To think a lot of MN are ableist?

[Sweetlifeofyours]

So I wasn’t going to post but as a mum with a disabled child myself I feel like I have to get things off my chest. I have read a couple of threads over the past week or so regarding mothers who are looking for advice and support for their disabled child/children (2 that stick out to me)

I was very sad to see that there were only a few posters who actually gave support and advice to the OP’s. The rest were in my opinion, downright rude and nasty and clearly just wanted to upset the OP’s even more for whatever reason.

As a mum with a SEN child, it is incredibly difficult and I myself don’t always get the correct help and support I need so to come on here and see that other women/parents show their (somewhat) true opinions of disabled children upset me.

I am completely 100% on board that autism shouldn’t be an excuse for everything, but surely some compassion wouldn’t go amiss to a struggling parent.

One of the worst things I read was a poster saying to the OP that they should make sure their child doesn’t turn into a sex offender because he enjoys hugs. Says more to me about the poster rather than the OP and their child.

I guess my AIBU is, do you think people (maybe especially on here) should have more compassion for the disabled community or have you read threads where you agree with the majority of comments (especially where we are talking about young children)?

We will have to agree to disagree. The privilege is in having a welfare state.

i'm not parenting. i'm caring, there is a difference.

i have two kids. both 16+
one can dress, wash themselves, cook for themselves, feed themselves, walk to college by themselves, look after a phone, a bank account and learn to drive.

The other can do none of that. He needs constant help and supervision. My parenting of him, and my caring for him are different roles. It's like having a 19yo toddler in my care.

So no, the government is not helping me meet my parenting responsibility, they are paying me to be his carer, instead of paying an actual carer NMW while i go out to work.

You disagree with easily available statistics?

We will have to agree to disagree.

I am not attempting to start a conflict. The issue is that you continue to circulate incorrect information despite multiple posters having already provided accurate corrections. Repeating the same inaccuracies does not transform them into facts.

Identifying misinformation in your posts is not antagonistic, nor does it derail the discussion. This thread exists to highlight the ongoing problem of certain contributors on MN and their attitudes toward disabled children and adults. Unfortunately, your repeated submissions have illustrated that problem with remarkable clarity.

I don’t think you can dictate what people with disabilities can and can’t do.

“There needs to be less 'you have ASD/ADHD therefore you CANT' and more 'you can if you work and find ways around it and with your disability”

is quite offensive.

Some would say what you and your kids are doing is not exactly challenging. The careers that other ND people may be a lot more challenging. ND is a spectrum and is far more challenging in how it presents for many. Who are you to say what they can or can’t do?

I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with.

To get Carers allowance i have to prove to the government that i am doing 35+ hours of care for a disabled person. That person could be anyone in receipt of higher rate care DLA or PIP. CA is there to act as a wage, its even taken into account as a taxable sum that i have to declare as Earnings for pension contributions.

But they are your own words!

because telling someone there is no chance of them ever achieving something is abusive, and stops people from even trying.

It isn't about 'dictating' anything.. its about opening their eyes to the possibilities of challenging themselves.

Do you think any of the CIN challenge squad would have even tried what they did if parents and drs and the professionals around them told them they'd never be able to do it?

And you have zero evidence that that happens .

What on earth are you on about?

I could say the same to you.

Professionals and parents don’t tell their newly diagnosed kids that they can’t do anything. 9 times out of 10 they get a diagnosis to help them achieve to the best of their ability .

Taking strong views is one thing, posting poorly conceived nonsense is quite another and it is the latter that you are being, understandably, challenged on. Trying to play the injured party who has no idea what they've done to deserve such robust responses is a little disingenuous.
I can speak from personal experience as someone who actually benefitted from the reasonable adjustments for disabled children during exams which you appear to have such a bee in your bonnet about.
My question papers were given to me in braille, with tactile diagrams where appropriate. By your logic, sighted students should also be given papers in braille, so that we are all getting the same treatment, though I'm not sure what good it would have done them!
Fortunately, when I was taking my A-levels, the exam board were willing to accept electronic transcripts so I was able to write answers on my laptop.
However, when I did my GCSEs a couple of years earlier, they had no facility to accept electronic submissions. Therefore, in order to complete my GCSE exams, I required a scribe and, for obvious reasons, a separate room in which to complete my exams. I also had a great deal of extra time. You may be horrified by all of this special treatment but I'd warrant you have never had to dictate a Latin to English translation of Caesar's war diaries, compose and dictate an essay on crop rotation during the agrarian revolution, specify the placement of data on various graphs or describe a diagram of a plant's reproductive system out loud to someone else. All this with no way of visually checking your work so far so needing to get the scribe to read parts of your answers back to you repeatedly. Believe me, this all takes a lot more time than simply being able to write and check your own work.
I did very well in my GCSEs, achieving nine A*S. Maybe you will say this diminishes my achievement as I had more time than my non-disabled peers, though I am confident that none of them would have willingly exchanged my exam experience, with all its attendant challenges, for theirs.

If the only gripe about disability was apparent disadvantage to other pupils in schools from children with autism or ADHD having extra support perhaps there would be less heat in discussion about disability etc etc but that’s most likely just what some posters will say to sound like “discussion about disability “ is impossible because some people get upset (fucking right they do).

Disability isn’t about having a life-long medical condition or life-long pain - both being presumably horrendous for the most part.
It is about being unable to do what most others can do.
Education or work will be part of that picture but so will driving, walking, talking, eating, washing, toileting, managing money, sleeping and so on.
Anything benefits related is supposed to help a person who is disabled be more able - it isn’t meant to compensate for “merely” (ie solely) having the condition.
I think that the fudging the issue of cost to a State versus the dignity and humanity of the person experiencing the inability to do things most regular people can do (whether with pain or a bit or often) is the source of much of what is reasonably being described as “ableist” by people defending disabled people .
In many circumstances (on MN but not this thread that I’ve noticed) are actually meeting the definition of hate speech.

When people complain about taxis to schools I often do what pps above do - explain the statuary obligation of the State to enable safe transportation to school and how few specialist schools there are, how far away they are. That reasonable response gets nowhere. I’m far more inclined now to ask “hands up who wants their child (with or without disability) to share transportation with my doubly incontinent child when she has a poo en route? Who wants their child sitting next to her having thick secretions suctioned out of her mouth or watching her vomit if her food hasn’t digested for one reason or another “..,
Or .. who wants to tell her special school to open the gates to parents before 9am so that they can then teleport back to employment 40 minutes in a different direction.

Please don’t bother telling me she doesn’t deserve to live etc etc I’m beyond bored of that narrative and if anyone who thinks that wants to pop around and help her achieve this “natural end” I’ll give you my address- let’s see how well it goes faces with the happiest and sweetest person I know.

Holy fuckballs batman.

Yes, i know.

If you follow the quote history i was talking to someone who was talking about a post made upthread where someone said they knew a child with ADHD who had been told they couldn't do something because of their ADHD and was sitting around on benefits because of it.

I even said that was either bad practice or bullshit because you shouldn't tell anyone that.

I have no idea why you're coming at me so aggressively for saying i don't think its right to tell anyone with a disability that they CANT do something because i firmly believe everyone should be encouraged to challenge themselves, rather than being kneecapped before they've even tried.

Statistics aren't relevant.

I believe that when we a child we have a life long parental responsibility to love, care and support that child. As such it is the parents responsibility to look after / support disabled children, first and foremost. Parents have a right to support from the welfare state to do this. This means that looking after a 16 old who cannot and will never be able to dress themselves independently is not doing the State a favour. It's part of what we sign up for when we decide to become parents. It isn't fair that some children are disabled and may need life long care, but that it is a risk every pregnant woman or parent faces - it may not be obvious a child is disabled at birth or they may become disabled due to an accident at some point in their life.

TLDR: I have a different view to those posters. It's neither right or wrong, just different. Hence we should agree to disagree.

That parents who look after disabled children at home are doing the state a favour.

My point is that the Task Force are working with the relatively newly expanded criteria and finding shock horror that lots of people fall within it and don't have a diagnosis. Does that mean that the criteria is correct and all these people are actually disabled by their ADHD traits to the point where they should be considered disabled? That's the bit that is controversial.

Again, drawing on the sight analogy. There are lots of people with what would widely be considered as having uncorrectable bad eyesight that wouldn't be considered disabled. This could absolutely hamper their day to day activities. They have to meet a certain threshold before they're considered disabled. It's not like everyone one side of the threshold can see perfectly and everyone the other side has no sight whatsoever. There is a pretty massive grey area as there is with most conditions and ADHD will be even more suceptible to this kind of non-binary presentation.

Where we draw the threshold is often largely subjective and to a certain extent has to be based on what's practical and distinct enough from the general population to be an actual disability. This is a subject of much debate in the scientific community. It's completely right that this is factored into any discussions regarding ADHD and also that the fact that it's not a binary, black and white condition is recognised. There is a hell of a lot of grey and it's doing lots of people a great disservice to deny this.

Parents can’t work full time and look after their disabled child full time. If parents didn’t do it, the state would have to. Or do you have another suggestion?

That comes in because if i chose not to do it, they'd be in care, or they'd need a full time carer who would need to be paid for. Which would be a LOT more expense to the council/taxpayer/nhs.

As neither of those options were right in my mind, there was never any question of my not doing it.

I agree its my job as his parent to do the caring, but in doing so, i'm saving the government money that would otherwise need to pay for his care, therefore, saving the government money. I am not being a 'sahm' who chooses to not to work. I'm a Carer.

I don't understand your stance of disagreeing with that view.

I think most people would support the state stepping in in situations like this to help the parent care for their own child. It's why we have a welfare state for families to fall back on and I think we should all be grateful for that as we all could need it one day.

This is slightly different though than suggesting the parent is doing the state a favour caring for their own children. This is a form of a blackmail that basically suggests that ultimately the child is the state's responsibility more than the child is the parent's responsibility. I think this is wrong! We all roll the dice when we have children and I believe we are all ultimately responsible for the children we bring into this world. Obviously there are times when we can't meet all our children's needs and we require help but I don't think that absolves us of having the ultimate responsibility to our children. It is a very dangerous precedent to set to suggest otherwise as really what's to stop all parents that are finding it difficult and tough playing that card and blackmailing the state?

I believe that primary responsibility should reside with the parents. One parent takes full time care of their child the other goes out to work. The welfare state provides support. There is no doing a favour for the state.

A disabled child that needs caring for, not just parenting, needs a carer. Taking the emotion out of it, it is a job that needs doing. It is extra to parenting. Therefore in a society like ours with an established welfare state, a parent caring for their child, not just parenting them, is a job. Someone else would need to do it if they didn’t and that’s what they mean by favour.

I am not being a 'sahm' who chooses to not to work. I'm a Carer.

Judging and virtue signaling does nothing to strengthen your argument.

Does looking after you own children in your home only have value if the child is disabled?

Being an ableist is wrong but ableism isn't?