Quarter Turn, No. 6

Sometimes a Quarter Turn Takes Us Back to the Beginning … and Behavior

DISCLAIMER: This is your warning that this post is a little all over the place. That’s why we love Substack. We don’t have to be perfect, peer-reviewed, or polished here. The point we’re trying to make is definitely in here somewhere. If you find it, please comment and let us know.

Last week, for a few hours, we got to spend some time together in person. It was the first time we both attended and presented at the TASH Conference (and it was in Denver this year!). The group that joined our session was the coolest and included disabled individuals who shared their stories and made our discussions infinitely better.

We left the conference thinking and chatting about so many things.

The Story … Ahem, The Stories

In my (Jackie) professional life, I’ve gotten to work on teams and become friends with adults with disabilities, including those with intellectual disabilities and significant support needs (I’m naming specific disability identities here because, as Dan Habib reminds us, they’re the most systematically segregated group of people in America).

A few years ago, my family and I were in New York City visiting friends, and I got a call from the parent of one of my teammates who has disabilities. I went to the bathroom, looking for a quiet place to talk. This teammate’s mother had just found out something about my teammate’s job that she considered unsafe. From what I’d learned, these were routines and responsibilities my teammate had been doing for years (since before I had started my job). It was nothing concerning, necessarily, and would not have been at all concerning if my teammate didn’t have intellectual disabilities. I’m just keeping details vague so that I don’t violate any kind of privacy here.

Their mother asked me if I cared about her adult child, because how could I care if I hadn’t questioned the level of autonomy they had. I remember my heart sinking. I said something to make sure she knew that I understood the weight of what she was asking me.

I took another breath and said, “They’re your child, but they’re my teammate.”

Then I said, “I treat them like I do my other teammates, and I offer more or less support based on what they do and share with me.”

I explained that I hadn’t questioned her adult child’s ability to keep doing the things they’d been doing long before I arrived because I care A LOT.

My teammate’s mother is genuinely wonderful, and as a mother myself, I would have probably done the same thing.

I’m grateful that, at this point in Juniper’s life (she’s only seven, so she doesn’t work yet unless you count the way she takes care of her beloved Vegas Monkey), we’ve had therapists who’ve similarly and gently called me in and helped me notice when I’ve limited Juni without meaning to. I’m grateful for my partnerships with our team and for their reminders that presuming Juni’s competence sometimes means sitting with my own discomfort as her parent (really, as a human).

Why am I telling this story?

Because it kept flashing through my mind all weekend, and I was hoping that writing about it might help me make sense of the connections I’m trying to understand.

Something Sally and I hear often is that the perspectives we have across our different roles and attributes (parent, professional learning facilitator, researcher, therapist, neurodivergent, etc.) give us a lens that feels a little different. People tell us that this mix is part of what we bring to our work with teams, part of what we’re able to offer. Maybe that’s true.

Mostly, we think our perspectives mean we’re in this with you. We get it, we live it. Our perspectives and experiences keep us connected to you and to the work. They also keep us honest, curious, and committed to making sense of the work in real time, even when it means starting a post with a disclaimer that bends and turns lie ahead.

Presenting at the TASH Conference left Sally and me reflecting a lot. One of the things we kept thinking about was this virtual space and what we hope to build here with y’all. We’re a little over a month into posting consistently, and TASH brought us right back to the heart of our work and why we started writing publicly (while very much in the “messy middle”) in the first place.

So many of our conversations last week were around what we also experience in our work with states, programs, practitioners, and families. Children’s behaviors, especially when they’ve experienced trauma and/or have disabilities, and particularly when they have intellectual disabilities or significant support needs, continue to be some of the biggest reasons adults separate, lower expectations, or move away from connection-focused practices.

But they don’t have to be. These are choices, not requirements. We can choose differently.

We want this space to grow into a place where we talk honestly about inclusion and belonging, and we want to make sure we’re focusing on what’s important to our field.

Right now, you’re telling us that what feels most urgent is how behavior impacts children’s relationships, connections, and belonging (not because of the child, their disability, or their behavior, but because of how adults and our systems interpret children’s behavior and make choices based on their interpretations).

I’m rambling about a NYC bathroom and a TASH presentation because they represent the work we want to do here, together.

So much of what we do comes down to how we (adults) interpret what someone else (often a child) does. Our interpretations can either build belonging or limit it.

We’re all wired for connection. We show and need it in different ways, but every one of us here on earth wants to be known, appreciated, befriended, loved … to belong.

Crouching down on that bathroom floor in New York City, holding my phone up to one ear, pressing my finger against my other ear to listen, I tried to communicate, “I care so much about your adult child that I’m choosing to believe in them the way I do all of my other teammates, and to offer them the opportunities they deserve.”

It’s that mindset, or heartset as Sally called it the other day, that we want to get into more here for a while, especially when it comes to children’s behaviors and belonging. We’ll still share ideas about environments and routines, because those matter a lot, too.

And, for now, this is where our own quarter-turn and our belonging work are taking us.

To questioning every assumption that ever tells us a child can’t,

Jackie and Sally