I originally wrote this article in my capacity as Disability Topic Expert on Goodtherapy.org. I now repost it here.
When I was 16 and an academic superstar, I set up a number of appointments to visit Ivy League and other colleges that I might attend the following year. Most of these visits involved campus tours on which my parents would accompany me. A few involved the opportunity to be hosted overnight by current freshmen in their dormitories. Although extremely socially uncomfortable, I managed the Princeton overnight with a modicum of grace. The Princeton campus was suburban and reminded me a lot of the university town in which I had grown up.
Then came the Yale overnight. My mother and I arrived in New Haven, a gritty, tough, urban town, and I went into an office to sign in for my overnight adventure. I came out with maps, keys and information, and was suddenly so overwhelmed with anxiety that I felt I couldn’t follow through with the plan. My mother and I spent the night in her hotel room, and I returned home with my tail between my legs, begging my mother not to tell the rest of my family what had really transpired.
What was this sudden loss of nerve about?
Looking back on it, I now understand that the lore in my family had been that, as long as I over-achieved academically, the fact that I had what was, at that time (I have since gotten some correction), a pretty severe visual impairment would not be an issue in my life. We all bought into that denial and the result was that, while I most certainly was over-achieving academically, I was under-achieving in the areas of developing social skills and confidence and acquiring life skills that I would need to function as an independent adult. Additionally, while I was under-functioning in these areas, others were both over-functioning and over-protecting me. This behavior was so ingrained in our family that even my baby sister participated in it; when we went into an ice cream parlor, she would immediately start whispering all the flavors in my ear so that the spectacle of me straining to see something I could not see or asking publicly for assistance, and very likely holding up the line in the process, could be proactively avoided.
After leaving home at 17, I acquired the life skills I needed pretty quickly and was a fully independent adult, able to work and travel in Europe, by the time I was 21. Acquiring ease with social skills took another few years beyond that and, even now, in my forties, I still struggle internally with social dis-ease on a regular basis.
Could my family, who loved me dearly, have done something to help me develop more normally? I ask this question because I now see young disabled clients of mine in the same position I was in the day I panicked at Yale. Regardless of whether or not they are academic superstars, they are under-functioning in the areas of life and social skills development, while others—their parents, extended family members and teachers--are over-functioning for them. The more these well-intentioned authority figures over-function, the more my clients lose both the opportunity to practice the skills they need to develop and the confidence to try, fail, and try again, until mastery is achieved. The subtle message the over-functioners are, probably completely inadvertently, sending is, “I don’t think you’ll be able to do this.” In some cases, of course, it’s true that people with disabilities can’t do things in the same way that other people do them; but, more often than not, if left to our own devices, we can figure out our own ways of doing things that work just fine for us--including ways that involve asking for help.
Scary and painful as it may be for our parents to watch us attempt things that they don’t think they could do if they had our disabilities, often times, the best thing that they could do for us is stand back, with confidence, and let us try. In the specific case of our being socially excluded because of the ignorance of other children and adolescents, I think the best way parents and teachers could help us is to look for opportunities to teach young people to respect and include people with disabilities; in some (or, perhaps, most) cases, this might require our parents and teachers first to spend time examining their own feelings, beliefs, and/or prejudices.Labels: over-achieving, parenting children with disabilities, under-functioning, young adults with disabilities