Can you bring up every child in exactly the same way? Highly unlikely. And even if you could, would they all develop in the exactly the same way?
Of course not.
My daughter, Meg, is a unique combination of her genes and her environment. She is like people with long, straight, blond hair and unlike people with short dark wavy hair; she is like people who think Paolo Nutini is great and unlike people who prefer Rammstein; she is like people who enjoy chocolate and unlike people who enjoy olives.
In short, she is as individual as every other individual on this planet.
As a parent, my job is to respond to the individual needs of my daughter, just as I have tried to respond to the individual needs of my son, my stepson and my two stepdaughters.
Meg has Down’s Syndrome, but does this mean she has Special Needs?
Statistically, most children do not need a dedicated support assistant in the classroom; statistically, most children are not born with a hole in their heart, which requires open-heart surgery at 5 months old; statistically, most children are not classed in a group which has its own height-weight-development chart.
Specifically, then, my daughter has Special Needs when other people are involved in providing extra support, be it the medical, educational or financial authorities.
Special Needs can be seen as a shorthand for saying out of the ordinary, needs more help than normal, will take longer to achieve. However there are also value-laden, social and political ideas that accompany these words – a burden, limited resources taken away from others, impure, abnormal, brave parents to be pitied, drain on society, freaks, glad it’s not me… etc
These value-laden ideas, which place our children in a negative light, are endemic in society, especially a society so obsessed with such a narrowly defined idea of beauty and perfection. The idea we are all free to be individuals is laughable when to stray from the idealized norm is to invoke hostility. It is this society that says my daughter has Special Needs.
And yet, the label Special Needs is still a mighty step forward from previous labels such as Mongol, Retard and even Handicapped; each of those defines in such a way as to written off as beyond hope, beyond growth, beyond bother.
In this contradictory world of ours, while the media try and convince us all we are inadequate for failing to live up to an impossible, surgically and digitally enhanced beauty, there is too a growth in the idea of equality of opportunity. People should not be dismissed because of their color, race, religious beliefs or perceived disabilities.
But how shallow, how tenuous is our grip on this ideal? If our society can label all Muslims as terrorists, all black youth as potential muggers, or all poor people as lazy scroungers, then we are fighting a losing battle.
When we see only the label and not the individual it is so much easier not to care.
Here in Scotland the term Special Needs is slowly being replaced by the phrase, Additional Support Needs, which has the advantage of being less exclusive, but in the wrong hands can still be used to prop up notions of burdens and limited resources.
I live in hope that one day the distinctions won’t be necessary; one day it will only be about Individual Needs.