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Disabilities: The Questions that are Unwelcome
Colorblind or failing memory?
Date: 1/21/2009 1:02:21 AM ( 16 y ) ... viewed 1895 times
Just a quick note about something I learned about having respect in social situations for people with disabilities, major or minor. Just a simple thing that we often just never thought about.
Two examples:
1]
The first clue came to me from my son who is colorblind.
He told me that the one thing, besides the problems of colorblindness itself, that really bugs him about being colorblind is when people "test him".
It seems to be the first thing that well-meaning people, who are just trying to show sympathy, do to the colorblind - "WHAT COLOR IS THIS?" they ask, holding up an object that is blue, or green, or no different than any other color to a colorblind person.
My son replies: "It is no color, I will say GREEN if it will make you laugh, or astonish you, or whatever the motive is for asking me that". It bugs him to be asked that because it highlights his disability, it proves it. He tells me: "Why do they need proof - do people usually LIE about being colorblind? Why make me prove it?"
And for me, all I need to know is that he doesn't like it, so I won't ask it.
It is nowhere near "polite" and it borders on cruelty to ask a colorblind person to play the idiotic game of "guess the color".
2]
The other "real-life" example of this kind of inappropriate behavior is about the elderly whose memory is failing, like my dear mother. What I heard when I spent so many hours in her hospital room during a recovery from an infection was that people were asking her questions that were intentionally difficult for her, as if they were gathering evidence of her waning memory.
For example: "Grandma, what was the name of the Town where you lived for 65 years?" [twitter, glee, and giggles ensued]. It usually only happened when there were lots of people gathered around her bed, as if it was showing off how clever one could be at dissecting which parts of Grandma's brain were still working and which ones were not.
I wanted to take my niece aside to try to explain, about Grandma, that "she is likely aware that we are asking her the tough questions, and it isn't nice to be putting the focus on her disability that way" ; "Dementia, and a failing memory, do not necessarily mean that there is no comprehension." "She cannot reply in a way that makes sense to us, but inside her head it could very well be clear to her".
At some point in dementia's progress, the way the brain works, it's victims are likely thinking clearly, but just cannot communicate. That stops a lot of the comments and idle chatter that people assume the patient cannot understand. Just imagine how these victims of dementia feel when they are thinking clearly but just cannot talk right, and they know that everybody has written them off as not being able to think!!
So, there are two lessons there with Mom - one, don't ask people with failing memories the type of questions they will get wrong, but instead figure out what they will remember and make the conversation about those things. Secondly, that a failing mind generally fails in communication ability before it fails to know what people are saying about them!!
Maybe what she WANTS to say is: "You are an ASS, I just cannot find the words to let you know that, and to tell you how much it bugs me that you keep asking me about things you know I forgot, you JERK!!"
And all I wanted to say is "don't put the focus on people's disabilities by asking questions that puts them to the test".
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