Howdy! I’m working on a story with a side character who has mild to moderate intellectual disability from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
The character really likes dinosaurs and I was considering having the character buy presents for his family members all with dinosaurs because that’s what makes him happy. But I was wondering if this would perpetuate harmful stereotypes? Any insight wanted thank you!
I was also wondering about writing his speech and how his family talk to him. I’m assuming they use simplified language? But I’m not sure what that looks like in general conversation.
If it's not presented as child-like or "stupid" by the narrative, I have no problem with it - seems realistic to me. I know a person from who attended SPED with me who did basically the same thing (except not dinosaurs specifically and with more or less everyone rather than just family members). I also appreciate an intellectually disabled character that's shown to have some deeper characterization to them, so that's cool to see.
Speech/language/verbality is a more complicated thing. It's a really broad spectrum in the context of intellectual disability. Some people will have it essentially unaffected - either because their ID is mild, or they have a specific disorder, like Williams Syndrome, where language doesn't tend to be affected much - and some have it be very obvious. To my understanding FASD doesn't specifically affect language abilities more than 'regular' intellectual disability.
If your character has mild ID, there's a chance his linguistic skills won't affect the dialogue 90% of the time. You can have him ask another character for clarification on what they said, for example, or ask them to reword a run-on sentence because he got lost 2 clauses ago. He might have poorer intuition when it comes to pronouncing an ambiguous word for the first time (for example, not noticing the pattern that the word is built on and breaking the syllables up incorrectly). He could have a particular tone of voice (most commonly: monotone) that you could mention in the dialogue tags. But things like incorrect basic grammar or misunderstanding everyday words are not a feature of mild ID (on its own at least).
Many people with mild ID aren't "obviously ID" to most people, and that includes speech. Others can often tell something is different, but in my experience it's often chalked up to autism, [insert a random developmental condition that person happens to know], or even poor hearing (some people might talk very loudly, which is what HoH/deaf people are often stereotyped as) since the average person seems to assume that a person with intellectual disability wouldn't be able to talk at all, or they don't even consider the possibility that a person with ID could exist near them (as opposed to being in an institution).
As for how people talk to him, that's a completely separate thing. You could have a situation where a mildly ID character knows someone and they have completely normal dialogue, but then the other character learns about the other's ID, and they suddenly turn to babytalk. Is this appropriate; no, the disabled character could clearly hold the conversation previously, is this realistic; absolutely.
However, yes, your character could need other people to alter how they speak to him, especially if his ID is more severe than just mild (and as always: it's not infantilization to have your needs met). Here you have some of the most common and realistic options of what happens (I'll use much simpler sentence examples than what would actually need to be simplified for the sake of clarity):
The bare minimum.
This is what happens when someone is kinda trying, but not really. Maybe they don't have the patience, maybe they just didn't think about it too much. Either way, the disabled character doesn't get the full picture and is effectively left out of the conversation.
E.g.: "Oh, yesterday Zainab and I went to the club and met up with her boyfriend and his annoying older brother, we wanted to grab some drinks there, but they were just so overpriced." = "I went out yesterday."
The "don't worry about it :)".
Pretty much what it says. The other character decides that the disabled character doesn't actually need to hear that; they decide that it's irrelevant for them.
E.g.: "Ever since her rent increased my mother has been doing nothing but worrying sick, and she won't even let me help her out." = "Don't worry about it."
The actual simplified version.
The gold standard of simplifying something is actually making the person understand what you are talking about without leaving out information, or leaving out as little as possible. Depending on the actual text, it might not always be possible (you can only get so far in simplifying scientific subjects, for example), but in terms of regular conversation you can probably accurately simplify the vast majority of things being said.
An example I like to use is English Wikipedia vs Simple English Wikipedia, some of the main features are shorter sentences, more commonly used words (when appropriate), and they use fewer pronouns in favor of repeating nouns. It's not perfect, but I think it illustrates what I mean by "simplification vs baby talk".
To figure out how his family speaks to him, you need to think about who they are as people and what's their relationship to him. An impatient person might just wave their hand and keep talking even if the character asks for clarification, while someone else might automatically switch how they speak when he enters the room to make him feel included. It's also a great way to show-don't-tell what the family dynamics are towards the disabled character.
Some of the posts about ID and language speech: 1, 2.
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