10:38am May 14, 2014

Unpopular opinion:

I really hate the terms ‘developmentally disabled’ and ‘developmentally delayed’ being used in terms of autism.

One, they imply that the only ‘correct’ way to develop is along allistic/neurotypical standards. They enforce the idea that any brain other than an allistic one is abnormal and defective.

Two, the term ‘developmentally delayed’ implies that a disabled person is merely developing slower than everyone else and will eventually reach an ‘appropriate’ standard of existing. Much like functioning labels or ‘mental age’, they try and compare the life experiences of autistic people and disabled people to the lives of allistic individuals, and subtly suggest that an autistic person is not worth anything until they’ve reached some ambiguous point where they are ‘acceptable’ to allistics.

Three, the idea of the terms ‘developmentally disabled’ and ‘developmentally delayed’ being used as euphemisms for autism implies that autism is such a bad thing that it needs to be referred to euphemistically. It’s not. Autism is not a bad word.

I understand that every autistic person feels differently about this, but I’m sorry, this is just my opinion. I hope I haven’t offended anyone.

I don’t like developmentally delayed for the reasons given.

I don’t like developmentally disabled as a euphemism for autism for the same reason that I don’t like it as a euphemism for intellectual disability: It’s a broad term that was never meant to cover only one condition.

What it’s supposed to mean is that you were disabled within your ‘developmental years’, i.e. before a certain age was reached (18 or 22 are common cutoff ages). So it’s supposed to apply to autistic people, intellectually disabled people, people with cerebral palsy, people with spina bifida, people with childhood-onset brain injury, people with some kinds of childhood epilepsy, and a wide variety of other people.

I don’t mind the use of developmentally disabled in that sense – when it’s used, correctly, as an umbrella term. I have mixed feelings about developmental delay. I don’t ever like developmentally disabled when used as a euphemism for any specific disability, much as I don’t like when people say “cognitive disability” when they just mean “intellectual disability” – because that makes it sound like intellectual disability is the only cognitive or developmental disability in existence. And I’m not offended that your opinions are different than mine.

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