Hi, Guys. So, Just To Warn You, I Encountered An ABA "therapist" (child Abuser) In The Wild Today So

wheelchair users deserve a minimum of three wheelchairs to meet different needs. like, bare minimum of indoor chair, outdoor chair, and off road chair. chairs that meet different needs for transport, activity, positioning needs, energy levels, etc.

there is not "one chair" that can meet every need. wheelchair users deserve to have multiple chairs that meet specific needs, no matter how complex their seating/positioning needs. we deserve to at least have a backup if our chair breaks that is just as suited to our needs.

people acting like accessibility tools are an inconvenience to them and would rather they not exist are annoying little shits. no, the captions aren’t ruining the movie. no, that ramp isn’t making your life harder because you have to go to the side entrance. abled people are so entitled to think that other peoples accessibility is a nuisance, especially considering disabled people rarely get the same kind of access abled people get automatically. equity is not oppression of the privileged

i simply need everyone to understand that i am tired all of the time. literally at all moments. if i ever go somewhere and do something, it is not because i am somehow full of energy, but instead that i have carefully stored up all of my little bits of energy like a dragon collecting jewels, and am now vaporizing them all at once

so here’s a quick lesson about having patience with kids.

I have a 6th grade student who isn’t really interested in doing her homework (big surprise). from my experience, kids who aren’t trying to do their homework usually fall into two general categories – “this is too easy and therefore boring” and “this is too hard and therefore i’m not even going to attempt”. it became clear by October that she fell into the latter group, but most of the staff chalked it up to “she doesn’t understand it”. I didn’t really believe it because she was a very smart, emotionally aware girl and it didn’t seem like she didn’t always want to try, just that she would rather do other things than struggle with her work. 

yesterday, she got sent to my office, just so that she would have a space away from her friends to focus on her work, and she asked me to help her with two questions. I looked at them and they were fairly straightforward, simple questions about the results of using various amounts of force on an object. I did what I always do – I read the question out loud first, and then tried to help her use recall to figure it out. she did in a snap. I did the same with the second question, and before I even finished it, she went “OH!” and started writing her answer.

that’s when it hit me – she doesn’t have trouble with the material, she just has trouble reading and processing what she’s reading at the same time. big difference! I asked her and she confirmed that it was easier to hear a question and understand it than to read it and understand it. so I got her phone out, pulled up her voice recorder, and told her to try reading the question aloud and then playing it back to herself so she could process it and she looked like i had handed her the holy grail.

the moral of the story is that sometimes you have to set aside what you think is a problem with a kid and just watch for what’s easier for them. will she be able to do that during a test? maybe not, BUT now that she knows that the issue is processing reading and that she’s an auditory learner, she’s in a better position to ask for resources to help her work better in school.

so i’m off to the school counselor to let her know so she can possible get more tools for auditory learners.  

"Brain damage" only sounds like a harsh and offensive way to describe brain injuries because people constantly use it as an insult. It's a totally neutral descriptor of what it is. I have brain damage. My brain is damaged. It's not ableist to call it that, it's ableist to call people you don't like brain damaged because you think it's an inherently bad thing to be.

Psoriasis on my forehead got really bad (mom says it looks like I have a chemical burn) so now I have to be emo and do the swoop fringe until it goes away. Ugh.

I will never forget the time I was on the bus and I heard some middle school-sounding kid say to his friend "Stop being so autistic, Sam," using autism as an insult.

And another kid, presumably Sam, said "But I am autistic."

That one... that really stuck out to me. An autistic kid having his own disability thrown at him as an insult. Every time I see someone use autistic as an insult, or "acoustic" and "artistic," I think of Sam.

‘how do you expect people who have been abused by someone with NPD to refer to their abuse then?’

by calling it what it is: emotional abuse.

it’s not difficult.

slapping the word ‘narcissistic’ on the front of abuse is blindly assigning blame and associating the abusive behaviours with NPD, despite the fact that nowhere in the criteria does it state any abusive behaviours as a symptom.

i understand that people who are severely mentally unwell are more prone to abusing others, however to point the blame at a disorder (and therefore at everyone with the disorder) is ableist, irresponsible and grossly misinformed.

to put it into perspective as to how bad the stigma surrounding NPD is, i have been diagnosed with NPD and have been told i should be killed because of it, that i will inevitably abuse my partners i have had, i’ve had partners in the past be harassed by people saying that it’s ‘just a matter of time’ before i abuse them without any of these people ever even knowing me. i see endless amounts of things online calling all narcissists evil, as well as having my own experiences with abuse disregarded because they do not believe someone with NPD could be anything other than a perpetrator, despite the fact NPD is induced by trauma. the list goes on.

your choice of wording does matter and it does damage people with NPD.

Fuck it I'm taking back the pyro tags and flooding them with info posts myself I'm tired of this shit.

Ask box is open for questions, shared experiences etc

years later House is still as relevant as he ever was