My last post was on inclusion for people with disabilities, with a strong emphasis on service provision. There is another area where "inclusion" needs to be considered and is perhaps harder to execute - personal interaction.
First, I'll give a broader definition of "inclusion". The definition doesn't focus so much on service provision, but is a more general philosophy:
A person is "included" when you don't (unnecessarily) treat them in a special way. In this definition, we assume that you have some default way to treat most people and 'special way' is defined as anything other than that.This definition prompts that ugly question again - what is "necessary"? You can even argue that there are different levels of "necessary", such as safety, development, happiness, etc. There's also the question of what happens when you don't have a "default way". I will get to that later. The key point is:
"Inclusion" is all about trying to remove unnecessary special treatment of individuals.
It is fairly obvious how this applies to service provision. It means adding wheelchair ramps to regular buses, and getting rid of the special bus for people with wheelchairs. It means not having a separate room where children with disabilities go to learn. Canada seems to have tackled most of these issues already, and been quite successful from what I've seen and heard.
It is less obvious how this applies to personal interaction. We interact with our mothers, our siblings, our workmates, our neighbours, our children, etc in quite different ways. There is no well-defined "default way" to interact with other people because our relationships are all different. Is it acceptable to have a "special way" for interacting with a person with developmental disabilities? Perhaps it is, and I would assume there will always be some interactions which are unique to that individual.
But, as a society, we have some standard conventions for interacting with other adults. If we want to "include" a person with a developmental disability, these rules should still be followed unless we feel it is really "necessary". Off the top of my head, some of these conventions are:
- Avoid one-word command sentences (eg. "Come" vs "Come here please.")
- Avoid person-specific rote phrases (phrases which trigger behaviour)
- Provide a choice (eg. "Drink this milk" vs "Would you like milk?")
- Allow time to respond (the length of time varies per person)
- Follow their focus (observe their interests before pointing out yours)
- Avoid prompting (key phrases that supplement a normal conversation)
It's cute, but also indicates that I'm perhaps not doing enough to interact with Timothy in a normal manner. I say that same phrase every single time I see him in the morning. That single phrase by itself is fine, but using it every time does not represent anything close to the normal range of human interaction. I'm failing to interact with Timothy in a manner that I would use for a 29-year-old brother-in-law.
Why is this important? The idea behind "inclusion" is that a person with a disability will benefit when we (at least try to) treat them the same as others. They deserve a richer life, not a dumbed-down set of command sentences and rote interactions. Limiting his interactions with other people is no different to placing him in a separate classroom. We, particularly those of us who are deemed caregivers, must be critical and question our own interactions to ensure we're not falling into a trap of command sentences, rote phrases, prompting, and just generally "managing the individual".
P.S. I feel that some people will respond and say "rote interactions are normal", like saying "Hi, how're you doing?". That is true, but for Timothy to develop further we need to avoid rote interactions like the plague. His disability lends itself to rote interactions, and so his life is full of them. If we want to go beyond his disability we need to avoid frequent rote interactions.
