A Word About the R-Word

Recently, one of my friends, Holly, who also has a special needs child, participated in her hometown in a walk to end the R-word and reading about that experience on her blog has gotten me thinking about that darn R word.  For those of you who don't know what R word I mean, I am talking about the word "retard" or "retarded" or "tard".  A word that is thrown around in conversation on a regular, and in my opinion, too frequent basis.   

While the term mental retardation is technically a medical term, the word "retard" has now become a word used to make fun of or put down someone or something.  A few years back, I read a book on the history of mental retardation in America (not fun reading for a mother of a developmentally disabled child) and was surprised to find that the first clinical term for a person with a low i.q. was "moron", but then that word found itself becoming a euphemism for a negative and it was replaced by the term "idiot", which soon suffered the same fate and was then replaced with "mental retardation".

Now, once again, the clinical term for a person with low i.q. has become part of the normal lexicon as a way to make fun or to mock.  Needless to say, "mental retardation" is now being thrown out in the special needs community and replaced with "intellectual disability" or "developmentally disabled" and who knows how long those terms will stay used only in the clinical sense. 

As the mother of a child with developmental disabilities, I cannot tell you how much it offends me to hear that word tossed around.  No matter how it is being used, it is hard for me to not see it as making a mockery of my child and his struggles.

When I hear someone say that word, I want to bring them home with me and have them watch Drew as he works so, so hard to learn to read, have them see the team of people that are needed to help him move forward with things, things that the person tossing around that darn R word probably learned without too much effort.  I want them to see how sad he is that he doesn't have a friend to invite over for a sleepover or see him look at me with his gorgeous blue eyes and ask me what "freak" means.  I want to show them how he is world's greatest hugger and how when he was younger, he could take his giant bin full of GeoTrax and build a track that used all the pieces and connected in every spot.  I want them to know that he has spent the better part of his life in speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, feeding therapy having to do things that are really hard for him and working his butt off. 

I want that R word user to see all of that, to see all this beautiful boy....................

..........and then try and call him a "retard" and see if it is still funny.  See if his struggle and this thing that he didn't ask for is something still to be mocked. 

Before having Drew, I myself was a user of the "retard" term and I get that people don't really think about it so what I am asking is that the next time you find yourself wanting to use that word, stop for a moment and think about my son and then see if it is a word you still want to use.