Intellectual Disabilities

http://www.kltv.com/story/21538141/special-olympics-officials-working-to-change-the-communitys-vocabulary

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words cannot hurt me.” We have learned that portion of the saying has been proven to be entirely wrong. Verbal bullying can cause lots of psychological damage to a person, that is also a main reason for bringing an end to the R-word. The special Olympics officials have been working on changing the verbiage used to encourage people to stop using the words retard and retarded. They themselves have started intellectual disabilities in substitute for mental retardation.

I think this is a good point that many in today’s world should really consider. From very recent events of suicides caused form bullying we know that a simple word can make a difference in a person’s life. In my personal opinion I truly feel like we should get rid of this word, it really does have a negative feeling. Even though this word can be used amongst friends jokingly, it can cause awkwardness if it is used if the family of an intellectual disabled person is close by to hear, and we may not know if that specific individual feels as though they are the ones being made fun of.

Something that stood out to me from this article was the when Deanna Ramsey says, “It’s  hard to see other people use that word and even me though his diagnosis is MR we don’t use MR we say mentally challenged.” To me I felt like that was another way to say we need as much support to keep moving forward and making life happier for these individuals and their families. So yes it does bring me to really feel that as a person if the one thing I can do to help a family going through a mental disability is not use the words retard or retarded I should stop the word use and encourage others to do so as well.