Title:
From “I Want One” to “Watch Out”
Subtitle:
How a moment of curiosity or fear can shape how kids learn about disability
Transcript:
Alycia Anderson: Welcome to Pushing Forward with Alycia, a podcast that gives disability a voice. Each week we will explore topics like confidence, ambition, resilience, and finding success against all odds. We are creating a collective community that believes that all things are possible for all people. Open hearts, clear paths.
Let’s go.
Welcome back to Pushing Forward with Alycia. I’m Alycia. This episode today is for all the parents that are constantly asking me, almost every time that I speak and beyond, how to talk to their kids about disability. How to allow them to engage, or not, when they’re out and about enjoying the world.
I’ve had several personal things happen to me recently. Little stories with kids out in the world while I’m navigating stages, or really just shopping at the store. Yesterday, I had one of the most incredible moments that inspired me to come on and talk about this topic, specifically, and just have some reflection on it.
I’ve noticed something. Children want to interact specifically with people with disabilities, and in my case, it’s with wheelchair users. They’re naturally curious, they’re open, they wanna ask questions that adults are definitely too uncomfortable to ask. And almost every time, there’s some sort of a joyful, very curious interaction that comes up with myself and whoever that child is on the other side of the conversation. And Things seem to flow well until an adult steps in, and the energy always changes a little bit. And this is where parents really start to wonder, “How do I allow my kids to be free to engage and learn about disability or not?” And so today’s episode is for parents, teachers, caregivers, and really anyone who’s raising the next generation, because children are not born to see disability as something that is strange or uncomfortable.
It’s really, actually, the opposite for the most part, that I have found. We teach them these things. Over the last several months, I have been reminded with many different engagements with many different children, and how adults are so quick to shut down curiosity. So I wanna start this episode with sharing a story that happened to me yesterday.
I was at my niece’s recital and it was in Sebastopol, California, which is a little bit of an older town in Northern California, which means a lot of the buildings are older, not necessarily fully accessible. They are accessible, but there’s sometimes back doors in and things like that. My niece was singing in a recital at this theater that was just like that.
There were stairs to get in to the theater, but there was a back door that I could access to go down. So, I went over the back door, and I was navigating down the ramp and made my way in. And as I was going down the ramp, I was a straight visible shot to the audience, and in the front row was sitting my sister, her husband, and my niece. And next to my niece was this other little girl. She was six years old.
And as I was rolling down the ramp, her eyes got super excited, and her feet started to shake, and she was really excited to see me. She wasn’t uncomfortable. She wasn’t scared. She was just excited that I was rolling down to come and enter the building, and be a part of the show.
As I came down and made my way seated next to my family, she was so excited. And she goes, “Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. I have always wanted a wheelchair, too,” is what she says to me. And I go, “Oh, really? You’ve always wanted a wheelchair?” And she says, “Yes. I’ve always wanted a wheelchair.”
And then she started asking me things like, “What can you do? Can you go down steps? Can you do pop-a-wheelies? How can you navigate? Can you dance? Can you do all these things?” So we had a long conversation about the freedoms that wheelchairs and mobility devices allow people that have disabilities to navigate the world.
And in the middle of this conversation, I say to her, “I’m curious. Why do you want a wheelchair? Why have you always wanted a wheelchair? She says, “For two reasons.” And I go, “Okay, what’s the first reason?” And she said to me that she’s always wanted her own wheelchair, so she could be the only student at school with a wheelchair.
Just let that statement sit with you for a second. She wants to be the only one at school in a wheelchair. What an amazing statement, right? She’s not looking at this wheelchair like it’s limiting, it’s different, it doesn’t belong. She’s looking at it as a differentiator to take to school and show all of her friends this cool piece of mobility device that she has.
She’s just thrilled about it. I sat there and we talked a lot about me being the only one, when I was in school, with a wheelchair. And how important it is when you see other students with disabilities, or that are different, to be friends with them, to spark up conversations with them, to be curious.
This is such a shift from where we take this conversation, from “I want to be the only one” to “That is not me. That’s an other situation.” It reminded me of how important these conversations are to have, to not take away the curiosity of little girls like this, and do not invoke ableism and fear around conversations that we don’t know.
First of all, it was just a really incredible conversation. The second reason why she wanted to have a wheelchair was to do all the tricks and the things that we were talking about. This is curiosity. Little kids are curious. They wanna understand something that they don’t know. And oftentimes, by the time we’re adults, we’ve been taught to not discuss that.
“Don’t say the word. Disability is bad. It’s limiting. It’s something that needs to be fixed.” All these things. We silence the conversation, and that silence in the conversation evokes this fear, eventually, and navigating it. And the avoiding and the othering that ends up happening really does create that exclusion, or that lack of belief in the path as we become adults.
Unfortunately, oftentimes, when children are navigating these things, we as adults go, “Ahh.” We wanna jump back, we want to silence them. We are embarrassed, we’re worried that they’re gonna offend the other person. I just think it’s so important to allow them to navigate, to learn, to be excited, to be curious, to understand the freedom and the power that mobility devices can give. Being different and navigating life in that way. The gifts that it gives you, the creativity, the innovation, the things that it really does drive into your life by having to navigate systems that weren’t necessarily built with you in mind.
It was just a beautiful moment for me to remember how curious and open we are, all of us, at such a young age, until we start learning the lessons of ableism. Her dad was sitting behind her, and we had this 30 minute conversation. I was watching him the whole time. He was smiling and I could tell he was really proud. And it was just a really beautiful moment and I really wanted to share that.
I also recently had another experience on the opposite side of the spectrum. I was shopping.
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Alycia Anderson: I was shopping, looking for an outfit for when I was gonna speak. There was a little girl shopping with her mom. We were down aisles, and she was probably about four. The mom was, up on the racks, looking at clothes. She did not see me. But the little girl, we caught each other’s eyes, ’cause we were like the same height. We never said any words to each other, but we did engage with smiles. We’re having a conversation with our eyes, really. This went on for quite some time. I was shopping around. She was dancing around her mom’s feet, and kept peeking around her mom’s legs and just engaging.
It was really nice. At a certain moment, the mom caught me out of the corner of her eye. She flinched, and she immediately turned around and said, “Watch out. She’s gonna run you over.” And she said this to the little girl. The little girl immediately retreated behind the mom’s legs. She went from having this joyful experience of engagement with me, a wheelchair user, just navigating typical life, to being afraid of me. In, literally, a moment, like a split second. What we have to realize, as adults, is children are taking emotional cues from us as adults. They’re looking to us to feel safe, when it might not be safe.
And whether it’s intentional or unintentional, we, oftentimes, induce fear into children about disability. Whether it’s that moment of “Watch out, she’s gonna roll you over,” or if it’s on the playground in PE, where teachers are leaving students with disabilities sitting on the sidelines and not included, while all the other kids are playing. These lessons are teaching exclusion or fear.
The mom immediately taught this little girl that wheelchairs are dangerous, that they could hurt you, they could roll you over. Leaving people with disabilities, children with disabilities, on the sidelines teaches all of the other kids, and it teaches them, that they’re not able to participate because of their disability.
In that moment with that mom at that store, I looked directly at her and I said to her, “Ma’am, if you don’t mind,” I said very nicely, “I’m as proficient in my wheelchair as you are on your feet. I would never run over your child. Never. But the more important thing to know is what just happened here. We went from engaging, and smiling, and having friendly interactions to you immediately just induced fear to your child about disability and about wheelchairs that will carry through.” The mom looked at me and she thought, and she said, “You know what? You’re right.” The children with disabilities on the sidelines, those are the situations that you’re teaching all the future CEOs and the children that are gonna grow up and start hiring people for different job roles, that people with disabilities sit on the sidelines, that they don’t participate.
It’s these social interactions, these social cues that we’re navigating over and over that is creating a lot of the limiting thoughts as we grow into our adulthood that really do affect so many different things. How we’re gonna hire, who we befriend, who we love, what we adapt, infrastructure we build, policies we create.
And it literally starts from when children are little and we’re teaching them “navigate this, go be curious, or be afraid of it.” So this external messaging is really important, because it either lowers expectations of people or it allows them to rise. This whole idea of language mattering and that our belief systems start early.
They do. And you can see this transitional phase from the little 6-year-old that’s like, “I have always wanted a wheelchair so I could be the only one at school with one,” to total exclusion and not being included in life. How do we do better? I think first and foremost, we don’t shush curiosity.
We gotta allow children to ask questions, to navigate differences, to explore those things. ‘Cause once they learn something, they move on. And there hasn’t been this traumatic engagement that will be stuck with them forever. They just learn about something new and they move on to the next thing.
We need to use honest, real, safe language that allows children to navigate. “She uses a wheelchair to get around,” or “you’re curious about her disability, why don’t you go talk to her? Why don’t you go say hello? That opens the door of comfort and safety. And they’ll carry that through to when you’re head of the human resource department, and you don’t know how to still say the word disability.
We need to model comfort, so children mirror those reactions. They will mirror the comfort in the conversation rather than the fear. That’s huge. Another thing we can think about is focusing on capabilities, not limitations. Maybe move from that sad or that there’s limitations in that situation, to, “Wow! Look at how she’s moving through the world. What a cool way.”
We need to connect these conversations to that much bigger vision that you hope for your children. That they’re gonna be the teachers, and the policy makers, and the CEOs. They’re gonna be the next generation’s leaders and change comes with them.
That’s powerful. Allow them to be those leaders in the best way possible. We need to talk about how disability shapes the workplace and benefits schools and communities into tomorrow, and how it creates a full scope of what society and what our culture looks like. The way to navigate these conversations with your children, in my opinion, is to allow them to navigate ’em freely.
They don’t mean anything. If they make a mistake, they don’t mean to do that. They’re just learning. If we allow them to navigate conversation at a 6-year-old age, she will continue to do that throughout her life. It’s so important. I hope that helps some parents out there.
I think we need to remember that children are not born to see disability as something that they need to avoid or fear. It’s really just something that they find curiosity in and imagination. Sometimes, like the little girl at the recital, they’ll have admiration in it. That’s a good thing.
And it’s our job as adults to not silence those moments, but to guide them through it. And what you’re guiding them through it, by the way, you’re gonna be guiding yourself through it. Because when children grow up understanding that disability is just another part of the human experience, they will grow into adults that understand how important it is to include everybody.
That’s a major pushing forward moment, honestly. Allow your children to be curious about disability. It will change the entire scope of belief in the lived experience for our next generation, and that’s pretty powerful.
We really appreciate everybody showing up for us every single week. This has been Pushing Forward with Alycia, and that is literally how we roll on this podcast. I’ll see you next week.