child. This isn’t always true, and parents are sometimes pressured into feeling and mourning through grief that they otherwise would not have experienced. When parents *do* mourn for their living children, that is emotionally devastating for the kids. Parents and kids both need much better support in navigating the disability acceptance process.

For another perspective on this, see Jim Sinclair’s classic article “Don’t Mourn For Us” (written about autism specifically.

You can’t appropriate your own mind

March 2, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

A reader asked:

I briefly self diagnosed as autistic, but I met with my psychiatrist yesterday and she told me since I noticed social deficits and tried to compensate, and managed just like a neurotypical person, it was just social anxiety bc if I were autistic, I wouldn’t have noticed or been able to learn so well. she didn’t mention the cognitive things I brought up, so I’m guessing they were normal /insignificant. How do apologize on my tumblr for fucking this up and appropriating?

realsocialskills said:

You don’t owe anyone an apology. Anyone in our community who has suggested that sincere but mistaken self-diagnosis is appropriation owes *you* an apology.

Thinking you’re autistic and being wrong is not appropriation. We all make guesses about ourselves; some turn out to be right and some turn out to be wrong. Thinking you’re autistic and being wrong is not appropriative and it is not fucking up.

That said, from what you described, it’s not even clear to me that you are wrong about being autistic. I’m not a diagnostician and I don’t know you, so I can’t say one way or another. But it sounds to me that your psychiatrist is basing their response to you on stereotypes rather than professional knowledge of autism.

Not all psychiatrists are competent to evaluate autism, particularly in adults. Psychiatrists are primarily trained in mental health; autism is a developmental disability. Mental health training does not imply expertise in developmental disability. It’s entirely possible that your psychiatrist is disregarding your cognitive issues not because they are normal, but because your cognitive issues are outside their area of professional competence.

Most autistic people notice social deficits and try to compensate. Most autistic people generate effecting coping strategies for a lot of things, including social situations. All autistic people can do some things that neurotypical people can do. Being able to notice and compensate for problems does not mean you’re neurotypical.

It’s fairly common for people who think they’re autistic to be told by mental health professionals that if they’re self-aware enough to ask, they can’t possibly be autistic. Or that if they can do anything at all, it must mean they’re not autistic. Those are perceptions based on stereotypes, not accurate understandings of autism. People with advanced mental health training are just as prone to a stereotypical view of developmental disability as anyone else.

If your doctor is responding to your concerns in a way that might be based on stereotypes and misinformation, it’s probably a good idea to find someone else (perhaps a neuropsychologist) who has a better understanding of autism and is familiar with adult diagnosis.

You may or may not be autistic, but it sounds like you could benefit from investigating further. And ultimately, the opinion that matters most is your own. You know your own mind better than anyone else does.

And whatever conclusion you or any professional ends up reaching, you have done nothing wrong or appropriative. It’s ok, and important, to try to understand yourself and figure out what you need to make your life work.