TPP 363: Emily Ladau on Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to be an Ally
episode
Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
44 min
1 speaker
1 chapter
transcribed 14 hours ago
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
There is the social model, which is really an understanding that, yes, there are things happening within a person's mind and body that may be disabling. But at the same time, a person's environment can also be disabling, whether it's the actual physical environment or. or whether it's the attitudes that are being put upon a person within a particular environment. So I may be perfectly able to do something until I am shut out because I have encountered stairs and no ramp or elevator. So it's not my disability that is the problem, even though I'm still disabled. It's that there were stairs that were disabling me in that moment and preventing me from participation.
I'm Debbie Reber and welcome to Tilt Parenting, a podcast featuring interviews and conversations aimed at inspiring, informing, and supporting parents raising differently wired kids. A theme we often touch upon on this show is how the discourse surrounding neurodivergence and the language used when referring to neurodivergence is ever evolving. I've observed on social media and in other spaces how conversations about terminology can be confusing, divisive, alienating, and complicated to navigate. Disability is one of those terms that can be uncomfortable for some people, including parents of neurodivergent kids, to embrace. But my hope is that this conversation will help you have a deeper understanding of what it means to be disabled, how ableism shows up and hurts all members of the disability community, including our kids, and how we can be better allies in the disability space.
To talk about this, I invited disability rights activist and writer Emily Ledao onto the show. Emily wrote a wonderful book called Demystifying Disability, What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally. And in today's conversation, we explore some of the core ideas in our book. As always, we covered a lot of ground in this episode, including what it actually means to be disabled, why the euphemism special needs is problematic for many people, how ableism is normalized in our society, disability etiquette do's and don'ts to keep in mind for future interactions, and so much more. And a fun fact about my guest, Emily Liddell's career began at the age of 10 when she appeared on several episodes of Sesame Street to educate children about her life with a physical disability.
Since then, Emily's writing has been published in outlets like the New York Times, CNN, Vice, and HuffPost, and she's spoken before numerous audiences from the U.S. Department of Education to the United Nations. Central to all of Emily's work is harnessing the power of storytelling to engage people in learning about disability. And I just want to say upfront that I know these types of conversations can bring up some uncomfortable feelings in us as we explore our own relationship with disability and ableism. I encourage you to listen with openness and to get curious about what, if anything, comes up for you. And now here is my conversation with Emily Liddell. Hey, Emily, welcome to the podcast. Hi, thank you for having me.
Yes, I'm really looking forward to getting into your work and diving into your gorgeous book. Such a wonderful resource called Demystifying Disability, what to know, what to say and how to be an ally. So we're going to really get into the concepts you write about. But before we do that, could you tell us a little bit about why you felt so compelled to write this book and how it's connected with your personal why?
Yes, absolutely. And first, I have to make sure that I say thank you for saying that the book is gorgeous and I cannot take credit for the actual illustrations. It was my... amazing illustrator, Tyler Fetter, who is a fantastic artist and really brought my vision to life to be able to represent as many different types of humanity as possible on the cover so that people who maybe have not feel or felt seen before on a book cover could now pick up that book cover and say, hey, I see someone that looks like me on this cover. So just to start off with that, I think actually leads right into my why.
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Chapters
1 chaptersSpeakers
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