Reading the Label

Day 55 - 3:27pm, Sunday 24th February

I read a social media post which questions whether or not it's a good thing to label special needs kids. It gets me thinking about Little Master's diagnosis. I've never really thought of it as a label. It's such a loaded word, but it shouldn't be. It should be neutral, and the fact that it isn't says more about us as a society and our inability to accept people and love them as they are than it does about the word itself.

In the same way that an axe is a tool which can be used for good (building a shelter) or bad (killing people), diagnosis is a tool and it is what we do with that tool and how we use it that is important. If we see labels as a limitation, as a means simply to point out areas of difficulties or worse still we use it as a mask where we see the label and not the person, then labeling a child with a diagnosis is a bad thing. But it doesn't have to be, and I suspect for most, it is not a closing door, but an opening one.

For me, diagnosis was a positive, a way in. It brought with it strategies and professional support, a way to open up my own limited understanding of what I could do to help him and hopefully has made me a better mother to him because of it.

Is he more than his diagnosis? Absolutely! Labels are there to guide you, they are not the final word: a jam jar label will let you know what kind of jam is inside, but it won't tell you how it will taste, you're only really going to know that when you put it in your mouth and experience it for yourself. And knowing his diagnosis, doesn't tell me who he is, it just helps me get to know him a little bit better.