by RACHEL ROBERTSON
As the (proud) parent of an autistic child who is not “normal”, I want to respond to the article “Is my child normal?” In this post mothers were invited to share their children’s unusual behaviour so that other mothers can reassure them that this behaviour is “normal”. Over five hundred people posted a comment on this story within the first few days.
I think that sharing stories within a community is important and even healing. What I do want to add though, is that I think the Mamamia community should also use this opportunity to spearhead a re-think about the concept of “normality”.
This would be a fantastic initiative because it would help those of us living with difference and disability to feel less excluded from mainstream society. And I think it would also help all mothers feel more comfortable with how they and their children are expressing themselves.
There has always been a huge range of variation in all aspects of the human being (and other species too). In the past, this variation was acknowledged and expected; only gods were perfect or ideal and humans were expected to exhibit variation.
As Lennard Davis has described, with the growth of scientific measurement and particularly the development of the normal or norm curve as a mapping tool, social scientists started describing something called “normal”. This “normal” was basically those people who fell into the middle of the norm curve. People on the outside edges became suddenly non-normal or “abnormal”. A shift occurred where the norm was then amalgamated with the ideal to create “normality”, which then became not only expected but also preferred.