There’s been a lot of talk lately about the word ‘retard’ and it being thrown around as a word to make fun of others. I’ve seen t-shirts saying ‘You’re a Retard’ and you hear teenagers and adults who just think its plain funny to use as an insult. Well I’m here to tell you it’s not funny in the slightest.
The Oxford dictionary states retard is from a Latin word ‘retardare’ a combination of ‘back’ and ‘slow’ and is still used today in the medical field with regard to the diagnosis of some children with special needs. This is where the word needs to stay and not used as a term to bully any child or insult and offend children with special needs and their families.
I knew he was different but I am not sure when I really understood what it was that made him different. I know he looked different with his cute little squishy face and nose, stumpy fingers and toes but his infectious laugh got you straight away. I was in a happy home that was full of love and fun but I always felt it was somehow manufactured.
I remember that Mum and Dad were always stressed, although I did put this down to the fact that we were on a farm and there was always something to be done. People think farms are a nice, beautiful, tranquil place to grow up and live on but the reality is very different. It is very hard physical work and Dad would often work 20 hours a day. Mum worked as also as a fulltime special education teacher so it was pretty much me and my brother left to my own devices and my best friend down the dirt track.
I don’t think it really hit me until going into about year 6 at school when I realised that I was different and my life was never to be the same, or that’s what I thought at the time. The school yard turns into your worst nightmare if you are the target of bullies and that was my place in the pecking order.
Its funny what you do as a sibling of a child with special needs. If your a parent reading this you are probably unaware of many of the actions and things we do to try to make life easier for you. I decided (only to learn many years later this was to my detriment) that I had to be the ‘good girl’. I had to pretend that I was happy. I had to not ‘tell’ about what was happening to me (although I don’t think I really knew what it was). I had to not show my emotions because I thought I would just cause them more problems. I had to pretend I wasn’t sad that I saw myself an ‘only’ child. I had to pretend that I didn’t hate him (although I loved him to bits) but most of all I had to hide the fact I was jealous. Jealous of the attention he got, the special Down Syndrome Christmas parties, the fancy toys, all the special people that came to play with him (physio’s and the like). The insane amount of pocket money never made up for the TIME that I wanted with my parents. I just wanted to be ‘seen’.
I was incapable in my younger years to see what damage I was doing to my own self-esteem, my own self worth and my own mental health. Had I been made part of his journey I may have had a better understanding of what was going on. Thankfully now there has been so much research done on the affect that a special needs child has on a sibling that there is help.
There have also been dramatic changes in using multi-disciplinary approaches where the whole family works together which gives siblings a sense of belonging to the family than the one who is always left out. I am not saying that parenting a special needs child is an easy challenge. It is a long and hard path with no clear freeway to follow or an instructional handbook that fits each family but please if you are reading this as a parent and you have other children can I ask that you try to find time in the madness to ‘be’ with your other son or daughter.
Listen to them. Get them to release their emotions both good or bad. Talk to them about their brother or sister with special needs and why things need to happen. I wrote a poem which I will share in Part Two when I was 23 years old entitled ‘I Grew Up Too Quick’ and it was the hardest thing I had ever written. If I knew then what I know now maybe I wouldn’t have ended up with long lasting negative problems stemming from not understanding what was happening in my family while I was so young.
