Discussion Guide – “deficits”

Strengths and deficits are a large part of how we “evaluate” and “assess” children. When we do, who or what are our benchmarks? To whom are we comparing them? Who is this lovely “average child?”

Are we implicitly wanting our children to work to conform to a “norm?”
Are we very sure that that norm is the most adaptive persona they could adopt, in their home, neighbourhood, world?
Whose interests are served when children do conform in small or large ways to the expectations of a strengths/deficits model of assessment?

Are there any ways that we could spin the graph, conceptually, to make what is a dip or a deficit into a strength? Can we imagine a setting or situation where that particular characteristic could serve this child in ways that are helpful to meeting their individual goals?

Once we realize graphs can in fact, turn on their axes, what does that do to our “normative data?”
Could it be that norms were created based on populations who were well adapted to their environments?
When environments change, especially rapidly, it is the ones who can adjust quickly from the norm who have the best chance of survival. Are there ways that environments are rapidly shifting for our kids?
Could we think of how our kids behave, what they pay attention to, and how they respond to certain inputs as primarily adaptive (in the sense of figuring out the world around them as it is), and if so, would they suddenly look a whole lot smarter?

Disabilities are dis-abilities. They are the barrier experienced when someone wants to complete a task or activity but can’t, in most cases for reasons that they carry with them. Unlike deficits, disabilities are in large part contextual – in that the context can create, maintain, exaggerate, or even negate a disability. Deficits are sometimes also disabilities, but not always. Do we assume that a deficit, or a disability, is completely housed within the person, and so duck responsibility for opening alternate paths to meaningful engagement in the world?

Do we too quickly replace our goals for a child with the goals that they may find most pressing or meaningful?
Do we in any way validate what they are working on, and help them achieve it, so they can move on to our goals, or is this considered giving in to their agenda, “spoiling them,” or letting ourselves be manipulated? Why or why not?
When a child’s goals have to do with personal survival mechanisms, such as attachment, physiological equilibrium, safety (real or perceived), or basic connection and communication with the world despite sensory or mobility differences, do we compartmentalize these into “other” time periods and insist on our agenda in our time, because we are very busy?
What is so important about our goals for this child’s use of “our” time?