Changing Attitudes about Disability: A Road Map

by jphilo | May 5, 2020 | Advocacy, Different Dream

Changing Attitudes about Disability: A Road Map

Changing Attitudes about Disability is a new book by today’s guest blogger Dan Vander Plaats. Read on to discover how a short conversation with a waitress motivated Dan to write the book and changed his own attitudes, too.

She didn’t mean to do it. In fact, she hadn’t done anything a million other people hadn’t already done. I had seen it happen so many times that I don’t know why his time it made any difference.

But it did.

She treated me like I was disabled.

Which I was. I was born with damage to a nerve cluster at the base of my brain, causing some slight under-development physically, but more significantly affecting my speech. It’s a pretty obvious speech disability.

I was visiting a restaurant in a midwest city with a few co-workers and two adults who participated in the day program at Elim, where I have worked for 23 years as a fundraiser. The server had done everything right. She came up, introduced herself, and then asked us all our names.

When she heard our program participants speak, with slight slurs and some speech impediments of their own, her head cocked to the side and her voice went up a little in register. It must have seemed to her like this would be the nice way to treat people with disabilities. It even seemed nice to me. Then she turned to me, and I said my name, and she treated me the same way. What had seemed nice now seemed simply condescending. I blushed and tried to laugh it off, but I was angry.

I stewed on it for a couple hours before realizing that the problem wasn’t just that she was condescending, no. There was a bigger problem. The problem was that I hadn’t taken issue with her attitude until it was directed at me. Simply put, I thought I was worthy of different treatment from my friends from Elim.

The problem was my attitude. I thought that people with disabilities should be treated the way they are – that it was simply normal and okay. I also thought that I didn’t fit with that group, because I saw myself as “normal.”

This, brothers and sisters, is the problem. When God formed us, He did not do it differently when it came to people with disabilities. We are all made in His image, fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139). I Corinthians 12:22 says we that those parts of the body that seem weaker are in fact indispensable. Ephesians 2:10 says we are all masterpieces with work to do. The problem is that we don’t listen to this; we too often deceive ourselves into believing that there is an us and a them, and “them” have disabilities.

That night, after leaving the restaurant, I wrote the first draft of The 5 Stages, a tool that has been translated many times and is helping churches and Christians around the world assess their attitudes about people with disabilities.

Recently, Dordt Press released a booklet called Changing Attitudes About Disabilities where you can learn more about these attitudes.

If you happen to visit a steakhouse in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, maybe you could hand a copy to the server who inspired the book, and this blog post.

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Dan Vander Plaats is the Director of Advancement at Elim, a global, Christian disability ministry based in Crestwood, Illinois. Dan serves on the advisory committee for a bi-denominational Disability Concerns. In 2009, he developed The 5 Stages: Changing Attitudes to help churches and individuals assess and change their attitudes toward people with disabilities, and he’s the author of Changing Attitudes about Disability. He is married to Denise (Hiemstra), and is father to Ben and Emma.

Author Jolene Philo

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My Child Is Different, but We Have More in Common Than You Think

My child is different, says guest blogger Amy Felix, and yet. And yet, Amy knows that parents of typical kids and parents of kids with special needs have much in common. That commonality, she also believes, is what will help us raise a new generation of compassionate and kind adults.

When she was younger, you thought it was cute. The way she jumped up and down excitedly and repeated everything I said. Her big, green eyes and sweet, round angel face were the first things you’d notice when she entered the room. Her meltdowns were, in your mind, toddler tantrums and you gave me that “I’ve been there, too” smile to relieve the tension you could tell I was feeling. We were the same back then. You and I were just parents, and we understood each other without having to say a word.

Then she got older.

My little girl isn’t so little anymore and, suddenly, there’s a great divide. Now my child is different. You still give me that polite parent-to-parent smile when we enter the room, but when she gets excited or upset–we’re no longer the same, you and me.

Now you’re staring.

As she flaps her hands and talks loudly when she’s feeling joy, or paces back and forth with her hands over her ears when she’s upset. Her differences are becoming more and more obvious to you. You look from her to me, sizing me up. When you realize I’ve noticed it, you look away and avoid me. We no longer have an understanding, and it hurts.

We are strangers to one another.

I know that you have no way of knowing that my child has autism. Not all disabilities are visible. Just as I have no way of knowing anything about your child or your life. So, let’s take a step back for a moment, beyond just us. Beyond this situation we’re finding ourselves in.

Our children are here, at this birthday party or that playground, together.

They are taking it all in and, despite what so many articles may say, bullying is not just something that naturally develops as a part of childhood. Bullying starts with us. You and me. Moms and dads. Staring at one another in the presence of our children who, though they are busy eating cake or playing catch, are also busy watching. Those little sponges are absorbing every moment of uncomfortable silence between us. They haven’t treated each other differently yet. Our children haven’t begun to place each other on a scale of differing values.

But they will because my child is different.

Unless we change this judgmental way of interacting. Unless you look at my situation, unless I look at yours, and try to see the positive; try to embrace the differences as special and not strange. Unless we can be more like our children, our children will all-too-soon be more like us–the us that stands divided. The us that doesn’t take the time to try and understand. The us that we’d rather not acknowledge. The window of time is closing in which we still stand a chance to raise a generation of compassionate, open-minded people. So, from one parent to another, this is my plea.

My child is different. So is yours.

They all are, and that’s what makes them breathtakingly beautiful. Please, let’s not take that truth from them and twist it into the lie that they all need to fit into the same mold. If you see my child doing something that you don’t understand, ask me about it! I’d love to explain what makes her unique and I’d love to hear about what makes your child special, too.

As a parent, I’m different.

I have to be, because my children are not your children. Each of these little people have different personalities and need different things from us as moms and dads. Can we please leave the judgmental stares and awkward silence at the door and just support each other? We may be on very different parenting journeys, but we have one thing in common.

We love our children.

There’s nothing we wouldn’t do for them. When we’re faced with differences that feel too great and we don’t know how to relate to one another, let’s just start there. Chances are, we have more in common than you think.

Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the monthly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for both at the bottom of this page.

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My name is Amy Felix. I’ve been married for 10 years to a guy who’s totally out of my league. I’m a homeschooling mom to 4 kids, ranging in age from 9 to 2 years. That’s really enough work on it’s own but, because I love it, I’m a photographer as well. And, in my spare time, I write. My faith is the driving force behind my special needs blog: Appointed To Hope. I’m a firm believer in being real, transparent, and using the gifts of this journey as a way to relate to others in their joy as well as their sorrow. To read more about my adventures in special needs parenting, visit my website at www.appointedtohope.com.