What Are Mild Disabilities?

Fall 2009

The Categories of Disability

• Please go to page 6 in the Raymond text.

• What are the thirteen categories of disability under the IDEA?

• Which do you think are considered to be mild?

• What do you think is the difference between “mild” and “high incidence?”

High Incidence Disabilities v. Mild Disabilities

• High Incidence

• Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD)

• Speech and Communication Disorders

• Mental Retardation or Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD)

• Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

Meet Jim

• Jim has problems with impulse control. Most of the time, he functions like the others in his sixth grade class. When frustrated, however, he is apt to lash out without thinking about the consequences. His teacher tends to respond to him with punishment. His Teacher doesn't believe he has an impulse control disorder, and Jim has come to internalize this "bad boy" image.

To Be Different

• “Being "just a little different" can indeed be very serious” Raymond, 2008, p. 9).

Classification

• “Classification, then is not a simple, scientific, and value free procedure with predictably benign consequences. Rather, it arises from and tends to perpetuate the value of the cultural majority, often to the detriment of individual children or classes of children. The majority has made the rules, determined what is good, normal or acceptable, and what is deviant, exceptional or unacceptable. Classification seeks to identify children who do not fit the norms, who are not progressing normally, and who pose a threat to the equilibrium of the system, so that they might be changed or isolated” (Hobbs, 1975, pp. 40-41; Raymond, 2004, p. 14).