Theme
3:11pm June 29, 2014

dendriforming:

People with intellectual disabilities (even ‘profound’ intellectual disabilities) think. People who can’t use language think. People who communicate in ways you can’t understand think. And this is still true even if they’ll never be able to use any of the systems of communication you’re trying to teach them.

But how do I explain this to someone who is so tied up in words and intellectualism? 

There can’t really be *nothing* going on inside her head, can there?

(“It terrifies me that you think that,” I said. I couldn’t reach words that had the substance that would convince her.)

I’ve only met this girl once. It’s so obvious to me that she’s thinking. And I want people to learn to communicate with her. It would make things so much better for her. But even if they don’t, she’s not an empty shell.

I would strongly suggest giving the person a copy of Dave Hingsburger’s book First Contact, if you can get hold of it.  It’s very cheap, it’s just hard to order sometimes.  It’s a short book that can be read quickly and easily by most people.  It’s entirely about how to communicate with people with profound intellectual or other profound cognitive disabilities.  And it talks in a very practical manner about how to get past a lot of prejudices that everyone (yes, everyone) has about the matter.  It is written in down-to-earth language and gives lots of concrete examples from the author’s work.  I don’t agree 100% with everything in the book (particularly the part where he assumes that someone won’t understand the words being said to them… because regardless of severity of disability you can never ever know that), but it’s the best thing out there on the subject and it can be life-changing to people who read it.  I often have people read that one along with Power Tools, a similarly-sized book by the same author about the use of power in human services work.  But First Contact is probably my favorite Dave Hingsburger book ever, and I have all of his books pretty much.

Notes:
  1. dafuqyouwantfrumme reblogged this from dysperdis
  2. dysperdis reblogged this from stubborn-string-bones
  3. brydeswhale reblogged this from stubborn-string-bones
  4. space-0pera reblogged this from autisticadvocacy
  5. cerebralrain reblogged this from dendriforming
  6. reidemosthenes reblogged this from resmeae
  7. operationnightfury reblogged this from stubborn-string-bones
  8. something-i-dunno reblogged this from autisticadvocacy
  9. darklightdragon reblogged this from autisticadvocacy
  10. caterfree10 reblogged this from stubborn-string-bones
  11. passionrootss reblogged this from autisticadvocacy
  12. super-rainbows reblogged this from stubborn-string-bones
  13. ealdra reblogged this from autisticadvocacy
  14. rosslynpaladin reblogged this from autisticadvocacy
  15. memsevpersonal reblogged this from autisticadvocacy
  16. cardboardmoose reblogged this from stubborn-string-bones
  17. maisie-whimsie reblogged this from misohead
  18. misohead reblogged this from dendriforming
  19. autisticadvocacy reblogged this from stubborn-string-bones
  20. stubborn-string-bones reblogged this from into-the-weeds
  21. thingsineededtoknow reblogged this from withasmoothroundstone
  22. thetigerisariver reblogged this from andromedalogic