There are several high functioning mentally retarded adults who live in a group home in my town and work in local stores as sweepers and baggers. They are pleasant, hard working people who do their jobs well. I’ve been wondering what kind of understanding some of them might have of their own disability. Can some of them comprehend, to a limited degree, that the rest of the population has cognitive abilities that they lack? Do they understand enough to feel sad at what they’re missing?
I guess what I mean is something like this: I am hopeless at math, but every now and the I’ll see a documentary on Nova about
mathematics or physics and I’ll understand enough to realize that there’s a whole, beautiful universe of intricate laws that exists beyond my ken, and it saddens me that I can’t grasp more of it.
Or to give another example, a friend of mine is tone deaf and indifferent to music, except for rare, random moments when some dormant synapse in her brain briefly fires up. During those moments, if she hears a melody she is deeply moved and saddened that she’s missing out the rest of the time.
So I’m asking, do some high functioning mentally challenged people have similar glimmerings of what they’re missing, and do they feel regret?
I work with DD people and some of them are high functioning enough that you wouldn’t know they had a diagnosis from a short conversation.
Everone is different, of course, but for the most part, I find that they understand their capacities somewhat akin to how a child would. They understand that they don’t understand everything and have to ask questions a lot or have things explained to them. Some of them have a self-perception that they “learn more slowly,” but that they’re not stupid. I have encountered some who are self-aware enough to resent their diagnosis and insist that “I know I’m not smart but I’m not a retard.”
In general, I guess I would say that they know they’re different, they know that other people are getting stuff they’re not getting, but that there is a range in how they respond emotionally to knowing that. Some accept it with good humor, some try endlessly to be “normal.”
Whew, I said all that without once succumbing to the impulse to make a Bush joke.
In response to the OP, I’ve worked and gone to school with quite a few high-functioning handicapped people. I agree with DtC’s assessment except in the case of people with high functioning autism or Asperger’s Syndrome, who never seemed (seemed is the key word) capable of that level of introspection.
My cousin is DD and fairly high functioning. He could not live independently, but he does manage many aspects of his life either on his own or with minimal assistance. He has several weekly activities, such as bowling league, that he takes public transportation to and from on his own, and keeps track of his schedule and responsibilities. If it is his turn to bring snacks, he will ask someone to remind him, but he never actually needs the reminder, you know?
He understands his condition much in the way that Dio describes. He knows he has more limitations than most other adults. He expresses frustration at times when he is aware that he is slow to grasp something he would like to master more quickly. I have never gotten the impression that he is sad about it, exactly. Sometimes he is sad if he is treated poorly or teased because of his disabilities, but it’s more a sadness about the other person’s behavior, not his own condition.
One aspect that he doesn’t seem aware of is his need for a strict routine. He quickly becomes anxious and then panicked if there is a deviation from the routine he expects. He has pointed out to me some differences between us – he has observed that I can drive a car, but he understands that he cannot, and he connects that to his disability (as opposed to a random coincidence that I learned to drive and he did not). The routine thing, on the other hand, seems so much a part of the way that he experiences the world that I believe he doesn’t grasp the fact that other people are not so tied to routine.
Oddly enough, I am tone deaf like your friend in your example, and I’ve never felt especially saddened about it. I would possibly describe it more as “a bummer” (generally I don’t think anything about it one way or the other) but not even close to a real, profound sadness. Unlike your friend, I’ve never had a moment where I “got” music, so maybe it is the contrast.
Like Dio and delphica said, the people I know/work with who have DD are aware that their mental functioning isn’t quite the same as everyone else’s. For the most part they’re quite matter-of-fact about it, and have no qualms asking for clarification, etc.
However, one thing I have noticed, though, are the ways in which they define themselves even further. Among the younger DDs at work, they will point fingers at the drop of a hat delineating who’s “dumber” or “stupider” than who. At first I was taken aback – heck, even shocked – at the behavior. But the more I thought about it, the more I remembered the saying that the more oppressed a person is, the more s/he lashes out, even within one’s own social/intellectual group. For some reason I never thought a DD person could grab such a concept. I was wrong.
A friend of mine has Down’s. She also has a law degree (in Spain that’s a Licenciatura, not a Doctorate; you start it straight from High School and it’s five grades) which she got through long-distance education because she was tired of being a poster child. She works with a local NPO (ANFAS). The first few times that she accompanied another Downie to a meeting, the other side was pretty surprised, now they know her.
She’s more disabled by other people’s perception of her than by the actual syndrome.
Other Downies I know are conscious that they understand things differently from other people; some take it badly, some take it very well. One is very involved with the parish and I think the best day in his life was one when he was feeling bad and one of the priests asked him what was the problem; this guy said “I’m so stupid, I never know the answer to the questions in Mass! I’m like the littlest ones!” and the priest bade him go up to the altar with him, opened the Bible and read that bit about having to be like a child. I’ve seen more than one get angry when someone talked down to them (“I’m in ANFAS, not a baby!”).
OK, how can I phrase this right… I think everybody has some “talents” but also nobody has them all; we all have some areas were we’re more-or-less disabled. I suck at high-level social stuff (mostly because I can’t bring myself to give a shit whether someone’s hairdresser is tha hairdresser in town ATM); my boss has no empathy for anybody who makes less than $XYZ; some people can’t read maps and others are dyslexic. But I’m good at getting information out of “peons”; my boss is good with the high-salaries; some people are good at combining clothes and others can sing real well.