“While you pick out apples, a stranger literally asks you how your child uses the toilet. Yipes.”
“No matter how complete my answer, there were more questions. The questions grew increasingly intrusive and demanding.”
“‘Why are her legs like that’ quickly snowballed into asking me to predict my child’s marital status, and how they’d pee. Yikes. By answering a seemingly benign initial question, I enabled more intrusions.”
“Some parents are convinced that answering the question demystifies disability, represents disability, helps disability causes, etc.
“I hear endless ‘knowledge is power’ and ‘people just need to know, they’re just curious’ but I very rarely hear an acknowledgement of the child’s right to decide what is shared in regards to their intimate body functions and private medical information.
“Not only does answering many of those questions violate your child’s right to privacy about their most intimate elements of disability: but it’s also ultimately not your story to tell.”
“Opting out of divulging private medical and other intimate matters about your child is powerful and it is change. It sends a message: your child is as worthy as their nondisabled peers are of privacy and agency.
“If you have found yourself being the one asking these questions? Stop. Immediately.
Teach your kids that ‘just ask’ is often rude and intrusive, but that ‘just accept’ bothers no one and automatically upholds disability as worthy.”
@ableismistrash – Instagram, October 2022
@ableismistrash is an Instagram account run by Christina, a disabled American mother of two. She posts about her own experience of disability, and the very different ways people respond to her disabled and her non-disabled child in public. For the full context of the quote, see this Instagram post – also embedded below.
[Image descriptions – quotes above:
- No matter how complete my answer, there were more questions. The questions grew increasingly intrusive and demanding – @ableismistrash
- If you have found yourself being the one asking these questions? Stop. Immediately. – ableismistrash]
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