human rights – Real Social Skills

Being allowed to do hard things

August 19, 2013June 14, 2021 Real Social Skills

Mel Baggs added to the post on “Some things about speech“:

I used to have a really hard time convincing people that sometimes lack of speech wasn’t overload or shutdown (or as psychiatry so inaccurately put it, ~anxiety~ or ~dissociation~), but rather just being myself.

And that far from always being a result of stress, speech caused me stress and lack of speech meant I was less stressed.

I knew the autism expert I saw was no expert when I heard her tell me that if we reduced my anxiety, I wouldn’t have to rely on my keyboard so much. Later on I found out she believed meltdowns and shutdowns were not sensory at all but rather ~off task behavior~, ~manipulation~, and ~tantrums~… And I lost my last shred of respect for her.

Also, even when it *is* the result of stress, that doesn’t necessarily mean that something is *wrong*.

Sometimes it just means that life is happening. Like, when I’m doing hard things, my speech gets worse. When I’m working a lot, I look more conspicuously autistic.

This doesn’t mean I shouldn’t work or study or do hard things. It’s important for us to be allowed to do hard things, and to be allowed to be stressed and have lives. Stress is part of life.

Sometimes people try to put us in bubbles where we don’t ever do anything hard or stressful. And take any autistic sign of stress as an indication that something is wrong. And that things need to be lighter and softer and less substantive.

Those places are not good and they are not understanding or accepting. They are hell on earth.

Remembering that people with disabilities have always existed

January 31, 2013June 20, 2021 Real Social Skills

Content warning: This post talks about institutionalization in graphic terms. Proceed with caution.

Sometimes people say things like this:

“When I was a kid, no one had all these learning disabilities and syndromes!”
“We’re all so much sicker these days. I never heard of all these diseases until recently.”

And – people who say this? You know why you never met anyone like this as a child?

Because, when you were a kid, people with learning disabilities, syndromes, illnesses, etc weren’t allowed to go to your school. A good percentage of them weren’t even allowed to live in your town.

They were kept away from people like you, and kept in horrifying conditions, so that you and other more socially valued people wouldn’t have to see them or know they existed. (It’s not your fault. You were a child and didn’t know. But it was done in your name, partly.) And a lot of them did not survive childhood because they were not given the care that would have made it possible. And this isn’t over. This still happens.

(And people with disabilities are still afraid of it happening to them).

But thing are getting a bit better – or, more accurately, people who have been fighting this evil for decades are starting to win.

So, these days, many children like those who were carefully kept away from you and your peers are allowed to grow up in families. In schools. As part of their communities. Visibly. And, this means more of them are suriving childhood.

And some adults with disabilities are now treated as adults and allowed to acknowledge disability without forfeiting adulthood. Not everyone, not yet. Not enough. But some. More than there used to be, fewer than there should be.

People with disabilities have always existed. And the fact that everyone now has to notice that they exist is a dramatic improvement. It’s a good thing that you see more people with disabilities now. It means some of them aren’t brutally hidden in institutions. Your children are growing up in a better world than you did. Remember this.

Social skills: Considering communication an obligation

October 13, 2012June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

Sometimes, when people learn methods of communication that sometimes work for people with disabilities, they use them only to get compliance. Or to make things more peaceful and calm. And they expect that things will become easier. And some things will, but…

If you’re doing it right –– if what you’re doing is real communication – you should be hearing NO a lot more than you used to. And some things should become more complicated than they were before.

And you should be understanding and respecting NO more than you used to. The communication should sometimes, probably even often, interfere with your plans and challenge your assumptions. If your interactions almost always make things more convenient for you, what you’re doing is probably not really communication.

Even if the person you’re talking to is a little child – even two-year-old kids who don’t have disabilities are allowed to say no and make it stick sometimes. Little kids who need help communicating, need help communicating things adults *don’t* want them to say, as well as things adults *do* want them to say. It’s important for them to learn how to *decide* what to say.

And, especially – if you’re treating an adult in a way that makes it impossible for them to communicate boundaries even a two-year-old child is allowed to have, somethings is going seriously wrong. And you should be fixing it, and you should expect that fixing it will be inconvenient and lead to you having to change what you do because the person you are communicating said no, or said something unexpected.

Learning to communicate is not just a matter of learning to talk to someone; it’s also a matter of learning how to listen.

And, in pretty much every culture there is, listening to people with communication disabilities is considered optional, and learning how is considered to be a special skill gained by special people who have extra special patience for Working With People Like That. (And, it’s not even routinely expected of people whose primary job is teaching or supporting people with disabilities. It’s considered something *exceptionally good* people in such roles might take on.)

But listening to and communicating with people with disabilities isn’t optional. It’s a basic social skill that everyone needs to acquire (unless they have a disability that prevents it).

And – considering communication optional makes it harder. Acknowledging that others have the right to communicate, and that listening effectively is basic decency and not a special favor you’re doing someone, makes it a lot easier to learn how to communicate properly.