As someone involved in the world of disability rights, I would disagree that disability language is all that clear, or a good model for trauma language. I have had someone call me "person with a disability" in a way that was really disrespectful and someone else who called me "disabled" or even lightly teased me as a "gimp" and yet done it in a way that I felt included and appreciated and loved. In sports, the same kind of applies. If someone called me a runner, vs someone who runs, I really don't care. I care about how they treat me.
There is also a big debate between the medical model of disability and the social model of disability. The medical model focuses on what's wrong with the person that if medical science was advanced enough it could cure or remedy. The medical model calls it "a person with a disability." None of this is bad or wrong at all, but it has limits. Not every disability has a cure, or a cure worth the risks of further harm. It also supposes there is a human with no limits and devalues the role of society valuing different abilities. The social model looks more at what tools the person needs for success and maximizing abilities. They tend to use all kinds of terms like "disabled person." A good example: I have a friend who is deaf. She speaks of "the deaf." She does not find it an insult but empowering. Some demand she is a "person with a hearing impairment" and push for her to get a cochlear implant correct her hearing impairment as the solution to her disability, not understanding all the problems and lack of cure. When people just accept she's deaf, it's easier for everyone. There is a whole subculture for people who are deaf too.
I am hesitant to say disability is like trauma. I was born with an incurable disability. It's how I am. It's not something I see myself being victimized by having. I wish often and much I did not have a disability, and it gets really hard at times, but that's different than feeling victimized by disability. I know others do feel victimized by disability, but for me, that mindset feels like it disempowers me to not take action and seek tools to succeed. I see it as just another characteristic about me that I have to manage and deal with to get through life. It's like if I was very short, I would hope I would not feel like a victim of being short, like it was something done to me, but rather just another way of being human and a need to get a ladder. The social model has influenced my thinking in this way. My disability is a medical condition. But the real barriers are often not the medical condition. It's like for the short person who grabs the ladder, if they were shamed for doing that or ran into a lack of ladders in society. For me, the real barriers to having a disability have been the social aspects of it, not the physical. I call myself disabled. Just like I would call myself tall. It takes out the "jmh is sick" aspect to it that leads to unwanted pity.
If there is a classroom with young children in it, we would call them young children. We would all know that age is not the defining factor of the children. If there is a classroom with traumatized children in it, the same applies.
In fact, the article post takes it even a step further and doesn't separate out children and traumatized children.
Adopt a “universal approach,” suggested the nonprofit Zero to Three, and “assume all children are trauma-affected and need social and emotional learning instruction and support.”... The trick, according to Mathew Portell, principal of the trauma-informed school Fall-Hamilton ElemeTntary in Nashville, is to never lose sight of the individual student: “Trauma affects children in so many different ways. Some kids are reactive while others are reserved. It is key to know the students’ stories in order to know how to support them.”
While only a small percent of people and children who have been through trauma end up with PTSD, and not every child goes through big "T" trauma... seems like a good thing to have teachers thinking about and equipped to handle trauma or trauma-related behaviors. It probably helps them see the whole student, not just the behavior, much better. It's a lot better than what I grew up with going to school injured from trauma, even crying to teachers twice, and telling them what happened, and no one doing anything. Is the approach of the article perfect? No. Is it a good discussion to be having? Yes.
