You know someone with a learning disability. You may realise that, or may not. You may want to ask about it, but don’t know how. One of my sons, Wayne, has a learning disability. My wife and I realised that he was behind in his development – some way behind – when we adopted him, aged seven, but were told that that he’d ‘catch up.’ He didn’t – well not in the sense we’d expected – but has grown up to be able to live independently of our family.
I’ve chosen those words carefully
He is independent of us, but lives in a house with five other men with learning difficulties, with full time carers. Getting to that stage really mattered to us, and, although he didn’t realise it, to Wayne. By the age of twenty, when home from college, he was the only one who couldn’t go out unaccompanied, and the only one of our adult children who had little or no experience apart from us. He was missing the opportunity to do things apart from us, and to be able to come home and swap experiences about things he’d done without us. “So what…?” you might say, but that is a key part of an adult’s relationship with family, that his siblings enjoyed and he didn’t.
Learning differently
Living with Wayne through his childhood we realised that his inability to learn in the same way as the rest of us didn’t mean he couldn’t learn or didn’t. It meant he learnt differently, and worked with a different reality. In the words of a wonderful friend of mine, and advocate for those with physical disabilities, his was a ‘diff-ability’. Within the family this was referred-to as ‘Wayne logic.’ There was always a line of reasoning to it, but sometimes it had some gaps, and sometimes it led to some conclusions that didn’t work well in wider society.
His time at school was a bit of a roller-coaster for this reason. In a mainstream school, and then a mainstream FE college, before going to a specialist college, he encountered a world with confusing language, strange social cues and expectations, and risks of exploitation all around him, both deliberate and unintended. Yet through all this he is a wonderful, kind, and gentle man who brings good to those around him, and brightens their, and our lives. My myths about learning disability have been busted time and time again over the years, and I am still learning as I look through his eyes at this world of kindness, misunderstanding and, often unintended, disregard and cruelty.
Over the last six months I and Sonnet colleagues have been looking through the eyes of those with learning and other diff-abilities and their teachers, families and carers at how their lives are affected by their school experience. This was working with National Association of Independent Schools & Non-Maintained Special Schools (NASS) and its member schools, and looks at young people in special schools and in supported mainstream settings. With that insight, let me bust three myths that resonate with my experiences parenting Wayne:
-
Location and setting matter
Don’t kid yourself that classroom layout, size of school, and travelling distance from where you live are just factors in cost-effective delivery: they really matter to whether a child with a diff-ability can learn. A visually stimulating environment may help one child to learn, but send another into a reaction that stops them learning. A large school may be a world of adventure to some, offering opportunity, but to another may pose barriers that make the experience terrifying and learning impossible.
-
Unless you know, it’s easy to misunderstand behaviour as naughtiness
Behaviour is language: we don’t all, or always, use spoken words. If a child is finding it difficult in a class of thirty and they get disruptive, maybe they are scared, not naughty. The teacher brings them close to the front to be near them, and they get more disruptive and keep turning round and shouting. The teacher doesn’t realise that the child now has all of the class behind them where they can’t see them, which is triggering a trauma response. It’s not naughtiness, is it?
-
Consistency is key if you are living in strange world
We need stimuli to learn, and thrive, but need to be able to digest them, and need to feel safe when doing so. With wider environments, including mainstream schools, once young people with learning difficulties get beyond their family, and their specialist teachers, carers and youth workers, they encounter people who don’t understand, are scared, assume they are disabilities not people with diff-abilities, and who may react in ways that are unhelpful even if caring. We all need to try to look through others’ eyes, and find out what being a diff-abled person is like.
Would you do three things for me ?
- Find out more about it so you can support those around you with learning diff-abilities. Take a look at resources like Mind’s guide to learning disability support; NHS getting support for learning disabilities and Mencap’s advice and support pages.
- Read our ‘Reaching my potential’ report about the findings and recommendations made to support children with complex special educational needs, commissioned by NASS.
- Think about it, and try and look at the world through others’ eyes.
Jim Clifford OBE, Director & CEO
