In Which I Reflect on "Person First" Language

This evening Kittygirl decided that she isn't going to walk normally for the rest of the holiday season. Instead she's going to walk everywhere using the polichinelle walk. This is a dance step from her role in the Nutcracker last year. It's sort of akin to a high skip. I don't see the polichinelle walk phase lasting long, but it reminds me of one part of her identity. She's a dancer.

Both of my kids are dancers. Squirrelboy started taking ballet when he was four years old, but even before that he was moving to music every time he heard it. Kittygirl grew up going to the ballet studio, and it was logical for her to start in the mommy and me class when she was two (actually, the first class was a couple weeks before her birthday, but they let her slide in). She has continued to progress through the levels even though Squirrelboy (though he still loves music and isn't embarrassed to move to a beat), stopped taking ballet four years ago.

Kittygirl is also a gymnast. If you don't count a short class in preschool, she has only been seriously pursuing gymnastics since August, but even before that she was climbing and swinging on playground bars, balancing on boards, and trying out somersaults and cartwheels. She has already progressed to the intermediate class, and I have a suspicion that gymnastics may eventually push out dance classes due to lack of time.

I could add lots of other descriptors of Kittygirl. She's a social butterfly. She's a loyal friend. She's an animal lover. She's a hardworking student. She's an eager helper. And, yes, on top of all of these things she's a type 1 diabetic.

There's a movement within the diabetes community and other disability communities to use "person first" language in order to avoid identifying people primarily by their disability. So, for instance, you would not use the term "type 1 diabetic" or T1D but rather "person with diabetes" or PWD.

First of all, I want to make it clear that I don't have a problem with this movement. It's never right to identify a person using just one aspect of their lives. Type 1 diabetes does not entirely define the lives of people who live with the disease. If a person dislikes the term "type 1 diabetic" because they feel that it's a label that gives too large a role for diabetes, then I fully support that person identifying as a PWD instead of a T1D.

To me, however, the term just feels and sounds awkward. I don't refer to Kittygirl as a "person who dances" or "a person who does gymnastics." I refer to her as a dancer and as a gymnast. I don't refer to her as "a person who loves animals" or "a person who loves to help". I refer to her as an animal loves and as an eager helper.

None of these terms completely define Kittygirl. It would be unfortunate if people only thought of her as a diabetic and didn't look at her life on a deeper level. It would also be unfortunate if people only looked at her a gymnast and expected her to cartwheel her way down the schools halls. It would be be awkward if people only thought of her as a dancer and expected her to actually polichinelle walk everywhere for the entire holiday season.

However, there is no movement I know of to start calling dancers "people who dance" or gymnasts "people who do gymnastics." Somehow we realize that these terms don't completely define a person while we don't always realize that a term identifying a person with a disease they live with or a disability they have only reveals a small part of that person's life.

At this point in her life, Kittygirl owns the term "type 1 diabetic" and embraces it as one aspect of her life. If, as she grows older, she chooses to instead embrace the term "person with diabetes" or some other alternate term I will support her choice and try my best to remember to use the term.

So far, I have not come across anyone in either the PWD camp or the T1D camp spilling vitriol against the other camp. I hope this continues. Whether the "pancreatically challenged" choose to call themselves type 1 diabetics or persons with diabetes, they still have a lot more to unite them than to divide them.