I agreed to take part in a blogging challenge this week but
nearly didn’t participate when the challenge was the above topic. The brief was to blog about what is normal
in your household due to having a child with a disability. Difficult for me as I write from the point
of view of having a Granddaughter with different needs. I help care for her so I could write about
my routine with her which would be unique and normal for me now, but then after
giving this considerable thought I came to the conclusion that was not going to
keep anyone interested for very long, but I do have opinions about the whole
concept of ‘normal’ when used to describe people.
According to the dictionary the meaning of normal is:
“Conforming with, adhering to, or constituting a norm,
standard, pattern, level, or type; typical:”
So therein lies my problem – What is a normal person? If a certain make of car is tested
thoroughly and found to veer slightly to the left when being driven at 70mph
then it would be fair to say that that is normal behaviour for that make of
car. But how can you equate that to a
human being? If our individuality is
taken away and we are made to think the same and act and look the same then we
cease to become part of the human race.
It is our individuality, our uniqueness, our lack of ‘normal’ that makes
us who we are.
The same can be said of the person with a disability. They are still people in their own right
they still have needs (some different perhaps) and feelings like everyone
else. We all form part of the wheel of
life and the uniqueness of each individual is what keeps the wheel balanced and
turning. Having said that, I really do
believe there is a danger sometimes of becoming so absorbed in wanting such
people to be treated as equals in society that we may sometimes unwittingly do
more harm than good.
Do you remember the ‘swat’ at school – you may even have
been that person! If you were the
chances are you had a rather lonely and perhaps sheltered childhood. You see the school swat was different from
the rest of the class (the normal ones), he handed in his homework on time, he
got good grades and because of this he was always being talked about and
praised by the teachers. The teachers
were proud of this person, they wanted everyone to realise this and kept
pointing this out at every opportunity, but the ‘normal’ children did not like
the school swat because he was made out to be different from them.
I think that the word normal should be deleted from our
language it could save us a lot of problems!
Nice one Anne! Reading this post, I'd be surprised if your routines & perspectives as a grandma of a special needs child were boring! Love the dodgy car analogy & agree we strive too hard to treat people as equals. The current trend is to over-medicalise IMHO :-)
ReplyDeletei agree - here here! our uniqueness, our wish to be seen as "me" takes us away from being normal. we are all different, able or disabled and we should strive to encourage acceptance of one and all.
ReplyDeletei have read your story to date, nanny anne and i wish that i could adopt you as my girls' grannie. your daughter is lucky to have you and i bet that you are a constant support to her. she's so very lucky to have you... thank you for sharing your side of jess' story x
ReplyDeleteThank you for the kind comments so far.
ReplyDeleteLiked the car analogy Anne. You're right, perhaps we overuse the word normal and place to much emphasis on people being the same rather than individuals, whether they have additional needs or not.
ReplyDelete