Thursday, August 6, 2009

Spread The Word To End The Word

If there is a cause that stands out to me, I will try my best to find the time to promote it. Spread the Word to End the Word is definitely a cause that is worthy of my support. It is a campaign to raise awareness of the hurtful effects of the word “retard(ed)." The campaign is raising the consciousness of society about the dehumanizing and hurtful effects of the R word and urging people to resolve, to pledge, to stop using it as an insult, casual or intended.

I actually heard about this campaign from Janice, a homeschooling friend of mine. She has a 10 year old son named Daniel who has down syndrome. She gave him the name Daniel for a reason, as it means "God is my judge," as she knew that her son would unfortunately have to live a life where he was judged on appearance and his handicap as opposed to who he is as a person. It's odd; you would think that most of the hateful and judgmental things that are said to and/or about him would come from children, but that's not the case. Janice has told me that about 95% of the time, the rudeness comes from adults, especially when it comes to directing the R word at him. Now that is pretty sad if you ask me.

The R-word is one of many words that I can say is NOT tolerated in our home. I don't use it, nor does my husband, and neither do our children. I personally had two older cousins (they have now passed away) who had muscular dystrophy and I used to hear that word directed towards them all the time simply because they were different. I didn't like it then, just as I don't like it now.

If you have a few minutes to spare today, then take a second or two to visit R-word.org and take the pledge to remove the R-word from your vocabulary. As I said, we don't use the word, but my husband and I still both pledged that we would not allow its use in our home, and that we would raise our children not to use it and to respect those with disabilities. Lets help spread the word so that we can end the word.


3 comments:

  1. Hi! I'm visiting from MBC. Great blog.

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  2. Hi, I'm visiting from MBC. Welcome to the blogging world. I love hearing about moms who have many little ones. I admire you girls! Hope to see you around.

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