Nicole Hampton

Nicole Hampton is one of the co-founders of Special Siblings Connect and a junior at Emery in Houston, Texas. She had an older brother, Jake, with MPS II. 

In The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, it is never explicitly stated that Christopher is autistic. It’s just an unspoken assumption, scraped together from his habits and thoughts. Inevitably, everyone hops on that conjecture, even if they were trying to not be presumptuous.

When my English class read it, people were so scared to say anything. Until my teacher said that we would assume him to be autistic, everyone just said he was “different.” The same people that argue against using “autistic” as an insult were essentially doing the same thing by treating the word as taboo. They weren’t scared to theorize about who killed the dog (the mystery of the novel), but they wouldn’t put the reasonable conclusion they reached into words until someone else had done so.

Still, everyone in the class, including the teacher, seemed scared of saying something offensive. When someone used the word “disabled” in reference to Christopher, my teacher corrected them, saying the correct term was “differently abled.”

Differently abled.

Isn’t that patronizing?

Everyone is “differently abled,” as in they are able to do different things. So, sure, it wasn’t incorrect, but it doesn’t replace “disabled.” Disabled wasn’t an incorrect term. There were things that Christopher couldn’t do because his mind wouldn’t let him. By definition, he was disabled. Refusing to use the term invalvalidates this fact.

And I was the only one in the class who had a problem with the term. Maybe, calling him differently abled made some people feel better, appeasing their sense of guilt for saying he was disabled.

I thought about what would have happened if someone called my brother “differently abled.”

My brother who had passed away less than half a year ago because of his disability.

My brother couldn’t walk or talk his last year; he could scarcely breathe or eat.

But still, he was kind and he was happy, smiling until he couldn’t.

When I brought this up to my family, they had the same reaction as me. It was just factually false, trying to masquerade the fact that he, biologically, couldn’t do the same things as others. It’s not that my class didn’t have good intentions, trying to not insult him. But in refusing to say “disabled,” they were turning a medical term into the insult they feared. Not only were they discrediting my brother’s experience, but mine and my whole family’s that were so affected by his inability to do many things. My brother was disabled, and, sure, it made some things hard, but it didn’t get rid of my love and connection with him.

Maybe it’s something you can only understand if you are in this situation, related to someone with special needs. Then, disabled isn’t an insult, just an unequivocal reality pervading all aspects of life. It’s still sad and unfair and generally awful (not the person -- just the situation), but it’s the truth that must be accepted, and not some slapdash label trying to hide that fact.

Being disabled isn’t a good thing, but the word “disabled” isn’t bad. There’s a difference.