“Like a two-year-old”…

A colleague reflected the discomfort telling us of the father of a 15-year-okd who had described his son a like a two-year-old… such a provocative comment… so many feelings and thoughts.

Using analogies to infants and children in the intellectual disability world… seems so often to go hand in hand with a tacit response, unspoken but shared.

But not all responses are the same. Not all intentions in uttering the words are the same. Not all interpretations of meaning are the same.

Hoping we can have a conversation to explore the use of age analogies, not to come to the “right” answer, but to understand different perspectives and the thinking (surface and deep) underlying the feelings.

I know I often stand as an outlier in using analogies of age. I know I need to unpack why I do this, and whether I should continue to do so. Can I encourage you to share your thoughts here on this often contentious topic… I will share some of my thoughts as a comment, as to keep the starter post neutral.

Paradigms and pragmatics

I’m busily working on my thesis. Read this quote, which I thought was worth sharing.
“Although issues such as community-based supports, quality of life, and normalization remain equally important to nonambulatory persons with PMR [profound mental retardation], a failure to plan for their day-to-day needs can result in decreased access to appropriate health-care services, deterioration in functioning, and overreliance upon a group of poorly trained and isolate caregivers”
– Kobe, F. H., Mulick, J. A., Rash, T. A., & Martin, J. (1994). Nonambulatory persons with profound mental retardation: Physical, developmental, and behavioral characteristics. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 15(6), 413-423. doi: 10.1016/0891-4222(94)90026-4