You’re not “Motivating” Disabled Kids, You’re Just Bullying Them

How educators and therapists talk to disabled children.

I’ve been disabled at pretty much the same exact level of severity since I was born. As such, I’ve gotten to experience the joy of being disabled in school. I also grew up going to various therapies like physical, occupational, and speech therapy.

While I acknowledge that many of my teachers and therapists had a positive impact on my life, I also experienced A LOT of bad ones. Between teachers who denied me basic help to therapists who tried to convince me that my inability to do certain things was my fault, it was a lot for a kid to deal with.

I still deal with insecurities given to me by these people, and I think they’d be absolutely shocked to hear that. I think they truly believe everything they did was motivating me, and that’s what I want to address here. Why are we willing to go so far to “motivate” disabled children?

I have a neuromuscular disease, which means my muscles and nerves don’t work properly. This applies to all my muscles, not just my legs. When most people see a person using a wheelchair, however, they assume that their legs are the problem.

This mindset applied to many of my teachers growing up. In second grade, I had a teacher who would give me horrible grades because my handwriting and drawing skills were terrible. She taught language arts.

This teacher would assign us to write a story and draw a picture to go with it. I’d usually get a C on these assignments: 100 for the story, 0 for the picture. My mom literally had to get one of the assistant principals involved for her to stop doing this, and after that she would give me both my grade and the grade she thought I really deserved.

This same teacher also didn’t let me use the word processor the school had gotten me to help with my lack of fine motor skills. My handwriting sucked and my hands hurt after writing for a bit, so the word processor would let me type all my assignments. When my mom asked why I hadn’t received the promised device during an annual accommodation meeting, they came to my classroom to look for it. The device was found completely untouched on top of a cabinet.

According to this teacher, she felt that giving me all these accommodations would lead me to stop working as hard. She claimed that she was motivating me to improve my fine motor skills. I guess she thought everyone else was babying me, but when all the experts are telling you your student won’t get better, maybe listen?

This teacher took her attitude beyond school work. Around winter break, she had us make paper snowflakes to hang in the classroom window. We were instructed to fold the paper three times before cutting it, but this made it too thick for me to cut through. I folded it twice instead and made my snowflake, but my teacher promptly threw it in the trash because I made it wrong. My second snowflake had the same fate.

I got sent to the school counselor because I became so emotional over this, and she found the whole situation ridiculous. She helped me make a third snowflake and personally delivered it to my teacher. This one hung in the window until the counselor left, when it joined the other two.

A fourth snowflake was finally able to stay in the window…of the counselor’s office.

This teacher thought accommodations made things too easy for me, and that I’d never get better at things if accommodations were provided. Her line of thinking was replicated by a fourth grade teacher who walked my class from lunch to recess while my teacher went to lunch.

The cafeteria and playground were on opposite ends of the school, and it was a tough trek in my manual chair. It was pretty much carpet the whole way there, and I’d often be too tired to care about recess by the time I got there.

In the past, my teachers would push me to recess. This teacher, however, refused. He said I should get used to pushing myself, especially since I’d be starting middle school in two years. I told him I didn’t intend to use my manual chair in middle school, but he insisted that he needed to get me ready for middle school.

I would beg this man day after day for help, but it never did any good. He’d watch me cry as I pushed myself down the hall, but he still acted like he was helping me.

My teacher eventually caught wind of what was going on, and he tried to convince the other teacher to just push me. When that didn’t work, he started pushing me to recess himself. My teacher gave up part of his lunch to help me because the other teacher wouldn’t.

The other teacher never changed his stance. He would make comments about my teacher babying me for the rest of the year, even proudly stating that he would’ve made me cry.

Therapists used different strategies, but they were often just as harmful. After a poor swallow study in kindergarten, I was restricted to eating foods with a thick consistency like pudding and applesauce. At school, however, I was inexplicably banned from eating and drinking anything by mouth. I only got fed through my feeding tube, and the amount of supplemental water I was given was pre-decided and unchanging.

Extra hot day? No extra water. Jog day in P.E.? No extra water. Teacher randomly gives extra recess? No extra water.

I would later learn that this decision had more to do with their liability and unwillingness to take me to the bathroom, more often than my swallow study. Despite this, both my school and private speech therapists tried to convince me that me not getting to drink water or eat a normal lunch was my fault. I just needed to work harder. If I worked harder and did better on my next swallow study, I could earn these privileges back.

So after my positive follow-up swallow study, I got those, um, privileges back, right?

Sometimes I forget how messed up special ed is.

The whole narrative of me just needing to “earn” my food and water back went on until I was in fourth grade despite every swallow study but one being good. The school decided not to let me eat or drink despite my doctor saying they should, and the speech therapists tried to convince me it was my fault.

I suppose it was worth it. They did get a few years of me trying to be an overachiever in speech.

This wasn’t the only time a therapist tried to blame me for things outside of my control. I dealt with a lot of bullying over the years, and most of my therapists knew that. One of them, however, seemed to think she knew why this was happening. She’d never been to my school, by the way.

In this occupational therapist’s opinion, the kids at school could probably tell that I wore diapers, so they didn’t like me. Yes, this was said to nine year old me by a licensed professional. Even if they couldn’t tell, she claimed, it would become more obvious as I got older. People would find out, and they wouldn’t be friends with me.

If you’re unfamiliar with neurogenic bladder and neurogenic bowel, it means you physically don’t have the ability to control your bladder and bowel. Often, and in my case, you can’t even properly feel them. It’s not a lack of motivation.

Also, what nine year old wants to wear diapers? I doubt any child that age would wear them if they had any other choice.

This same therapist would also get mad at me if I didn’t react properly to activities we did. She used to put me on this board and spin me, which was supposed to help with spatial awareness. I often complained that it made me dizzy, but she said it couldn’t because she spun me an equal amount in both directions. She’d accuse me of just trying to get out of therapy.

She also belittled me when I couldn’t do things that “should be easy.” One exercise we did frequently involved me reaching into a bag of wooden shapes and pulling out the shape she requested. A simple activity for anyone not diagnosed with a peripheral nerve disease.

My sensation is completely unreliable when I can’t see whatever I’m supposed to be feeling, so I almost never got the right shape. This was perceived by my therapist as a lack of effort, especially the time I spent ten minutes looking for the cube only to pull out my other hand. I never improved at this activity, and I was blamed extensively.

Eventually, I mustered up the courage to tell all of this to my physical therapist, who also owned the facility. She told me that my occupational therapist was just trying to motivate me to work harder, and that I should grow a thicker skin.

Years later, when my mom went to her about a different therapist that made me uncomfortable, she asked why I didn’t say anything. She didn’t remember this conversation.

My experiences aren’t unique. We’ve completely normalized doing absolutely anything to motivate disabled kids, including outright bullying them. Regardless of the intentions, bullying is bullying, even when it’s to disabled kids.

Therapy isn’t boot camp. Disabled kids didn’t sign up to be berated, often they were just born. When disabled kids can’t do something, there’s probably a reason for it.

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