#getting needs met

[conscious-love]

seerutkchawla ~ Instagram

[darkobssessions]

There are very few less equipped to handle special needs individuals than my parents. They’ve got the challenging personalities, the societal and cultural norms, the generations of tradition, the self critical inner voices, dismissiveness, denial and subtle and not so subtle guilt, blame and shame complexes going on. They’re out of their depth, I am 27 years too tired to ask for help or beg for my needs to be met, to be disappointed when they cannot or will not budge or try to understand. Well, and with the knowing that they cannot understand. That this is the limit of what they are willing and able to extend. ‘Try what normal people are doing.’ ‘We feel with you, but we are disappointed.’ ‘You’re regressing.’ Yes. Because I have hit my absolute limit of sensory overload, neglect, the wrong environments and putting up with things that disable me rather than push me to be the best that I can be. I am alive in SPITE of this environment, I am here with the knowledge of who I am and my role as a straight up miracle. I survived this hell of a situation so that I could be acutely attuned to the needs of those with a wider spectrum of senses and different needs. For that I’m thankful.

[realsocialskills]

"A place better equipped to meet their needs"

Most schools are not good places for disabled kids. Often, this fact is used as an excuse to exclude kids from mainstream schools. (Even though special needs schools aren’t actually better, they’re just separate). 

People will say, in a tone dripping with compassionate condescension, “We feel that your child would be better off somewhere more prepared to meet their needs.” This usually makes them go away. It does not often result in their needs being met.

After that conversation, the disabled kids tend to go somewhere else and be someone else’s problem. Often in a self contained special needs school. This conveniently allows the mainstream school, and often the child’s community, to continue ignoring them. 

They can pretend that the excluded children are in a wonderful place, surrounded by experts who know how to help them. It’s almost never true — the place “better equipped to meet their needs” is almost always imaginary. Segregation creates the perception of expertise; it does not create expertise.

Sometimes the expertise a kid needs flat-out doesn’t exist yet. There are a lot of people who need supports and teaching methods that have not been invented yet. If what they need doesn’t exist, their needs aren’t going to be met no matter where they are. Excluding them allows others to avoid having to face the reality of how awful things are for many people with disabilities; it doesn’t get their needs met. 

Special education is not special, and special educators are not high level experts who know how to teach everyone. Special education settings are generally full of behaviorism, behavior plans, and low expectations. When special educators have real disability expertise, it’s because they’ve made a focused effort to get it. It doesn’t happen automatically as a result of training or professional experience. General educators can do that too.

If schools wants students with disabilities to be in “a place better equipped to meet their needs”, they have to work to become that place. There are no viable alternatives. Making people go away doesn’t get their needs met. Working to meet their needs does.

(Edited to add: It’s more complicated than that, and there are things I don’t like about this post. I think it’s more true than not, but there’s things it doesn’t cover, and I’m planning on writing some followup posts about it which will hopefully cover more ground.)

[whatmesober]

Getting Our Real Needs Met

Getting Our Real Needs Met

When we were acting out in our addictions,  we put our real needs for social,  physical,  emotional,  intellectual and spiritual fulfillment on the back burner.   Depending on our history,  we may have denied one or more of them completely.   We may simply have treated them as annoyances that needed to be gotten out of the way, quickly and efficiently, so we could get back to the important…

View On WordPress