People With Developmental Disabilities Are Cool Too!

I have been blessed with having a son who is now 14 years old who has significant developmental disabilities. I say blessed because it has been and continues to be a journey that has lead me to meet super cool people, that 14 years ago, I wouldn’t have dared to think to approach.

So what does significant developmental disabilities mean? Developmental disabilities come in all shapes and sizes. I’m in no way poking fun, it’s just a way to describe it with a lighter connotation. Significant signifies that the person most likely needs support in all of his basic activities of daily living (ADL) because of his level of cognitive or physical ability. Activities of daily living include personal care and basic daily needs- eating etc.

Developmental disabilities include an array of labels such as autism, cerebral palsy, Willie-Prader syndrome, Down syndrome, hearing loss, Tourette’s syndrome, Angelman syndrome, and the list goes on. These labels don’t change who the person is, because that’s all they’ve known anyway, it just attaches identity to them for societal purposes.
I wouldn’t go up to someone and introduce myself, and say, “Hello, I’m Cristina, and I have diverticulosis” not that I do. Just as people who have developmental disabilities need not justify any such disclosure either.

When I say that they are cool too, it’s because everybody wants to feel “cool” in some way or another, and these folks definitely have “cool” too. I recently completed a training session called Partners in Policymaking in Columbia, MO. Almost all states provide this training session. It’s one weekend once per month for an eight month commitment. So you get to know the 25 participants quite well. About 1/3rd of the participants have developmental disabilities and this where I really learned about how cool these people are!