Boxes
Every week I have to explain to a parent that their child
has a disability. I never take this aspect of my job lightly and ensure that I
have assessed the child to the best of my professional abilities. As one could
imagine, parents’ reactions vary widely. Some appear unaffected while others
are thoroughly nonplussed and still others are completely distressed. Whatever
their reactions, I make it a point to be hopeful for remediation and clearly
state that our goal in therapy is to make their child better; in essence to
help in the healing process.
Then comes the paperwork, with the boxes that need to be
checked. “Child has a disability that causes them to be maladjusted”? Check.
“Team has ruled out potential stigmatization that services for this disability
may cause?” Check. I know these forms well and have committed them memory to
the extent that I don’t even need to look at them to run a meeting. Yet, I
always take these boxes seriously. “Is the child really maladjusted?” I ask myself. Or, “Could he/she be stigmatized by this label?” Generally,
at this point in the process parents and teachers are more concerned with getting
the student help then potential social/emotional ramifications of labels.
Most children improve with what I believe to be a mix of development
and intervention and eventually it is time to cut the therapy apron strings and
declare that the child is no longer impaired. These dismissal discussions are
always dicey. It often appears that parents and teachers are reluctant to believe
that a student has improved and is not disabled anymore. There is an overriding
fear in these meetings. Trepidation over whether or not the child will fall
back into their previous communication behaviors, worry that minimal speech
errors remain, can cause caregivers to unwittingly seek to keep the label and
the services going. They are often desperate to keep those boxes checked.
There is perceived safety in boxes. Marking on clinical
paperwork to categorize people or mentally placing those you know into trite
classifications, helps to keep one’s environment predicable and, “safe.” The
problem is the boxes are neither wide enough nor deep enough to contain anyone and all too often the boxes never
get unchecked. Often times the worst offenders are the, “helpers” themselves
who either project their own difficulties, are unsure of their clinical
judgment or unconsciously want to
keep their client in the “disordered” box.
I see kids in high school who have been receiving speech
services since preschool and they seem dejected with an attitude of
helplessness. As if no one ever told them they can get better or that wholeness is possible even with an impairment. The same holds true
for those who have sustained trauma or hardship in their lives. It is so much
easier to place a check next to “broken” when viewing others.
My clinical training taught me to spot pathologies. My years
of experience have allowed me to view each client as a whole person. My
spirituality has given me the chance to look deeper and to start unchecking
those boxes. I am starting to think that this is what resurrection is really
about.
