What is it like to have an intellectual disability?
ZeroFactorial
Hummingbird
Joined: 18 Aug 2019
Age: 22
Gender: Female
Posts: 18
Location: Istanbul, Turkey
Depends a lot on the type of disability.
In general, all people want to be treated with respect and like other people.
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The river is the melody
And sky is the refrain - Gordon Lightfoot
I notice I am a huge kid, as well, even though I am 26 now. How do you deal with this? It is really hard to take care of myself. I still live with my parents. My IQ is also quite high. My sister's IQ is over 160. But I get nowhere in life
How different? It's beyond quantifying! Hence (I suppose) the very well chosen name Wrong Planet. A different species from a different world: and that's the disability aspect, because it can be hard to survive in this weird alien atmosphere with these freaky NTs all over the place and their freaky ways of communicating and their petty irrational rules which they can't be bothered to explain until after you've broken them...
It isn't like a comparing one car with another car. It's like comparing a 1957 Cadillac Eldorado with a banana milkshake.
In practical terms, my housekeeping and day-to-day living skills are about as good as those of a 12-year-old who's been trusted to stay in the house all alone overnight, and given some pocket-money to go to the shop and buy himself something sensible to eat. Emotionally, I'm roughly as good at keeping my head together as a 6-year-old. I think this is why the phrase "invisible disability" is quite a good one, because people look at me and see the body of an adult walking and talking like an adult, so then they expect me to function like an adult, and when their expectations go unfulfilled, they tend to cope quite badly with the ensuing shock and disappointment!
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You can't be proud of being Neurodivergent, because it isn't something you've done: you can only be proud of not being ashamed. (paraphrasing Quentin Crisp)
America's slaves lacked the ability to write in English what their experience was. Does that make it inane to wonder about that experience?
As someone who works with people with intellectual disabilities, I can tell you they don't see themselves as different. What you commonly hear is something along the lines of, "I know I need help with some things, but at least I'm not ret*d." Of course, that kind of sentiment tends to come from those with higher IQs and who are more independent. I think they are very aware that society views them as different, and this causes a lot of frustration. I knew a middle-age guy with a limited vocabulary who was very aware that men his age were doing a lot of things he couldn't, such as driving and getting married. This was deeply frustrating for him. In general, those with ID seem pretty aware of being treated differently, without knowing why.
America's slaves lacked the ability to write in English what their experience was. Does that make it inane to wonder about that experience?
Excuse me?
I said its inane to ask intellectually disabled folks. I did not say its inane to wonder about it.
By bringing up slavery you're just proving my point.
You wouldn't go on the 2019 world wide web and say "HEY YOU! Former slaves in the American antebellum south! I want you to post about what it was like to be a slave!" for the obvious reason that the folks you are addressing are no longer alive.
Also many slaves, like Frederick Douglas, did learn to read and write, and talk about their experiences.
By the same token its kinda pointless to ask living people who are, by definition, inarticulate, to articulate what its like to be inarticulate (ie why address people who you know are incapable of writing posts on the web to describe what its like to be so mentally disabled that you cant do things like make posts on the web).
Finally - the main body of your post also proves my point: it takes someone like you, who is NOT themselves ID, but has experience with folks who are ID, to articulate to folks on a text based website like this one what it is like to be ID. None of the intellectually disabled folks you worked with could have written your post about what its like to be intellectually disabled.
America's slaves lacked the ability to write in English what their experience was. Does that make it inane to wonder about that experience?
Excuse me?
I said its inane to ask intellectually disabled folks. I did not say its inane to wonder about it.
By bringing up slavery you're just proving my point.
You wouldn't go on the 2019 world wide web and say "HEY YOU! Former slaves in the American antebellum south! I want you to post about what it was like to be a slave!" for the obvious reason that the folks you are addressing are no longer alive.
Also many slaves, like Frederick Douglas, did learn to read and write, and talk about their experiences.
By the same token its kinda pointless to ask living people who are, by definition, inarticulate, to articulate what its like to be inarticulate (ie why address people who you know are incapable of writing posts on the web to describe what its like to be so mentally disabled that you cant do things like make posts on the web).
Finally - the main body of your post also proves my point: it takes someone like you, who is NOT themselves ID, but has experience with folks who are ID, to articulate to folks on a text based website like this one what it is like to be ID. None of the intellectually disabled folks you worked with could have written your post about what its like to be intellectually disabled.
My point is you were being hateful. Even if they can't write it, they can probably tell you. And ID refers to a huge range of capability.
It's not up to me to tell people, but I will tell people if they aren't going to talk to folks with an ID diagnosis.
The reason why you have never thought about this before is because many posters on WP make it sound that only people with an ASD are neurologically atypical and that everybody else's brains have typical wiring, making them all normal. But that is not true. People with intellectual disabilities are neurologically atypical too (in other words, not neurotypical). The nature of intellectual disability is different to autism, although they can still share some traits with us and feel like a social outcast, or some may even need support throughout their whole lives. Intellectual disability is also a spectrum, some people can be mild, whilst others can be more severe. Believe me, I know a lot about this type of thing because I used to volunteer with teenagers with disabilities, and they weren't all autistic but still had other special needs and were not in mainstream school.
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