The start of a long journey (cont.)

Every day, I go through life wondering about the people that I've met, wondering why there are some people who are horrible to disabilities.  The honest answer is that they are ignorant and can't be bothered to learn about the disability.

I met one person, who literally said that he didn't like disabled people to my face. After he said that, I went home and ignored him.  People who don't want to learn, they are missing what great people there are in the world. We live in a multi-cultural world, where everyone is different, whether it is being disabled in some way or another, being a different race, from a different country, we are all different and we should learn about the person and what makes them tick.

When you meet someone who has Developmental Language Disorder (aka, DLD), you need to follow some guidelines on how to interact with them. Here's ten:

• Don't interrupt them.  If you interrupt them because they're speaking too slowly, or not answering right away, you will put them off and lose their train of thought.  We will always get there, but it just takes a bit of time, so please, just be patient.
• Don't finish off their sentences. This is a pet hate of mine.  Why finish of the sentences? Are you a mind reader?  Do you actually know what we want to say? If you answered 'No' to the last two questions, then please continue down that road. If you answered 'To help you out' to the first question, guess what, you're not helping.  Again, we'll get there in time.  This is probably the most frustrating one out of these guidelines, and yet, people still do it even when I have said not to.
• Don't help with finding words. If we get stuck on a word, we'll ask for help or we'll find another word that is similar to it.  If you give us a word in place of the word we are stuck on, 90% of the time, it's wrong. So, let us try to think of it, and if we get stuck, we'll ask and then by all means you can help.  We'll usually tell you what the word means, then you can say, for example, 'Oh, you mean 'duck', don't you' and then we can say yes or no.  If it is a no, we either have thought of it, because your explanation has triggered the word to come to the surface, or we'll give you a further definition.
• Don't ignore us. Like with everyone, ignoring someone is very rude.  But, ignoring someone with DLD is a road to disaster.  There are some people who can chat for England, but even they shouldn't be ignored. We have had a number of years in the early part of our life where we weren't able to talk due to having DLD, so when we start learning to talk through speech therapy, it has given us a bunch of words to learn, so when you ignore us, does that give us the ability to learn those words? Unfortunately not. When someone learn, they usually bounce off what they've learnt to someone else, and that's what we do when we're speaking.
• Don't think that we're thick or mentally retarded. So, we speak slower than you? Why is that a problem? There are a lot of us who are very intelligent.  I've known classmates with DLD who are ace at Maths, and yet there are people who can't even look at maths. So, what makes us thick or mentally retarded?  There isn't anything about us which does.  We may speak slower than you, we may take longer to learn than you, but at the end of the day whatever we will do, we will get there in the end.
• Respect our Privacy. And no, this doesn't mean technology privacy or anything like that.  With our brains working a lot faster than anyone else, we can get very tired as we're concentrating, translating, and producing the language that we learn, either from someone talking to us or replying to that person.  We are spending all day to collate everything we learn in our brains into a sensible order and at the same time making conversations while trying to slow the brain down to get the words out in order. At times we need some downtime to recharge, so if we ask for some alone time, please respect it.
• Don't expect that we understand everything. The problem with DLD that we face is that we do not understand everything.  If you have a child in a school, do not under any circumstances expect that he or she has understood everything, this goes the same with college and/or university. Ask them questions to see if we've understood, not questions like: "Joe, do you understand what happens when two worlds collide?", because it is more than likely we'll say 'Yes'. Go further into the question, test the knowledge on the topic.
• Don't expect that we want to be controlled. There may be areas of our personalities that we can't handle, whether it is the idea of money, keeping our rooms tidy, knowing what we can or can't say, etc. But that doesn't mean that we want be turned into a robot and be controlled.  There may be some of us who have no choice, but a majority of us are able to live our own lives, so please, don't control us as that will irritate us.
• Don't change things without notice. In ways, there are some things that is listed under DLD which are similar to Autism, and this is one of them.  When someone says, "Joe, tomorrow, we are going to the zoo, at 3 pm", don't get to 'tomorrow' and then when 'Joe' says "Hey, it's 3 pm, lets go to the zoo now" say "I'm sorry, Joe, I can't...", it may totally destroy 'Joe' because from the first moment you mentioned it, he would have been looking forward to it and now, you've just dropped a bomb onto his enjoyment and killed it.  What would follow would either be a tantrum or a blanket silence from 'Joe'. If it is a blanket silent, you will not be able to get through to him.  So, don't change an activity without prior notice, or if it's day before the activity like in the scenario, don't mention the activity.
• Don't expect that we know how to do everything. Do you? As previously mentioned, we take longer to learn things so don't expect that we know how to do something straight away.  I am learning how to create videos for my YouTube Channel, but if I had someone saying 'Oh it's easy.  You do this, you do that, you do the other...' and they said it at the speed of a Category 5 Hurricane, do you honestly think that I will know when they left me? It may take a long time, but be patient we will find our own way of learning whatever you want us to do.

These are only guidelines, not rules.  Everyone who has DLD is different and you will not find two who are exactly the same, similar to a fingerprint, but there are quite a few who would agree with these guidelines and could add more to it. 

With me, if you met me, I'd love it if you abide by all of the ten guidelines as I find life difficult. But, I know people who have DLD and you wouldn't even know that had DLD if it was your first time meeting them.  They're in my eyes, are the lucky ones. But, then again, there are people with DLD who a million times worse than me, and if you didn't abide by the guidelines, then their lives would be in a total mess and they would go within themselves.

The thing is, what I'm writing here is what I face in every day life. But, it's best to keep these guidelines in mind for a reference, or even come back to them if you forget any of the points.

So, let me know if you have ever met someone with Developmental Language Disorder and what did you notice that you weren't expecting.

I hope that you can continue coming back to the blog.  There will be a new blog every Saturday. And don't forget to subscribe and tell your friends.