"The only disability in life is a bad attitude"

I came across a picture of a child with Down's Syndrome on Facebook the other day. The child is laughing, looking very happy, and across the top of the picture in a swirly font it says "The only disability in life is a bad attitude". I looked at it and initially thought 'Ah, how sweet', but after giving it some thought it didn't sit well with me. I couldn't at that point however, put my finger on why.

Over 1.2 million people had liked the image, with another 600,000+ people sharing it. Looking through the 12,500 comments I found that I wasn't the only one who hadn't taken well to the image, and reading some of those made me begin to understand my own feelings. I took to my Facebook page 1000 Mile Running Challenge, and wrote:

"I've read a really interesting Facebook thread on using people with SEND as inspiration. Many of them expressed disdain at social media posts using images of 'disability' as a way of promoting acceptance and equality. The part of the post of the young woman who responded to one of the images which really got me thinking was:

"These pictures, which have become known as "inspiration porn" to us, are irritating and untrue. We use the term "porn" because it objectifies us. It objectifies us in that you, the "normal" people, are using us, the "disabled" people, as a source of inspiration so that you can not feel so bad about what life's circumstances have thrown at you."

It got me thinking about E; she inspires me to keep going and when the going gets tough when I'm on a run I think about how tough her days are and then I think I've got nothing to moan about. My thoughts turned to acceptance and equality - she is accepted by her peers at school and has good friendships. Equality is harder to measure. She is as important as the rest of the students in school, and her teachers work hard to ensure she has an equal opportunity to access the curriculum and to reach her potential. All of the things that we, as her parents, and her school have the ability to change or influence are done in order to make her as happy and fulfilled as possible.

What we can't do though, is change her disability. It can't be taken away, fixed or healed. No amount of acceptance or equality will change her disability. It might make her world a nicer place to live in, but I think that the issue of acceptance and equality affects further and wider than just people with SEND.

I wonder if Eloise will grow into a person who wants to be accepted and equal, or if she would simply want to be able to talk without having to think so hard that it makes her head hurt.

Food for thought."

I then came across a blog written a while ago, addressing the same issue. The image challenged was a child with Down Syndrome, wearing bilateral leg prosthesis and running alongside Blade Runner Oscar Pistorius. The blog stated that 'Bad attitudes do not cause disability any more than good attitudes guarantee health', and while I agreed with many aspects of the writer's opinion it still didn't quite explain how I felt. I don't think that the creators of these images are trying to dismiss disability as a matter of attitude, but I still don't quite get their point either. The image of Oscar Pistorius surely challenges this in a new way; here is a man once hailed as a role model and used to promote ability and where is he now? In jail for shooting his girlfriend.

The best I have heard disability described is by a friend of mine who has a daughter with cerebal palsy who uses a wheelchair. Rather than describing her daughter as 'disabled', she told me how the wheelchair enabled her daughter's mobility in the same way as someone would wear glasses to enable them to see properly, or how someone with diabetes has insulin to enable them to properly metabolise carbohydrates and fats. Perhaps E's learning disabilities aren't the problem; the problem lies with us not yet knowing how to fully enable her...

When I started this blog and the running challenge, one of my aims was to try and get people talking about invisible disabilities. When I was training to be a nurse, I had a placement in the community to learn about caring for people in their own homes. We regularly saw a young gentleman who had a spinal cord injury and therefore he used a wheelchair. You could be forgiven for thinking that his biggest problem was that his legs didn't work but for him the worst part of his disability was invisible. Not being able to walk was one thing, but his bowel didn't work properly either. The health care professionals providing his care had to enable him to have his bowels open regularly. Even those with the most visible injuries and disabilities have invisible problems too; it isn't just confined to learning difficulties.

Maybe I can challenge bad attitudes and try to open the eyes of the ignorant. I will never be able to remove E's disabilities, but I will carry on pushing the doctors to help me enable her to learn, to understand and to communicate well.