Special Needs and the Language of Disabilities

It is funny to me, as a Mom of children who have special needs, that often folks say to me a phrase that grates on the ear, and yet to someone who isn’t daily dealing with the needs of people with disabilities, the speaker doesn’t even notice!  As a Special Needs Teacher, I had situations in the course of recording a student’s progress when I was required to write all the strengths of a child who had special needs in the “current performance” section of the Individualized Education Plan (IEP).  Usually it was so easy, because each child, uniquely made by God, has such strengths.  And, yet, as in one of our previous blog writings, the disability or disabilities go before them, and often a child or adult is known primarily by their disability or weakness, without any of the strengths noted.  You may have heard this when a baby is born, and has Down syndrome, and is referred to as a Down’s baby, instead of a baby who has Down syndrome.  Isn’t the child a baby first, and then the fact that the baby has Down syndrome secondary?

And, so it is with a switch, which is more like a shift in language referencing people who have a cognitive delay.  In the US, special needs is the term most commonly used to reference a person who has cognitive delays, but since special needs can also mean a physical or medical need, oftentimes one has to go on in the explanation past just the description “special needs” to encompass the type of disability a person or people group defined has.  So, around the world, the more acceptable term used for folks who have a developmental delay is “intellectual disability”.  Because we work with folks from all around the world, we want to be clear in who we are ministering to and with.  We specifically work with and serve people who have a developmental delay, a cognitive delay, which we define with the worldwide term, intellectual disability.

What’s in a name?  We think quite a bit.