In conversations that I’ve had with various people over the last few years, I’ve noticed that “disability” means something different for each of them. However, the most common meanings involve some sort of physical disability.....the child in a wheelchair going to school, the man down the street with the seeing eye dog, the woman in the subway with a hearing aid....these are some of the images that come up for many people when they think of a person with a disability.

 What images do not come up when people are thinking of a person with a disability are: a boy having a meltdown in the school yard, the “weird” teenager next door that has no friends, the colleague that is a genius on the computer but doesn’t talk to anyone, the “bad” kid at school who’s always in the principal’s office. These are not images that people think of when they think of “disability”. What they don’t realize is that so many people have invisible disabilities. These are not tangible conditions that you can “see”. These are disabilities that are neurological, and are often expressed in behaviour.   They include Autism Spectrum Disorders, Attention Deficit Disorders, Speech and Language Disorders, and Learning Disabilities to name a few. Although various parent associations and advocacy groups have been around for many years, there is still a lack of awareness of these disabilities, and, more importantly, how they affect those who have them. 

 What really strikes me is the amount of understanding and compassion there is for the person in the wheelchair, but so little compassion for the child who has tantrums if his daily schedule is interrupted.   For individuals with neurologically-based disabilities, science tells us that their brains are wired differently. What exactly does that mean? Well, as someone who works in the field but has no medical or psychological background, I also have trouble wrapping my brain around this, at times. “Wired differently” refers to a thinking process that is considered an exception to the norm. The odd thing about this is that individuals who are “wired differently” do not think of themselves as being “wired differently”. Instead, they are being who they are and think of things in a way that is normal to them. It is us, the “Neurologically Typical” (a phrase sometimes used by persons with invisible disabilities to refer to others without neurologically-based disabilities) who need to accept differences in the way individuals with invisible disabilities think and relate to us. We are able to understand the challenges and accommodations required for the person with a physical disability, the person who is hard of hearing, etc. However, we need as a society to better understand invisible disabilities.

Sophie, Director