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[…] Well, so what if they don’t understand? How do you know if you don’t let them even try? Is it the end of the world if you give someone a chance to engage with the same material as their age-mates and they don’t understand?
They might not, but what if they did? What if they would, but you wouldn’t even give them a shot?
We have to be allowed to not necessarily understand perfectly, not understand everything, not understand right away, or to try and not understand at all, without being declared forever incapable of understanding, if we’re going to get a fair chance to understand. Those have to be acceptable possibilities.
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Well, the first part of presuming competence is presuming capacity. […] Please, keep believing that I can do things, or at least should be able to give them a good honest try before […]
But. I have failed a lot in my day. There are things I just cannot do. […]
When I tell you I cannot do something, presume that I am competent to understand my own limitations. […]
We all have inabilities. It’s ok to have inabilities – unless, it seems, you are disabled.
Acknowledging a difficulty is not the same as presuming global inability. It’s part of seeing me as a whole, really real person.
Really real people are allowed to not be able to do things.
Autism: Explorations 