Autism Soccer: "You Have a Condition, So You Can't Do It!": The Importance of a Simple Word

Being incorrectly considered "special" or a "child with a condition" for living with autism, generally becomes the ideal justification to stop being and doing, which hinders the implementation of the process of inclusion in the social and educational field.

The human being has always had the urgent need to name, catalog, classify, order and rationalize the world and everything that it comprises.

At present, social struggles are planting the discourse of diversity as a banner. The awareness campaigns on Autism Spectrum Disorder do not escape this trend, a constant debate about the correct way to refer or name certain topics.

No diagnosis can nor must suppress the capacity to be; to be considered a person, a human being with the same rights as any other. Rights that, not because they are universal, must cease to be diverse in the ways in which their implementation is conceived.

The Importance of a Simple Word

In the area of education, to speak of disability is to close the doors not only to the recognition of the capacities and opportunities that the person does have, but also to close them to change. A change that is becoming increasingly evident and necessary in the schools of the 21st century.

However, there is another problem in educational inclusion where the meaning of a word makes it an impediment to the successful development of this process: a diagnosis of ASD and be automatically cataloged "special," and not in a good way.

In school, being considered "special" for children with autism, usually becomes that reason to stop doing, which hinders and delays the process of inclusion in the educational field, for several reasons.

When an adult justifies or associates inappropriate behaviors with the "special" character of the child, ignores the explanation and the taboo reason of the topic, but immediately gives a negative label to the fact of being considered "special" before the eyes of the rest of children. And at the end of the day, because of the understanding that children usually have, being special is equivalent to behaving badly.

Then they will begin to wonder “Am I special? Do I have something that makes me special? Do I want to be special?”

If the teachers have no measure to refer to our children with ASD and call them incorrectly, it becomes a definition that instead of explaining and accompanying the process, segregates and hinders it. This moves us away from the goal of working for an education where there is tolerance, acceptance, and respect for the different. It hinders the way to build and transform subjects and mentalities capable of respecting and living in a diverse society.