Panties In A Wad

We in the community of developmental disabilities are all in an uproar over the recent Ann Coulter‘s use of the word retard.  Today, I challenge the community to take a step back and look in the mirror.

 If we want to see lasting change, we have to change ourselves. If we truly don’t want people to be devalued by society, then we have to change the way we value the people that we serve. I recently was witness to a professional introducing her brother as a “quad”.   Say What?  A young man speaking at a conference, a person that experiences life with Down syndrome, introduced himself as mentally retarded. This is what we need to be concerned about. This is what we need to change. We so called “professionals” have not changed our words, or supported people to change theirs, so why are we expecting anyone else to.

We, the system, still expect people who experience life with developmental disabilities to live in group homes and attend sheltered workshops. You may argue that each person now has a myriad of choices in the type of service they receive, yet we continue to fund the construction of large group homes, we fund licensed ICF/MR facilities, state run institutions, and sheltered workshops. Our words don’t match our actions.  

So while we are spending time getting our panties untwisted from Ann Coulters comment let’s look at what we can be doing to different to make life long sustainable change to the community – We can start by changing the way we think about service delivery. How can we do this differently to truly benefit the people served? When we start thinking differently we start to believe differently, that opens us up to the possibilities and our expectations change.  When our expectations change, that in turn affects our attitude which in turn changes our behavior.  So, Ann Coulter needs to change her behavior, so do we.