Deviance

A first-grader with Down syndrome was working with his Dad to correct a worksheet during his first year in a regular classroom. The assignment was to find the synonym for a given word from a list of three other words. They got to the word “different.” The choices were “alike,” “strange,” and “OK.” The child had checked “OK. It was marked wrong. The right answer was “strange.”

The development of children with disabilities has been observed and described in terms of the development of children without disabilities. The children with disabilities are then categorized as departing, or deviating, from the established norm. Because it is difficult to say ‘different’ without saying “better’ or ‘worse,’ what deviates quickly becomes “worse”; that is deviant, strange, wrong, inadequate, in need of correction.

We need to ask whether the problem lies in the definition of the so-called norm, or the very desire to create a norm. Instead of fixing a person, maybe we need to fix the norm or devise a more meaningful one. In our efforts to avoid the label of deviance, parents are often perceived as denying difference. But we are only struggling to express what the first-grader say: different is OK.