Re: Fw: Girls Don't Play Drums

[Guest guest]

I forget that the links on newsletters don't always work.

I have already deleted the newsletter, Disability is Natural...will try to get a

copy of the article to which I was referring, Quiet Hands.

Ellen

Ellen Garber Bronfeld

egskb@...

[Guest guest]

Sorry...forgot that those newsletter links don't work on IPADDU. Here is the

article about Hands Down...

Just Stimming…

A land we can share (a place I can map)

Quiet Hands

with 71 comments

TW: Ableism, abuse

Explaining my reaction to this:

means I need to explain my history with this:

1.

When I was a little girl, they held my hands down in tacky glue while I cried.

2.

I’m a lot bigger than them now. Walking down a hall to a meeting, my hand flies

out to feel the texture on the wall as I pass by.

“Quiet hands,” I whisper.

My hand falls to my side.

3.

When I was six years old, people who were much bigger than me with loud echoing

voices held my hands down in textures that hurt worse than my broken wrist while

I cried and begged and pleaded and screamed.

4.

In a classroom of language-impaired kids, the most common phrase is a metaphor.

“Quiet hands!”

A student pushes at a piece of paper, flaps their hands, stacks their fingers

against their palm, pokes at a pencil, rubs their palms through their hair. It’s

silent, until:

“Quiet hands!”

I’ve yet to meet a student who didn’t instinctively know to pull back and put

their hands in their lap at this order. Thanks to applied behavioral analysis,

each student learned this phrase in preschool at the latest, hands slapped down

and held to a table or at their sides for a count of three until they learned to

restrain themselves at the words.

The literal meaning of the words is irrelevant when you’re being abused.

5.

When I was a little girl, I was autistic. And when you’re autistic, it’s not

abuse. It’s therapy.

6.

Hands are by definition quiet, they can’t talk, and neither can half of these

students…

(Behavior is communication.)

(Not being able to talk is not the same as not having anything to say.)

Things, slowly, start to make a lot more sense.

7.

needs a modified chair to help him sit. It came to the classroom fully

equipped with straps to tie his hands down.

We threw the straps away. His old school district used them.

He was seven.

8.

Terra can read my flapping better than my face. “You’ve got one for everything,”

she says, and I wish everyone could look at my hands and see I need you to slow

down or this is the best thing ever or can I please touch or I am so hungry I

think my brain is trying to eat itself.

But if they see my hands, I’m not safe.

“They watch your hands,” my sister says, “and you might as well be flipping them

off when all you’re saying is this menu feels nice.”

9.

When we were in high school, my occasional, accidental flap gave my other

autistic friend panic attacks.

10.

I’ve been told I have a manual fixation. My hands are one of the few places on

my body that I usually recognize as my own, can feel, and can occasionally

control. I am fascinated by them. I could study them for hours. They’re

beautiful in a way that makes me understand what beautiful means.

My hands know things the rest of me doesn’t. They type words, sentences,

stories, worlds that I didn’t know I thought. They remember passwords and

sequences I don’t even remember needing. They tell me what I think, what I know,

what I remember. They don’t even always need a keyboard for that.

My hands are an automatic feedback loop, touching and feeling simultaneously. I

think I understand the whole world when I rub my fingertips together.

When I’m brought to a new place, my fingers tap out the walls and tables and

chairs and counters. They skim over the paper and make me laugh, they press

against each other and remind me that I am real, they drum and produce sound to

remind me of cause-and-effect. My fingers map out a world and then they make it

real.

My hands are more me than I am.

11.

But I’m to have quiet hands.

12.

I know. I know.

Someone who doesn’t talk doesn’t need to be listened to.

I know.

Behavior isn’t communication. It’s something to be controlled.

I know.

Flapping your hands doesn’t do anything for you, so it does nothing for me.

I know.

I can control it.

I know.

If I could just suppress it, you wouldn’t have to do this.

I know.

They actually teach, in applied behavioral analysis, in special education

teacher training, that the most important, the most basic, the most foundational

thing is behavioral control. A kid’s education can’t begin until they’re “table

ready.”

I know.

I need to silence my most reliable way of gathering, processing, and expressing

information, I need to put more effort into controlling and deadening and

reducing and removing myself second-by-second than you could ever even conceive,

I need to have quiet hands, because until I move 97% of the way in your

direction you can’t even see that’s there’s a 3% for you to move towards me.

I know.

I need to have quiet hands.

I know. I know.

13.

There’s a boy in the supermarket, rocking back on his heels and flapping

excitedly at a display. His mom hisses “quiet hands!” and looks around,

embarrassed.

I catch his eye, and I can’t do it for myself, but my hands flutter at my sides

when he’s looking.

(Flapping is the new terrorist-fist-bump.)

14.

Let me be extremely fucking clear: if you grab my hands, if you grab the hands

of a developmentally disabled person, if you teach quiet hands, if you work on

eliminating “autistic symptoms” and “self-stimulatory behaviors,” if you take

away our voice, if you…

if you…

if you…

15.

Then I…

I…

..

Ellen Garber Bronfeld

egskb@...

[Guest guest]

Ellen,

Thank you for running this. We do all we can to rob our people of

themselves and blame then for reacting

When Adam was very small his teachers would do all they could to get him to

give eye contact...pulling his chin so his face would square off with their

face....corner him so he could not turn his face any further from their

face so he would HAVE to make eye contact.

When he was in high school he wanted a student whose locker was next to

his say hi to him. She refused and when he used the same " strategies " that

were used on him the halls of the schools rocked and I was called in for a

big table conference. When I reminded the good teachers this was exactly

how he was taught to give eye contact, it certainly made sence to him that

was the way he would convince his fellow classmates to give him eye

contact and say hello. Not very socially appropriate...by either the

teachers or him.

Just this week a well intentioned adult was demanding to a young adult

" give me your eyes...look at me..give me your eyes " So if I want to ignore

someone, I just ignore...if I have a disability I am coaxed like a two year

old and even though the person with a disability is in the mid 20s and the

only way he can articulate " I want to ignore you " he is denied his matter

of communication by turning away.

There are a lot of ways society has figured out a way to demean people with

disabilities. In 2011 we often treat young adults like two year olds.

GEEZE, besides all the other stuff we are juggling, SSI, Medicaid, etc. we

still have basic human rights and attitudes to deal with.

Cindi