Despite everything, this last year has brought some truly inspiring people into my life. One of those people is Sarah Wheeler who is a Child Psychologist with a PhD in Education, and a mother of two small kids. She is also one of the funniest people I know. I thought you would appreciate her thoughts, resources, and reflections so I am sharing her piece on All Kinds of Minds below. Also- Sarah’s newsletter is one of the highlights of my week and I highly recommend checking it out.
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All Kinds of Minds
by Sarah Wheeler
One year ago, I started a newsletter focused on neurodiversity and inclusion, topics I’ve learned more and more about in my 15 years as what we still, unfortunately, call a “special educator.” Then, like all of you, my world turned upside down, and my writing became more about the urgent challenges of parenting in a worldwide pandemic.
But as spring turned to summer and America faced a long overdue reckoning with white-supremacy, I began thinking more and more about the children I work with, the stories I hear from disabled activists like Alice Wong, and how “ableism” (discrimination in favor of able-bodied or minded people) is a sister-sickness to racism.
In my early twenties, as a special education teacher who had zero training and only one professional outfit, I discovered a phrase, “all kinds of minds,” that has shaped the way I think not just about my students but about people in general. The work of Nick Walker, a queer autistic scholar and educator, helped me understand this idea further, and see the intersectionality in how we think about race and ability:
“The concept of a “normal brain” or a “normal person” has no more objective scientific validity – and serves no better purpose – than the concept of a “master race”… The Han Chinese constitute the single largest ethnic group in the world, but it would be ridiculous to claim that this makes Han Chinese the “natural” or “default” human ethnicity…
The most insidious sort of social inequality, the most difficult sort of privilege to challenge, occurs when a dominant group is so deeply established as the “normal” or “default” group that it has no specific name, no label. The members of such a group are simply thought of as “normal people,” “healthy people,” or just “people” – with the implication that those who aren’t members of that group represent deviations from that which is normal and natural, rather than equally natural and legitimate manifestations of human diversity.”
In our country, the “default” race, for far too long, has been white. The default body is an able-bodied one. The default mind is one that can succeed within our very specific version of schooling, that can be quiet and obedient, that can be productive and predictable. This is all, as Nick Walker puts it, ridiculous, insidious, and difficult to challenge.
But if you’re a human being, you’ve probably been in at least one situation in your life where your mind or body was overlooked, undervalued, or flat-out belittled. If you’ve ever been gaslight in a relationship, told by a parent or teacher that you’re not doing something fast enough or the “right” way, or passed up by a potential romantic partner for your skinnier or more symmetrically-featured friend, you know, in some small way, what it’s like to be marginalized. What is lost when a body isn’t seen as deserving of love and touch? When a mind is shamed into hiding its unique way of thinking?
My brain, for instance, in an ADHD brain. I know this because a doctor told me, but also because I am part of a vibrant community of “ADHDers” with whom I deeply identify. At the dinner table the other night, my son overheard me use this term, and asked what it meant. “Remember how there are all kinds of minds?” I replied, “And none is better or worse than any other? Well, ADHD is a kind of mind where you need adventure, you’re good at doing lots of things at once, you get very excited about the things you love, and sometimes you get distracted. My mind is an ADHD one.”
He thought it over for a minute and then said, enthusiastically, “I’m that! I’m ADHD too!”
My son saw himself as ADHD because I led with the gifts of having an ADHD brain (and he might be, it runs in families!). These gifts are real, they are not corny platitudes, and in scenarios where these gifts are valued (planning a family vacation, hosting a party, responding to a crisis), an ADHDer is also valued. But when we focus only on what ADHD looks like, say, during a spelling test or a meeting that has gone on too long, we view ADHD as “abnormal” and bad. Many people prefer to refer to themselves as “disabled” rather than having a disability, for just this reason. The problem doesn’t reside in the disabled person, but in a society that disables them by not considering their kind of mind or body as an equally valid way of being.
Anyone can become disabled, any day. Any bright little preschooler can go on to be diagnosed with dyslexia. Every child is born with an eagerness to accept the “equally natural and legitimate manifestations of human diversity,” but our culture quickly talks them out of it. I do not think there is a world where we can avoid discomfort, embarrassment, and failure in our attempts to communicate about differences, especially when it comes to our children. But we are fighting against invisible powers here, and we cannot fight passively. Those of us who are part of the “default” group, who are considered “normal” have a lot to lose from living in a world where such arbitrary definitions of superiority abound, just as white people, too, ultimately lose out in a white-supremacist society.
How can we make our homes a place where these messages are internalized? I wish I knew the silver bullet for raising a child free from ableism. Our kids will point and stare at people whose bodies don’t look like theirs. They will want to be faster and smarter than their peers. They will one day stop wearing clothes thought of as belonging to the other gender, or keep wearing them and perhaps feel othered by it.
We know that children already develop racial biases by preschool. My son is five, and I also see his burgeoning awareness of the default brain (“I got the answer more faster!”) and body (“mom, why is that man so short??!”) grow greater every day. But if we only talk about differences in contexts where they are a problem (a kid in his class who wont sit still, someone struggling to find a wheelchair-accessible entrance), he will see them as just that.
So we must open ourselves up to awkward conversations and difficult moments, instead of shushing or ignoring our child’s uncomfortable questions and comments. We must tell our children that meeting someone who is in some way different from what they’ve known can be surprising, but it’s a natural and equally valid way of being. We must point out the ways that our environment disables some people and not others, and think about how the environments we create can be accessible to all (“Is there a way for every kid at your birthday party to hit the piñata without help? Where can kids go when they are overwhelmed and need a break?”). We must ask our kids to notice what is missing when a story only has abled-bodied characters. We must talk about our own brains and bodies, what comes easily to them and what is trickier, how in some situations we are superheroes and in others we struggle. We must paint the vision of a world where there is no such thing as normal.
Like what you read? Subscribe to Sarah’s newsletter on parenting and neurodiversity here.
Media that combats ableism for adults:
The Disability Visibility Project
“Why Everything You Know About Autism is Wrong” Ted Talk
Disability Terminology: Choosing the Right Words When Talking About Disability
Crip Camp Film on Netflix
Atypical on Netflix (for teens too!)
Media that combats ableism for kids:
We Are Little Feminists board book series
Just Ask by Sonya Sotomayor
Sweety by Andrea Zull
El Deafo by Cece Bell