#cognitive difference

[beyondunderstandin-blog]

In the US, roughly 4.6 million people are identified as having an intellectual disability.

DoSomething.org

[studyindeduction]

[disabledbyculture-blog]

The Isolation of Unique Perception One of the most common experiences of gifted children is a unique way of perceiving. They make more abstract connections, they synthesize diverse experiences, and they make sophisticated conclusions at an early age. Not that the gifted child's unique perceptions are always "true" to the rest of us, but they are powerful. The result is a child growing up with a reality somewhat different than the reality of her peers -- and often different from her parents, teachers, and allies. Because they are different in other ways, gifted children are often isolated anyway. Somehow these multiple tendencies toward isolation reinforce one another to the point where the majority of gifted children feel lonely, left-out, or different. This combination of unique perception and its concurrent isolation yield an emotional vacuum. After all, for most of us, our emotional selves develop by "bouncing off" of all those around us.

Joshua Freedman and Anabel Jensen, PhD, Joy and Loss: The Emotional Lives of Gifted Children

[disabledbyculture-blog]

"Autism is not a disease or an entity. It is not something that we must seek out to eradicate. Rather, it is a mode of being, an umbrella term to describe how one relates (or does not relate) to the world. If we look at autism as an entity, a ‘thing’, then this leads us to develop programs that will seek to alter the person into something they are not nor will or can ever be.  It causes us to seek to alter the person by force, coercion, and manipulation..."

"A commonly used approach with autistic persons is Applied Behavioral Analysis where the child works on drills for up to 40 hours a week with a therapist. This type of program separates the child from their parents. The repetitive drills often lead to depression, humiliation, and rage. The entire system is built on this concept of altering the person by force, seeking to gain their compliance to an arbitrary ‘norm’ of what a child must and should be. Instead, we should realize and respect the various developmental stages both perinatal and postnatal that occur and understand that developmental differences exist. These developmental differences exist, and those wanting to aid the person must realize this, and then help the person in discovering their being, of who they are, and to be able to embrace who they are.  Early intervention programs sometimes force children into meaningless, repetitive tasks and are geared towards conformity, solely seeking to prepare the child for the classroom, but not taking into account other aspects of the person."

"... This is the direction I believe that programs to aid autistic persons should be geared. Not to alter the person, but rather to help them to be themselves while also having an understanding of the ‘mainstream’ and being able to navigate through it."

- Dan Edmunds, Ed.D. (via madinamerica)