to hate the term "special needs"

[witchandchips]

to find it at best patronising and at worst offensive. What does a wheelchair user have in common with some one on the austic spectrum? Apart from allocating funding across schools why do we need a catch all term, surely it plays into the hands of those who think anybody different is "stupid"

mabanana - yes - although I can see that it is a political approach and a good basis from which to campaign and demand 9legitimately, imo) an environment and an approach which DOES remove every obstacle and barrier that can be avoided.

Onager - if you have to call ahead etc than the obstacle has only been removed to an extent. If the place had been built or adapted to be really accessible than none of that would be necessary.

I think it's a great starting point for a campaign and a benchmak of rights. If new buildings have access 'designed in' - and that means fo people with sensory as well as mobility disabilities - then they are generally easier for everyone to use, children, old peolee, those with loads of shopping, heavily pg etc etc.

I suppose in the case of AS conditions then a v large part of the disability is as a result of other people's attitude, obdurateness in understanding the child's needs in school, lack of actual support to meet specific needs - SALT, 1-to-1 assistance in school, negative attitudes in public etc.

Yes and if they went out of a town onto rough terrain the natural countryside would be disabling..

the disability community, while wedded to the social model do acknowledge the medical issues too. Its not one or the other!

Riven - indeed.

It's not the bit that tends to feature in Equality Traiining days though - as a result of the perfectly legitimate need to campaign and get people to make provision where they can.

I think the term of reference for the social model is usually the 'built environment'

and people's attitudes.

I prefer additional needs but don't really have a problem with SN being used. I find having a catch all quite useful as it saves getting into any explanations of Ds's actual needs.

Agree with pagwatch

I prefer special needs to handicapped. But I dislike "oh yes it's all suitable for special needs" when what they mean is there's a ramp and a wide automatic door. That'll help some wheelchair users but won't be enough for others, and probably doesn't help someone with a child who runs away all the time.

And I don't want a disabled toilet, I want an accessible one. Properly accessible with a changing bench.

What really does set my teeth on edge is when someone says "She IS special needs" as opposed to "She HAS special needs" - No she isn't, she's a girl. I do agree though, additional needs would work better.

i don't mind sn
I don't like accessible. as if you have an accessible toilet you have to que up with the mums and buggies. what is wrong with a disabled toilet for disabled people!!
as for the lovely idea that is the environment that disables the person. what piffle.
I wish it was true, then as we have full disabled access in our house d's disability would vanish on entering as she would be able to access it.
of course it wouldn't she would still be in her wheelchair requiring support to access it.
additional needs is fine for with a disability that it suits or might need more help in a setting.
but sadly a lot of disabilities go way beyond that.

Compared to terms used in the past like "educationally subnormal", "retarded", "handicapped",
"spastic" I think that "special needs" is fairly polite.

Yes, it is a big catch all, but if you subsituted a term like "additional needs" then people would soon become offended by that.

I think it depends on the context the term is being used. Its one thing to have a "special needs registered" but it is unreasonable to say a child is special needs or a child is additional needs. It is far better to say a child with special/ additional needs.

wonderstuff on Mon 06-Oct-08 12:12:13
"But onager once you put in the ramp and the lift etc the wheelchair user is no more disabled than you, they are able to access the building in the same way iyswim, the stairs disable them. I teach a child with one hand, and i don't notice it because in my lessons she is doesn't present a problem, so she isnt 'disabled' at that time. "

But Wonderstuff, once you had put in the ramp etc, my daughter would still be in pain. You might not notice it, if she was in your class, but she does. She will always be disabled, because chronic pain is disabling. You can't take that away from her. The situation can be improved by aids which prevent her from overstraining, but she can't ever be like someone who hasn't got that experience. Pretending that it is the same because that makes us more comfortable isn't actually very helpful.

Besides, I think that whole idea is piffle, as Saint says. The point about disability is that it leaves you dependent on other people. You may have excellent aids and brilliant carers, but it's not going to be the same as not depending on aids or people. As dd said to me once when I talked about never having cared about being popular at school: 'Well, that's nice for you! You can afford that. I can't because I need the others to help me'. Point taken- I had a choice, she doesn't.

RT, surely when those old words started being used they did not have any of the connotations they have today?

"retarded" - just means delayed development
"handicapped" - means having some sort of disability
"educationally subnormal" - takes in half the population
"spastic" - means just that, as a child my sister was routinely called it as a playground term of abuse, but I've not heard it since. It was a medical term and there are still spastic societies AFAIK.

Pagwatch is right, it doesn't matter what words you come up with, that minority of fuck wits will sneer.

I agree reallytired. I say ds has sn or he is a child with sn but never that he is SN. I hate that expression.

It is obviously grammatically correct to say "with SN" rather than "is SN". But the latter use reflects ignorance rather than malice.

I know upwind - it just bugs me

Most of the words we now find objectionable were simply descriptions at the time, and not meant particularly as insults. My Mum does her family tree and some of the old censuses have a section to tick for "moron" or "cretin" IIRC - Someone she was speaking to was shocked at them using such "insulting" words, but at the time they were simply the terms used to describe people with SN/learning difficulties/mentally handicapped/whatever.

What matters is the attitude, and the willingness to try to treat people as individuals, and help them to achieve their potential, far more than the words.

I do agree that "She HAS special needs" is better than "She IS special needs", but it is only a figure of speech. I was regularly asked "are you free school dinners" but I didn't take it to heart.

When we were looking at schools a teacher said 'we say additional needs because we are all special aren't we' !!

I am very new to (and still very caught up in the emotional whirlwind of) the world of "Special Needs", but to give my perspective as a mother of a newly 'flagged' daughter with "SN", I would say this:

I cringe when I say that the pre-school feel DD has SN. Not because I feel ashamed or upset or embarrassed, but because I then have to go on to explain what that means for DD. She appears to be intellectually OK, but behaviourally and developmentally 'behind'. How far, I don't know, or why. Yet.

But it is a relief to say that DD probably has SN, because then I can make it clear to people who know us that DD isn't being naughty, she just has slightly different wiring.

All the phrase 'Special Needs' has done for DD, is to secure her funding for 1:1 for every pre-school session she attends. I am grateful that it is a wider term, because it fits DD and means that she gets help we didn't know she needed.

God I HATE the term too. But not as much as 'neurotypical' which seems to be acceptable used by people on the autistic spectrum to describe people who aren't.

Yeah right, like everyone has the same wiring in the brain, apart from if you've been diagnosed ASD. Grrrr, loathe it, there is NO such thing as a 'neurotypical' person - we are all unique.

My annoyance with neurologically typical when its used on mumsnet is the assumption that its the opposite to special needs. Many children have special needs and healthy brains.

For example children who are blind or deaf usually have effective and reasonable functioning brains, but do have major special needs.

Although, Reallytired, children who are blind or deaf are often NOT NT because there is some aspect of their brain which has not allowed their eyes to see or ears to hear. So they can be NT in the sense of intellectual ability, but still not NT in the sense of what you would typically expect in the development of a child.

I.e. My DD, recently been flagged as having behavioural and developmental delays/ needs, could be described as 'NT' for intellect, but NOT NT for behaviour/ development. So you would be wrong to describe her as NT, yet also wrong to assume that means she has lowered intelligence.

The problem with this lazy usage (and I am guilty of it) is that there is no modern up-to-date pc version that describes a person-without-special/additional-needs. And sometimes, such a term is convenient. As in, "parents with NT children can't understand what it's like". (time was when you could say normal- but that is long past).

In actual fact, I don't know whether dd is neurotypical or not: there is a suggestion that people with HMS also have a problem with the wiring of the brain which leads to misinterpretation of pain signals. I think the jury is still out on that one. So I either have an NT child with SN, or a child with SN who is also not NT. Life is complicated...

I prefer additional needs to special needs, it is less patronising.

"Although, Reallytired, children who are blind or deaf are often NOT NT because there is some aspect of their brain which has not allowed their eyes to see or ears to hear."

There are plenty of children with hearing problems where the hearing problems are caused by conductive deafness or damage to cochelar. Often their brains are fine. MRI scans often show that their brains are normal.

I know some very bright people who are profoundly deaf and do not have behaviour issues. They have their own culture, language and community.