Why Are Some Parents Labelling Their Children Disabled When They Are Not?
All human life can be found on the dreaded school class WhatsApp. I was reminded of a chilling exchange when it was reported, a few days ago, that a record number of 730,000 children receive disability benefits after a surge in autism and ADHD diagnoses. Like the best of parochial rows, the school WhatsApp exchange touched on issues of national importance: who is really disabled?
“A gentle reminder that the disabled parking bay is for people with GENUINE blue parking disability badges,” read the first WhatsApp message. It’s a picture-perfect village primary, where children walk from the village hall car park, past the cricket pitch and a large field of sheep, to the small Victorian school. There are disabled spaces also at the back of the carpark, but the disabled spot at the front is prime; it is generally occupied by a small grey car containing a mother and her son. In the window of the passenger seat is a square blue badge: “Disabled Child Onboard,” affixed with a translucent sucker. It can be bought for £6.99 on Amazon.
The inevitable WhatsApp followed: “Not all disabilities are visible.”
An immediate reply: “But genuine blue badges should be.”
“My son suffers sensory issues.”
“My daughter is in a wheelchair.”
“He prefers to be closer to the park and stride”
The parent WhatsAppers got serious, and a ‘Whole School’ letter from the Headteacher followed, reminding everyone not to use the disabled bays unless they were owners of a genuine blue badge. An unseemly squabble about competing conditions then unfolded – won, to all neutral observers, by the careworn mother of the child in the wheelchair.
And yet, the following day, the small grey car with the illicit disabled badge was brazenly parked in the disabled spot again and remained in place for the whole term.
What could have been done? We’re not the sort of community where verbal rows are ever had in village hall car parks. Besides, the mother of the illicit blue badge is a big woman who obviously believes her child is disabled, despite lacking an official medical diagnosis.
What impulse is this – to label a child ‘disabled’ when they do not meet the medical criteria for such? Why the pride in broadcasting your son’s ‘sensory difficulties’ to the class WhatsApp? Why the mindset that lionises the weakest side of a child to the extent a fake disabled badge is purchased? Why reduce a child to a disorder? Surely, at some point the boy will say to his mum, “But I’m not disabled.”?
According to the above report, claims to support children with ‘behavioural disorders’ have more than doubled to 182,000 since before lockdown. This gives rise to inevitable questions over whether these behavioural disorders are biological or social in nature. But, the well child made sickly by their either vicious, inept or misguided parents is one familiar to readers of children’s literature. Just think of poor Colin in The Secret Garden or Clara in Heidi.
And what is the worse thing about this rush to label well children disabled or disordered? That the children in actual wheelchairs, who are in need of help, are shunted to the back of the carpark.
Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence mentor.
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The difference between a Welfare State and a Totalitarian one is ——A Matter of Time. (Rand)
The difference between Ayn Rand and a moderately intelligent human being is that the latter would never assume that the sum of one’s own experiences must encompass the totality of the universe. Eg, the emperor Diocletian turned the Roman empire into a totalitarian state but it was never a welfare state in the post-1945 sense of the term. Another example of that would be Stalinist Russia. While morons like Rand would probably argue that Bismarck must have been a socialist because he invented universal health, accident and old age insurance, the totalitarian 3rd Reich didn’t organically grow out of the German empire. It didn’t even grow organically out of the Weimar republic, also a bit of a welfare state (it even had a joblessness insurance which – to Rand and her fans – would make it only insignifcantly less communist than Lenins soviet republic) but needed outside intervention in two cases: The Entente powers forcing the treaty of Versailles onto the German republic they begat by promising that they’d be willing to negotiate with German republicans as they were only warring against the German military leadership and not against ordinary German people. They didn’t mean to keep this promise for… Read more »
Rand, a moron?
I’ll resist commenting on your views on Rand, have you read her? Is it The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged that features Rainham Steel? I only ask because there used to be ads all round the pitch at one of the Nth East premier league clubs, Sunderland, Middlesbrough or Hull for Rainham Steel & I always wondered if someone up there was a Rand acolyte.
I’ve read Anthem which was fairly badly written SF story and started reading the Fountainhead but at some point, grew terminally tired with the plot and the acting characters and chose to cook a nice dinner with Brussels sprouts instead.
With Brussel sprouts; I think I understand now.
It seemed a very appropriate counterpoint to this tale of the dynamite-wiedling genius rapist seeking to seeking to bestow ugly buildings modelled after what small children build with toy bricks on a world which didn’t want them because he’s really the modernist messiah who begat himself as the hypothetical divine entity a majority of people still mistakenly believed in couldn’t have done it because it didn’t exist.
It’s a real pity Rand didn’t yet know about takeaway pizza and ready-made microwave meals. This could have become an exciting subplot about destroying architecture and cuisine at the same time. Had she further lived to experience half-naked black women going through rhythmic contortions with some black guy babbling poorly rhymed nonsense in the back-foreground (aka hip hop), music could have been added to the mix of ancient things we really need to overcome to prove that we’re MODERN!!!
Extensions into yet more fields of human culture she considered rather grating because they were was all completely alien and unintelligible to her could certainly be envisioned.
The Treaty of Versailles was disastrous on many levels, for example, two major outcomes of forcing the Germans to mine and ship coal to Britain for free as war reparations were
1. a destroyed British coal mining industry and
2. a lot of Germans learning how to be expert coal miners.
I can’t comment on the British coal industry but Germany was one of three major industrial powers in the world prior to the war and by that time, coal was an essential resource for anything-industrial as use of oil had just started. As only member of the alliance of four (Vierbund) with considerable coal reserves, it had also supplied Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey with coal from 1914/15 – 1918 on top of what was needed for its own war effort. If anything, coal mining in Germany shrank after 1919 because the formerly very important industrial area in Upper Silesia had become Polish.
I don’t know much about Rand though from what I do know I seem to share some of her views.
I expect with enough restraint and good sense a welfare state can be made to work reasonably well and not lead to totalitarianism but restraint and good sense seem to be in short supply.
The statement is just stupid. Judging from human history so far, periods of tyranny have always occured and will thus probably keep occuring, COVID being the most recent example. Hence, anything that’s a welfare state today will probably eventually become a tyranny. But that’s regardless of it being a welfare state now. Eg, the kingdom of Irak which wasn’t welfare state in the western sense turned into the totalitarian tyranny of Saddam Hussein through a couple of coups d’etat in the 1960s.
Rand could as well have stated that the difference between a welfare state in Florida and the coastal areas being devastated by a hurricane is just a matter of time. That’s as true. And as unrelated to welfare state.
Yes indeed tyranny is a common outcome and not exclusive to welfare states
Restraint and good sense are the problem, somewhere a level to which the have-nots are to be lifted must be decided and that level is always higher for the Leftwaffe and lower for the Libertarians. So the level decided oscillates a bit but then rises monotonically gradually for ever because no one wants to be ‘nasty’ and very few understand normal distributions and can determine the point where the mathematics pushes costs above the benefit to society.
And yet I see people who are are on the street because without an address you get no benefits from the state and are then only given charity, if you’re lucky.
“Normal distribution”
You’ll get into trouble using phrases like that!
Forget your personal opinion of Rand or her work——Is the statement above true or not? Isn’t it the case that Welfare at the level we see today creates a nation of government dependent slobs who once dependent on government are putty in their hands?
See other comment. If we define (totalitarian) tyranny as artifical endpoint of history, all human endeavours will ultimatively end with it. That’s a completely banal truism.
If I had any say on that, the not-so-nice people occupying the nearby salvation army hostel would all be housed in barracks on some moor and be occupied with subsistence agriculture unless they demonstrate a willingness to work in some other job. OTOH, I’m all for feeding them in order to keep the number of them loitering at street corners to acquire the means for a living by clubbing pedestrians low. I believe the overall cost of the former is lower than that of the latter.
Probably an attempt to blame the shortcomings of their own parenthood on a pathology. And maybe get a bit of extra disability money to make ends meet. There are people like that. You would be surprised the stuff that people will say in order to gain access to extra state funds. I don’t doubt for a moment that the culture or miasma that we live in disables people. As an adult I had to fight a long battle against the demoralisation that is inflicted upon us. But you shouldn’t use a third party as an excuse for your own weakness. It is like someone who complains about their dog’s entitled behaviour and if you look at the lack of dominance they show over the dog you can see why,. Feminized, infantilized and encouraged to wear the pink panties of submission. And at this point a lot of people will gladly sport the undergarments of humiliation.
Good question.
We’re all disabled (imperfect) as we’re not God. Deal as best you can with what you have – accept things you can’t change and work towards improving everything else. I’m not sure it’s overly helpful to label yourself or have other people label you – or don’t get hung up on the label.
They have this idea of a perfect child and any shortfall means that something was inflicted on them. How about you inflicted your genes on them and if you had any sense you might’ve refrained from breeding. They just remind you how much of a waste of space you are.
Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy.
It’s a sad indictment on a sick society when people themselves, or on behalf of others (children etc.) lie about “disabilities” to gain some perceived advantage or payment. It’s just dishonest and cheating, and what lesson does it teach children?
That’s its okay to lie and cheat if you can gain something from doing so!
Many years ago I was badly injured in a car crash (as a passenger) and spent 3 months in hospital. After I had recovered and recuperated through physiotherapy I was informed I was entitled to a disabled badge, even though I had made pretty much 100% recovery by that time – I declined.
I had been taught decency, honesty and self-respect.
I don’t say this to appear virtuous, more to point out many of those values no longer exist in an a society that feels ever more entitled, and proud of its victimhood.
Also, as in the example given, it deprives people with genuine need. Those cheating have no moral compass, and feel no need to change or guide their offspring.
It comes from the top ultimately. I have worked in counter-fraud and you can see clearly that the sort of gaming behaviour that the population follows is essentially mimicry of perceived patterns of behaviour. There are complicating elements. In our time it isn’t difficult to see why international organized crime will pick up on these weaknesses and exploit them. There is a huge involvement in Bulgarian and Romanian organised crime robbing the British state. There was a recent case with the DWP and an organised crime gang operating from rural Bulgaria that resulted in prosecution but massive loss of money. . In terms of doubtful disability you will get some chancer who will brag to the people he lives amongst that he has just been awarded PIP for entirely bogus reasons. He will see this as an achievement and will brag about it even among people who hate him. You have to have a full grasp of what public morality is these days.
“Why Are Some Parents Labelling Their Children Disabled When They Are Not?”
The reason? There is money in it. Once parents caught on to ADHD and the like the benefit claims rocketed, aided and abetted by lazy bloody doctors who rather than stand their ground gave the diagnosis the parent wanted. It is one hell of a racket. I might be wrong but I suspect an ADHD card carrying brat generates a Blue Badge for Mummy and Daddy so that’s free parking sorted. There are numerous other freebies for disabled children.
Yet another example of how honest taxpayers are soaked. Oh, and the immies are well versed in this treat with frequently all their offspring “disabled.”
Passport to comfort and even possibly riches for the most hard-faced.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/126623893505?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=VW87kUfdSfK&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=-_y_2nlVSr-&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
The Bible when I worked for DWP. A mine of information.
In a sense I approve of ADHD. If what you pick up on from the media is utter nonsense and you listen to the conversation going on around you then you could argue that an attention deficit is not only rational but necessary. If I was a kid born into these times I think I would go mad.
Maybe remove the word ‘special’ regarding needs…and change it to ‘additional’.
It seems everyone wants their kid to be ‘Special’
I have been told I cannot find if this is true or not, that schools receive extra funding per Autistic child, hence schools are driving the surge in claiming children as autistic.
In my day children were naughty, or lazy or not very bright, Parents these days would rather label their child with a disability than admit they are any of the three above. The child is not mature enough to recognise it is being used to project its Parents insecurities, and as they the child will be treated “specially” in school then they will grow up believing themselves incapable of doing things they could do because of Adults
Not true. See my comment here.
What is driving the surge is children developing autism.
The numbers are huge and increasing year on year.
Ordinary schools cannot cope without additional help which is often one-to-one care from a specialist adult for each child.
Follow the money. Prescriptions for ADHD and autism increasing at a great rate.
If you read my comments here and here and here you will discover you are wrong.
Autism is a real health problem which has been increasing year-on-year for two decades and more.
But the real question is why is it increasing? Very few things are without cause, but the cause of something which is increasing must be found. A large review of child health records should provide some useful pointers, but experience says that this will not happen because TPTB are afraid of the possible results. Of course I wouldn’t like to mention jabs, as the last lot were “safe and effective” weren’t they? I probably suffered with some Autism when a child, and my wife says I still do, but it doesn’t seem to have done me much harm except at school, where I suffered immense depression which no one noticed!
TPTB say they don’t know what causes autism but they are certain is it not vaccinations.
They also cling to the mantra there is no increase and that it is all better diagnosis and greater awareness.
If you want to know what causes autism read ‘Vax-Unvax Let the Science Speak‘
It covers Covid19 injections for children also [they are not vaccines – to the degree the term had to be redefined to include them].
As autism has currently no diagnostic pathology it is diagnosed by the presence of a combination of characteristic behaviours. Everyone has potentially one or two of these traits but autistic people have all of them and some may be borderline autistic. But 60% of autistic school age boys are in the worst affected categories which are so unmistakable it does not require diagnostic training to recognise them. Recently a mother brought her child to a sports club to join. As the sports session had already started the child did not want to join in. It was because as an autistic everything has to follow the expected order and anything which does not is disturbing to that degree. When asked what the child was good at to explain an analogy between learning a sport and other activities the answer was the one answer the majority of children would not give – ‘maths’. That child is a high functioning verbal autistic but the worst cases are non-verbal. It has become fashionable for adults to claim they have features of autism and ADHD. It also has been fashionable to claim famous historical figures were autistic. This is on the basis they have some… Read more »
There is only one reason: Massive Welfare Benefits.
Parents no longer even need a medical diagnosis of “anxiety” or “depression” or any other kind of mental health disability in order to claim a bewildering array of welfare benefits for themselves and their child.
DWP on the 57 medical conditions that could qualify you for £400 a month in Disability Living Allowance – Cambridgeshire Live (cambridge-news.co.uk)
Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for children: Overview – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
It it just another way the Globalists tempt, corrupt and enfeeble the population, along with drugs, porn and obsession with “gender confusion”, in order to prevent all resistance to the New Feudal World Order.
And on the rare occasions that the peasants do resist, they are ruthlessly crushed, like Wat Tyler long ago, and now. The Globalist motto is, as the great American Patriot Charlotte Iserbyt warned:
“Target the Resisters”.
Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence mentor. It is not merely tedious for DS to host authors who write about what they know very little about but it is harmful and in this case harmful to a huge number of children and their families. Anyone who can write is a writer. And anyone who has a fancy made up job description of ‘confidence mentor’ immediately drops through a huge hole in my confidence floor to an abyss below. It has become fashionable to deride the explosion in disabilities like autism in this way. The autism pandemic has been gaslit for decades when it is one of the most serious health problems in the UK and is costing the NHS [those of us who still pay taxes] a bloody fortune: Autism and ADHD place “unprecedented” demand on NHS – BMJ – 04 April 2024 So I am disgusted by Joanna Grey who comes here to moan about her tiny little world of online comments by parents at just one school. More fool her for sending her kid to such a school. Official figures show that over 7% of the UK’s school age boys are autistic. And the figures from Northern Ireland, when they… Read more »
If anyone wants to deny there is a problem, look up the statistics on the steady increase in specialist schools opening over the past two decades for autistic children.
They are not autistic because their parents say so. It is damnably difficult to get a diagnosis and a diagnosis is necessary for the condition to be recognised and a child given access to special help at school.
But with 60% of boys being category 5 they cannot attend normal schools and probably cannot attend any school at all but may require residential care for the lives.