Why You Shouldn't Use the R-Word

I don't often use my blog as a drum skin to bang. This is my space to entertain myself and share my life with the people who choose to read it. But today, I'm picking up my drumsticks and banging away, hoping one person will hear my words and choose their own more carefully the next time they speak.

I've written before how using the word retarded affects me. I'm tired of hearing people use the word retarded as their go-to word for stupid or defective and I'm even more annoyed with the people who don't understand why I take offence to it's usage.

The word retarded, when used in our modern lexicon doesn't just mean slow any more. The r-word has become a catch-all word for society to use when frustrated, annoyed or ignorant. It's spawned a family of new words: the celebutard, the e-tard, and the ever useful, fuck-tard. The word and it's growing plethora of cousins is all over the internet, filtering into our daily lexicon.

It's not okay.

Like I tell my kids, words have power. Yes, I understand the meanings of words flux and change over the course of time, like currency in modern life. But this should mean that our standards of morality and the words we use to reflect that morality must be constantly examined and reapplied as time passes. It shouldn't mean that our standards be abandoned, bankrupted like an American bank in the Great Depression.

When you drop the 'tard bomb into casual conversation, you are demeaning disabled people and reinforcing the stereotype that mental disabilities are bad and that people who suffer these disabilities are lesser; to be excluded and ignored because they don't know any better. Heck, it's not like they even know what the word means right? Who are you hurting?

You are hurting me. You are hurting my kids. You are hurting everyone who loves someone who has been labeled a retard due to how they look, how they speak or how they learn.

It's not okay to go on twitter and announce that your computer is retarded. Did you mean your computer's operating system is running slow? You might have meant to convey that your laptop is a piece of shit that doesn't work and you desperately covet a new one, but instead you just conveyed your ignorance and your lack of respect for the most marginalized, disparaged group of people in the world.

That pisses me off.

This is a word that carries with it a history of social isolation and exlusion. It's use is a reminder of the culture of neglect people with disabilities are forced to endure every day. By using it, you are reinforcing the idea that handicapped, mentally disabled, people are bad, lesser, sub-human.

It only takes a second for a person to call something retarded, but for my children, for me, it will take a life time to erase the negative connotations associated with the word. In the instance you insert the r-word into your casual conversation, I'm instantly transported to the moment in time I overheard a complete stranger refer to my beautiful child as a retard, or the time my children came home in tears because someone chased them around the playground teasing them about having a retarded brother.



You are reminding me of the endless hours of sitting in a hospital beside my child, worrying for his future, wondering what is going to happen to him when I'm too old or weak to take care of him myself. You are reminding me of all the times I've fought to have him included on field trips and of all the times I've spent on hold with some bureaucrat trying to find funding to pay for a necessary service. You are reminding me of the friends I've lost because they are made uncomfortable by having my child around them.

When you use that r-word, or any of it's colourful and less charming derivatives, you are hurting someone. You are discriminating against a people who can't stand up for themselves and quite frankly, you are pissing me off.

I don't need a reminder of the dismissive attitude in our society towards my child. I live it every damn day. Every time a child hides in fear behind their mother's leg because they are scared of the drooling kid in a wheelchair. Every time a grown adult refuses to make eye contact with me or my son. Every time I hear someone I know tell me it's not a big deal to use the r-word after I chastise them for doing just that.

It is a big deal.

By using that word, whether YOU realize it or not, you are minimizing the struggles of disabled people and their families. You are demeaning, mocking and disrespecting a society of people who have been forced to endure more hardship and struggles than most, simply by nature of their birth.

Oh, and that argument that I'm being to over-sensitive? Too politically correct? Ask yourself how you would feel if you were forced to wear that sign pinned to your back side for others to try and kick.

You can argue that you are taking the word retard back, owning it, but you aren't. Thirty years plus of having the word retard being used in a derogatory manner isn't going to be erased. The stereotype isn't just based on society's careless use of this word, it resides in society's treatment of and attitude towards these special people.

There is no defending the use of the r-word in my world. Defending it's use is not defending freedom of speech, and heck I'd fall on the sword to defend that right, but instead it is the defence of bullies.

That is why you shouldn't use the r-word anymore.

Because ultimately, no one likes a bully.

Go here to read Jumby's story. And remember his face next time you want to drop the r-bomb.

Deja-Vu

Jumby was off yesterday. He didn't seem sick. He was just not himself. There was no commando crawling through the kitchen to sneak up behind me and bite the heels of my feet. (Yes, he's a carnivore and delights in feeding off the dead skin on the backs of my feet.)

There was no gleeful shouting of "Go!Go!Go!" followed by "Mumma! Mumma!" as he kicked back and forth on my lap.

There were no high fives, no peek-a-boo's, no kissing (which is really more of ' I'm gonna open my mouth and see if I can bite mommy's lips with my teeth'.)

There was, however, a whole lot of lethargy and falling asleep on my chest at the blink of the eye. It was like I was raising a wee little narcoleptic.

At first the husband and I weren't worried. We chalked Jumby's sleepiness to his late night partying the night before. The kid has a thing for strippers and disco balls in his bedroom. What can I say?

But as the day progressed so did the severity of Jumby's lethargy and I found myself reliving the past.

"I think I should take him in. My mommy radar is going off."

"Then you should take him in," Boo agreed, looking worried as he held the zombie we called our son.

"But it's late and we'll likely just end up sitting in emerg all damn night and then they'll send us home with slap on the ass and orders to call the pediatrician. I hate that."

"Well, then don't take him in. I trust you."

"That's the problem, I don't trust me." The last time it was late at night, and I found myself with a sick child who may or may not have required emergency care, I vascillated on taking him to the hospital. I did all the right things, I called the right people, I followed the right advice but instead of listening to my instincts, I ignored it because it was late at night, I was exhausted and I didn't want to spend all night in an emergency room.

I've played the game of 'What-if' ever since. What if I took Bug in right away? What if I didn't wait? What if the doctors had more time? What if, what if, what if. Two crueler words to a grieving parent, I can't imagine.

Those 'What-if's' swirled in my head last night as I stood in the exact same spot I had four years ago, looking at my husband holding yet another sick little boy.

Deja-vu stopped by to drop kick me in the stomach.

I knew when we adopted a special needs child there would be moments like this. Dark moments in which I'd face the past while wrestling the 35 pound ghost of a certain angel boy who hangs off my back.

I knew adopting a special needs child would mean late nights in an emergency room, hospital stays and getting to know every pediatric specialist a girl can imagine once again.

I knew a whole lot. Or so I thought.

But I forgot how much it hurts to be helpless when your child is ill and there isn't anything you can do to make them feel better.

I forgot how exhausting it is to spend the night bedside to a child while wringing your hands with worry and hoping the doctors you entrusted your child's well-being with, are up to the task.

I forgot how long and lonely the drive to the hospital can be in the dead of the night.

Last night, it all flooded back.

Jumby is better now, dropping his zombie impersonation and becoming more boyish with every hour that passes.

And as I sit beside him and watch him play quietly with a rubber ball, yawning from last night's drama, I remembered something else.

The reason we signed up for this gig in the first place. No matter what happens, no matter how many late nights in the emergency room I have to endure, or even what the ultimate ending to Jumby's story may be, it is all worth it.

I love this kid.

That's the best lesson deja-vu can drop on my head any time.

***I'm a little late on the uptake, but I'd like to thank the Babble editors for naming me as one of their top 50 Mommy Bloggers. There are some fabulous writers on that list and if you are looking for some new reads, I suggest heading over there to check it out.***

***Can't get enough of me? Head on over to my group page at Savvy Source. I'm spilling dark parenting secrets and fessing up to my parental crimes. Join the party so I don't feel like such a schmuck.***

The Hardest Thing

My child recently had to write an essay about the hardest thing he ever had to do. For him, it seems to be trying to keep his damn room clean. It's mission impossible for a twelve year old sloth I tell you.

But this essay inspired a conversation between us that I have long since been thinking about. He asked me what the hardest thing I ever had to do was.

I didn't know how to answer him.

What does hard really mean? Gestating and giving birth to three rabid badgers who tore my insides out was hard.

Coming home with a disabled baby no one expected or prepared for was hard.

Trying to explain to people why my beautiful son never smiled was hard.

Spending endless nights, months on end, staring at a boy in a crib in a hospital and wondering if my family would ever be whole and under one roof together was hard. Dealing with one doctor after another in a never ending series of medical emergencies was hard.

Missing field trips and precious moments with my older two children because I had to be with their younger sibling was hard.

Driving alone, in the middle of the night, with a dying child in the back seat of my car was hard.

Looking into my husband's eyes when he arrived at the hospital and having to find the words to tell him I failed him and our son, was hard. Phoning our family to tell them our boy had died, was hard.

Walking out of the emergency room with nothing but a plastic bag of a dead boy's belongings was hard.

Mustering up the courage to walk into my childrens rooms, sit them down as their father stood behind me weeping, to tell them their brother died in the middle of the night and they would never have another opportunity to hug him was hard.

Seeing the mound of dirt heaped upon where my boy's body lie and having to walk away from that boy for the last time, was hard.

Hard doesn't seem adequate enough.

Facing every holiday and birthday and anniversary knowing my family is forever fractured, is hard.

Watching our friends and family's be able to celebrate together as a family with all of their children, is hard.

Opening the box of Christmas decorations and hanging a stocking for a boy who only exists in dusty picture frames and our hearts is hard.

None of this gets any easier. It seems to get harder as time ticks past and stretches out in front of us.

How does I choose what was the hardest when all of it is equally devastating and soul shattering?

Trying to adopt a baby boy, only to lose him and be accused of being a bad parent was hard. Fighting to clear our names and bring home another boy, our Jumby, was hard.

Fighting to get our family's to accept and love Jumby has been hard.

Keeping my marriage together in the face of all this adversity has been hard.

All of these thoughts swirled around me as my son looked at me with patient innocent eyes. It was then I realized what the meaning of hard was to me, what my answer is, what it will always be.

"The hardest thing I have ever had to do, will ever have to do, is to remember to live, Frac," I answered thoughtfully. "The hardest thing in the world is to choose joy. To remind myself that the scars we bear on our souls are just reminders of what we have been through, what we have lost. They shape us into the people we are today but they shouldn't determine what comes tomorrow, Frac. For me, setting the example for you and your siblings that no matter how hard life gets, it should always go on because where one joy disappears another will appear."

Frac fell silent while he stared at his lost brother's ornament glinting off the Christmas tree as he processed what I had just said. I sat quietly beside him, staring off into the ether of my own memories as I waited for him to respond.

"I wish life wasn't so hard for us. I wish we could just be regular people."

"Me too buddy. Me too."

"Thanks Mom," he looked at me, the twinkle of the lights on the tree reflecting off his glasses. "I love you."

"I love you too kidlet," I smiled as I ruffled his unruly hair.

"I was totally wrong, by the way."

"Wrong?" I asked, confused.

"Ya, I told Fric that you'd probably say the hardest thing you have ever done was get your nipples pierced. Boy was I wayyy off base," he snickered.

I didn't have the heart to tell him, so I just bit my tongue as he walked away and thought to myself, "Nope, dying the muff bright blue all by myself was waaaay harder than stringing ornaments through my boobs."

Sometimes staying quiet is the hardest thing to do.