Speaker 1Hello and welcome to the How Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast, the bucket-emptying episodes. I'm your host, Dr Mary Han, psychologist and parenting expert. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation because today, absolute corker, I am joined by Cathy Ray, journalist and author and mum of two disabled children. Welcome, Cathy. Hi, thanks for having me. Oh, my pleasure. Now, Cathy's book, link in the show notes, has just been published and so we're going to be talking very specifically around how do we have conversations with our children about disability and is that different, a different type of conversation when we're talking about seen and unseen disability?
Speaker 2So, I think I want to actually start answering this with a kind of bit of background that I think we often gloss over or forget or maybe don't really think about and that is that disability affects everyone. It's not some mythical, far-off, kind of really scary, we avoid it thing and I think this is something a lot of people don't realise. Children have already been exposed to disability lots of times, even before you start talking about it. Maybe that's through having elderly parents. Maybe that's through having elderly grandparents or through someone they know having an accident or even becoming unwell because temporary disabilities are still disabilities. Or it could be through someone they know being classically disabled. And when I say classically, a lot of the conversation around disability centres on being physically disabled and being disabled in a way that is very represented in the media. So, for example, you might be a wheelchair user, you might have dwarfism, that kind of thing. Right. The spectrum of disability is so vast, so vast. And there are disabilities that are obvious to us on meeting somebody and there are disabilities that we would never know about unless somebody shared. And as I said before, there are disabilities that are temporary, there are disabilities that are permanent. We're all disabled sometimes, some more often than others and some for longer than others. And that's just a fact. And I wanted to say that to start off with because I think it's really important that we don't have this us and them kind of mythical division when we talk about disability. Because that's one of the things that makes us intimidated to be disabled, almost, because we're putting this divide between us and seeing disabled people. Well, if we're human as non-disabled people, seeing disabled people as other, when in reality, we are all. all together. And as I said before, we are all disabled sometimes anyway. So if we think about disability like that, we're actually having conversations around it quite a lot. And we're making accommodations for disabled people all the time. For example, maybe mum has a migraine today so she asks the kids to make her a cup of tea or bring her things. Or dad is going through depression and the kids know he needs some processing time alone. Grandma needs a shoulder to hold onto as she stands or grandpa can't read the subtitles on TV, so you need to read them for him. We are making accommodations all the time for disabled people. We're just not saying that's what it is. And so I think bringing disability closer to home, into the home, can help kids realise it's not an us and them conversation and it's certainly not a pity them conversation. Rather, it's about teaching kids compassion and an openness to collaboration that's sadly rarely seen in society, which so often glorifies hyper independence. It's about working together to identify everyone's needs and ensure they're being met as far as possible. And obviously working together to bulldoze any barriers in the way. I think another way that we often view disabled people and disability is oh, okay, well, they're less able to do things and I'm more able to do things because I'm not disabled right now. And so I need to help and I need to do this. And so I need to be able to say, gee, disabled people are the most resourceful, adaptable, ingenious people I've ever met. And we can do loads of things, we just might not be able to do the same things as you. So working together and identifying all of our strengths and collaborating on those things is really, really important, because we have a lot to bring to the table
Speaker 1as well. I love the way that you've introduced so many of these small aspects of the reality is we all experience some form of disability at some point in our lives. And I think that's what we need to do. disability at some point and it's the I love that right you're wearing
Speaker 2glasses you're disabled
Speaker 1like we just don't genuinely it's such an interesting I guess it's about breaking those stereotypes isn't it there's an assumption I mean I'm in my sort of mid-50s so you know in terms of having conversations around disability has moved on a huge amount given the sort of the era that I would have been raised in in the 70s but actually it is about trying to break some of these ingrained stereotypes that we have and broadly seeing all of those things you know grandma needing a little bit of an extra lift to get out of a chair or reading the sort of the subtitles on the television but how do we so we our children are as you say seeing disability all the time so we're we're walking somewhere we're at a playground we're walking into town we're in the supermarket and children are naturally curious aren't they how do we then have a compassionate conversation that doesn't create stereotypes when our children either ask us questions or we have a real direct opportunity to this is a moment where I can have a conversation with my child about disability I
Speaker 2think something that's important to say is that disabled people aren't and when I say disabled people I mean people who are who are very apparently disabled in a permanent way they're not a teaching point in the sense that yes you can you can use your experience of of of encountering countering a disabled person to talk later to your child about it but I don't really like and I'm not saying you've just done this you absolutely haven't but sometimes the conversation is like oh well just go go and the tip is go and ask the disabled person go and say hello and ask you know and and ask them any questions you like so that you can not be afraid of them but we are not there to teach you like we are not there to make you feel better or not afraid right that is not our job you're not paying me for that so to be accosted on the street by a small child is is is a lot and we don't necessarily want that and so I think it's really important to use those moments and to reflect on them with your child and to talk to them about them but not when we're there later on and kids can remember so that's the first thing I wanted to say but it's yeah it's super important so like obviously I'm a I'm very apparently disabled in a very permanent way well this disability any other disability I acquire we'll see but my children are also disabled uh similarly to me now we have a lot of disabled people in our life whether they have dwarfism or a different disability or a combination of disabilities but we still encounter other people who have other disabilities and sometimes my kids are caught off guard and they want to ask questions about it and that's absolutely fine and so when we're at home they they know by now that I won't answer questions when we're in the middle of the park but when we're at home or uh or later on you know uh my child might say one of my children might say how come this person looked this particular way or behaved this particular way you know and then I'll talk to them and I'll just kind of say well I think maybe that person's disabled in in a way that's different to us and that means that the way they're interacting with the world is is going to be different and I'll just say that kind of thing and to be honest kids don't need much more than that they don't need much more than that and often also relating it back to as I said to to you before like disability is already in your home relating it back to that is really important because although you know you might be seeing somebody who is I don't know maybe non-verbal having an epileptic seizure in the park let's say and that's so far removed from the disability that's in your home or the disability that you've ever experienced before there is always underlying factors that are actually not that removed so when you say to your kids oh well that that child or that adult might have epilepsy and this is something that causes your body to behave in that way sometimes they're completely used to it the people around them are used to it and they know that they're not going to be able to do it and they're not going to know how to bring the body back to a calm state and it's not something to be afraid of you know you might say that but you then you can also say another thing that's not something to be afraid of is when mummy can't see because her migraines are so bad and we know that's a temporary thing for mummy as well don't we and how that's really scary at the time because she really needs our help but she's absolutely fine you know and and you know just connecting it to those experiences it really is a very important thing to do and I think it's a really important thing to do and I think it really humanizes it and makes it you know something that kids are like oh okay so everybody experiences disability in a different way and that's and no one experience is more terrifying or more pitiful than the other yeah I
Speaker 1think you've raised a few points and actually I i have done the absolute classic walk into the stereotype let's have a conversation with our children because we've seen somebody in a particular situation and now we need to kind of have this big teachable moment and actually what you're saying is and that just shows how ingrained these stereotypes are that fundamentally we're having these conversations all the time it's not a big one it's not a one moment conversation and then phew i've had the disability conversation
Speaker 2i think as parents we're very like oh we must get this right so that our child doesn't grow up to be mean to these people you know we put all this pressure on ourselves but actually it's much smaller than we think and i think the the bigger deal we make of it sometimes the bigger deal they'll then make of it and
Speaker 1actually it's much more around those moment-to-moment conversations around just generally we are all going to experience disability at some point our children are going to see it around them quite often with the accommodations that they make for grandparents and or us as their parents and or friends and when they're poorly and i think it is around that can i ask kathy one particular thing in terms of the sort of terminology just to kind of close off the sort of the language that we use do we talk about disability because in lots of ways when we talk about additional learning needs i mean you know my view is that everybody has additional learning needs because we need to accommodate our own peculiarities when it comes to learning new information do you advocate for that type of language in terms of disability um
Speaker 2as in do i advocate for the word disability and disabled yeah yeah absolutely i mean my book is called how to be disabled and proud right and it's for it's for any child that experiences disability which again is any child in the world and uh and there's a whole bit in that about how you know the word disabled has been used and can be used by people in a cruel way in a in a shameful way but that's not actually ours to own and that's not the words that's not the word's intention or the word's meaning you know um that is the feelings of people putting something putting their feeling or their how they feel scared of disability or how they feel intimidated by disability onto a word and we don't have to own that and so part of you know being comfortable in your disabled identity is kind of realizing that you as a disabled person you can be you can be on the receiving end of a lot of projections but we don't have to own any of them we can say no and actually calling ourselves disabled it's radical in itself because we are disabled primarily by things that are nothing to do with us by society and by other people and many people so disabled within their own bodies you know especially i'm thinking particularly of chronically ill people and things like that you know who experience a lot of pain and and would experience that whether they were out doing something or not but the fact of the matter is that disabled isn't a bad word it's just an explanation of of how we kind of fit in to this world that expects so much
Speaker 1yeah i think and i think it's it's probably much more about our relationship with the word than the word itself and and it's kind of getting comfortable with the fact that it is a word that describes it's completely neutral just like
Speaker 2saying i have brown hair i say this in the book saying i have brown hair i have white skin i'm disabled you know these things should be neutral because they're just facts
Speaker 1brilliant kathy thank you so much for that that was so helpful there will be links in the show notes specifically for the book and i would highly recommend that you purchase the book because i think it's part of a general parenting um it's part of that broader aspect of parenting and i think it's a really important conversation that we need to be having now as ever if you've enjoyed this episode i would be eternally grateful if you could rate follow and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love so until next time you
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