Mental Retardation

It’s one of my pet peeves. “He’s having behaviors,” says the new teacher. Argh! I hate that phrase. Of course he’s “having behaviors.” We all have behaviors. When we stop having behaviors, we’re dead. What she means, of course, is that her student is behaving in ways that are difficult, challenging, and unacceptable to her. She wants a behavior plan. She wants to get rid of the difficult behaviors. I want more information. Can we talk?

I think it’s a holdover from the old days. As recently as only thirty years ago, many people in the field thought that people with mental retardation could not have a mental illness. Some people even thought that people with mental retardation didn’t have feelings like the rest of us, or didn’t want to relate to other people, or were too “retarded” to make sense of things.

 It’s interesting and humbling to realize that when people...