Disability-affirming growth mindset
Children are often taught to think “I can’t do that *yet*” as a form of encouraging growth mindset. That’s a really useful strategy when it’s applicable, and it also needs some nuance in order to be more disability-affirming.
Growth mindset has to be grounded in reality.
Growth means that I am always learning new things and developing new skills and getting better at things. It doesn’t mean doubling down on pursuing impossible dreams; it means doing real things.
Sometimes growth mindset means thinking “I can’t do that *yet*,” and continuing to try until I can.
Sometimes it’s more like, “This isn’t working. Maybe I need to do it another way.”
Or: “This isn’t working, and maybe it’s not going to work. What else can I do?”
Or: “I can’t do *that*, but I can do the important part a different way.”
Or: “I can do that with help.” and/or “Let’s figure out what supports would make it possible to do that.”
Or: “We can do that collaboratively, together.”
Or: “I could do that with appropriate assistive technology. Let’s figure out if some exists and/or if there’s something we could invent.”
In those instances, realizing that something isn’t going to work is part of how we find out what *can* work.
There are also cases in which growth mindset means realizing that something may not be a good use of our time and effort and resources. A skill that is broadly useful to nondisabled people might not be worth it to me, even if I’m technically capable of doing it. (For instance, handwriting is a useful skill for most people, but it’s always been so hard for me that it’s not really worth it. Losing the ability to handwrite more than a few words at a time has freed up my abilities to do other things, like focus on typing words.)
There’s something powerful about seeing your body as it really is and working with it rather than against it. Sometimes figuring out what isn’t possible or what’s not worth the cost in time and effort is how we find areas where we can grow and flourish.
Growth mindset means that I *don't sabotage my growth* by wasting time and effort pursuing impossible things. I don’t stand on a chair or a roof and expect believing in myself to make it possible to use my arms as wings and fly. If I want to fly, I need an airplane, and that’s ok.
At the same time, I think that claiming the power of “yet” is really important for disabled people, and especially for people with developmental disabilities.
Sometimes there can be a lot of pressure to see ourselves as incapable of doing things every time disability makes it harder or means we need to do things differently or it’s not obvious whether or how we could do the thing.
Sometimes we get pressure not to try things unless there’s some certainty that we will be able to do them. (And for something as complex and poorly understood as developmental disabilities, there’s rarely much certainty. Having other people’s doubts limit what we’re allowed to try makes the world very, very small.)
Sometimes disability-affirming growth mindset means saying “I can’t do that, let’s do something else,” and sometimes it means saying, “I might be able to do that, and I’d like to try.” Sometimes it means saying, “I want to keep trying even though it’s harder for me and I’m not catching on as quickly and no one seems to know how to teach me.” or “I don’t know if this is going to work but I think it could, and at this point, I’d like to keep trying.” Or, “I know most people learn this by the time they’re four, and I know I’m much older than that, but I’d like to try to learn this too.”
Sometimes it means an adult claiming the right to learn how to read, or finding a dance studio where they’re willing to slow down enough for them to learn. Sometimes it means practicing a new skill in private while you’re figuring out if it’s something that makes sense for you. Sometimes it means asking around to other disabled people to see what their strategies have been. Sometimes it means demanding your right to accessibility and accommodations even when others don’t think you belong and don’t see you as capable of doing things in the space you want to be in.
