10 LESSONS I'VE LEARNED FROM PEOPLE WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES

Welcome to another episode of Vita with Alita! We are slightly shifting gears this week! Instead of bringing you a scientific paper to discuss, I am going to use my own observations and experiences volunteering with individuals with intellectual disabilities to draw on 10 lessons that I have learned from them to enhance my life. I look forward to sharing my positive experiences with you and I hope that my personal interactions inspire you to to look at life from a different perspective and better appreciate individuals with intellectual disabilities. 

* Special Olympics Website: https://www.specialolympics.org/about/intellectual-disabilities/what-is-intellectual-disability

Let's get in touch! You can email any inquiries (or just say hello) at hello@vitawithalita.com

I am happy we can share this journey of levelling up, together. See you next week! 

- Alita <3 

Transcript

Welcome to another episode of Vita with Alita. I'm your host, Alita Gideon, and I am excited for this week's topic. So this week, I wanted to kind of shift gears a little bit.

I'm not gonna bring a scientific paper or anything like that to you this week. Today, I just wanna talk about my thoughts, my own observations, things I've learned, things I've seen, and things I've experienced, and bring them to your attention today. So today, I would like to talk about 10 lessons that I have learned from working with individuals who have intellectual disabilities.

This is something I wanted to talk about because I think that there is something we can all learn from today's topic, and it can help to gain a different sort of perspective in our lives and appreciate people who have different lived experiences than we do. So personally, I am volunteering with an organization known as Special Olympics, and Special Olympics is an organization that helps individuals with intellectual disabilities participate in sports. They have a range of sports, things from swimming to track, to soccer, even climbing more recently I've been involved in.

And I think it's a great organization. Physical activity is beneficial on so many levels. And it's great to see a community of athletes with intellectual disabilities come together and play sports.

So that's where my interaction with individuals that have intellectual disabilities stems from. And I would like to share them with all of you today. Before I dive into sort of what I've learned from these individuals, I think first it's important to kind of define what is intellectual disabilities, give everyone a better background understanding of what I'm talking about.

So this is straight from the Special Olympics website, which I will link down in the show notes for everyone to see, if you like to visit the website yourself. And if you kind of ever... If this is something that may interest you, feel free to look at their website to also volunteer yourself within your own community.

I think it's a cool thing. And I will have an episode at some point about just volunteering as a whole and why I think everybody should do it. But for now, we'll focus on Special Olympics.

And if you'd like more information, please refer to the link in the show notes. Okay, so directly from the Special Olympics website. What is intellectual disability?

So there are many kinds of intellectual disabilities, and there are also many causes. But intellectual disability is the most common developmental disability. Okay, so what is an intellectual disability?

Intellectual disability is a term used when a person has certain limitations in cognitive functioning and skills, including conceptual, social, and practical skills, such as language, social, and self-care skills. These limitations can cause a person to develop and learn more slowly or differently than a typically developing person. Intellectual disability can happen anytime before a person turns 22 years old, even before birth.

And according to the American Association of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, an individual has an intellectual disability if he or she meets three criteria. So one, the IQ is below 70. Two, there are significant limitations in adaptive behavior in one or more of the following areas, conceptual, social, or practical skills.

So skills needed for work, to live, and play in the community. And three, the condition manifests itself before the age of 22. So then now this may bring up the question, how does an intellectual disability happen?

According here to the Special Olympics website, intellectual disability, which was formerly known as mental retardation, can be caused by injury, disease, or a problem in the brain. For many children, the cause of their intellectual disability is actually unknown. Some causes of intellectual disability such as Down syndrome, fetal alcohol syndrome, or Fragile X syndrome, birth defects and infections can happen before birth.

Some happen while a baby is being born or even soon after birth. Other causes of intellectual disabilities do not occur until a child is older, and these might include severe head injury, infections, or stroke. Lastly, what are some of the most common causes?

Well, some could be genetic conditions. So if you inherit abnormal genes or if you have errors with gene combinations, an example of this is Down syndrome. Another cause could be complications during pregnancy.

So if the baby doesn't develop inside of the mother properly, so if there's a problem in the way that the baby's, let's say, cells divide, or if a mother drinks alcohol or gets an infection during pregnancy, that can also cause an intellectual disability. Intellectual disabilities can also develop from problems during birth. So if there was a complication during the labor and birth, for example, the baby not getting enough oxygen, that could lead to an intellectual disability.

Lastly, diseases or toxic exposure. So diseases like whooping cough, the measles, or meningitis can actually cause an intellectual disability. They can also be caused by extreme malnutrition or not getting appropriate medical care.

There are some things that are kind of highlighted on this website that I would like to bring to your attention. We know that intellectual disabilities are not contagious. It's not a type of mental illness like depression would be.

There is actually no cure for intellectual disabilities. But people with intellectual disabilities can learn to do many things. They just need to learn a bit differently than their peers.

I'm sharing all of this information so we can all gain a better appreciation of intellectual disabilities. I wanted to share this information because something caught my eye when reading this page. And it's that intellectual disabilities, or having an intellectual disability, is a lot out of the person's control.

And that may seem obvious, but I highlight this because this is something affecting that individual's life in every single way, from the way they learn to the way they interact and socialize with other people. And they have this intellectual disability, something that was completely out of their control, and in some cases may have even been prevented, let's say if the mother was drinking alcohol. Which caused that intellectual disability, and yet this is something they have to live with, and learn to live with for the rest of their lives.

And despite this kind of depressing tone to it, when you interact with these individuals, you never feel that way. I will get into that a little bit later in the episode. Now before I get into my lessons, you might be asking yourself, okay, well, how common are intellectual disabilities?

Will this ever affect me? Well, there are approximately 6.5 million people in the United States that have an intellectual disability, and approximately 1-3% of the global population has an intellectual disability. So you can think of this as about 200 million people.

Okay. So now going to my lessons, my observations, and why I am so thankful that I have been given the opportunity to work with individuals with intellectual disabilities. And the first lesson I can take away from people with intellectual disabilities is to celebrate the small wins.

What do I mean by this? So I am a volunteer coach for a basketball team in my community. Something as simple as one of these athletes getting a basket in is a cause for celebration.

They run up and down the gym, and they're yelling and screaming and celebrating that they were able to shoot the basketball. And that might seem trivial. You might even think it's childish, but it makes me appreciate all the small wins.

Forget basketball. Even when someone's birthday is coming up, they make sure to announce it, to let everybody know it's their birthday, and that we're going to sing and celebrate them. I appreciate this because I feel like sometimes we get so caught up in our own lives that we don't celebrate the small wins, and we just move on to the next thing right away.

And we're going at such a fast pace that we don't even appreciate the small things to celebrate. So that was my first lesson I wanted to share. Celebrate the small wins.

Take the time to celebrate them. Share them with the people around you, the people you love. Appreciate everything that you've accomplished.

The second lesson is a little patience can go a long way. Patience is such an important virtue, but it is so... it can be very difficult to practice and to put into practice.

But a little bit of patience is honestly sometimes all people need. And I am talking yes in the context of interacting with individuals who have intellectual disabilities, where you might need to repeat yourself, you might need to speak a little bit slower, you might need to change the format of what you are trying to say for the individual to understand. By nature of these people having an intellectual disability, you don't get upset at them.

You... well, at least I don't. I understand in the back of my mind that I do need to be more patient with them.

But outside of interacting with these individuals or these athletes, why can't we have patience with everybody in our lives? And this is something I need to work on. I'm saying this to myself.

Have patience with everyone you interact with. You don't know what that person is dealing with, if they're having a bad day or whatever, but a little patience can go a long way just to make the other person feel that they're being heard, make the other person feel that they are respected, make the other person more willing to share with you. So yeah, patience is important.

You can practice it with everybody in your life. It's a real game changer. All right, next, this might sound silly.

The third lesson I've learned is that you matter or I matter or that we all matter. We all have a space in this world. It's important to remind ourselves of that.

And I'm not talking about me mattering in like a selfish way, but in the sense of don't be afraid to speak your mind. Don't be afraid to take up space. If you do something that bothers, well, from my experience, a lot of the athletes I've interacted with, if I'm doing something that bothers them, those will just straight up tell me.

They have no problem setting boundaries and just telling me, telling me I'm in their personal space or telling me that I was mean, or telling me their opinion on something, even if I may not agree with it. And it reminded me that their opinions do matter, and that sometimes I find myself that I'm overthinking, I don't want to share, I don't want to set boundaries because what? Do I not matter?

But these individuals remind me that I do matter. And they are probably sharing, they're probably not, I don't know for sure, they are probably not having those same intrusive thoughts, thought processes, or overthinking I may be experiencing, but clearly they don't mind sharing their thoughts. Not all of them.

I can't say that for every single one. So third lesson here is that you matter, and remind yourself of it. Fourthly, something I truly admire from these individuals is they do not see themselves as victims.

And I alluded to this a little bit earlier when I mentioned how a lot of people with intellectual disabilities, in a way it's sad because it's completely out of their control. But despite this, I have never interacted with an individual who has an intellectual disability, who had that victim mindset. They don't see themselves as having a disability or being at a disadvantage.

They just see themselves as, okay, I'm different, but you know what? I can still do X, Y, and Z, and nothing's going to stop me. They don't have that victim mindset that I find that even myself, I tend to put myself sometimes in that victim mindset, and that's not always a good thing.

Yes, things can happen to you. I'm not saying no, and I'm not saying that. You can't acknowledge those negative things happening in your life, but don't put yourself in that victim mindset.

You can take control of what you do and make better choices, do better things for yourself. So yes, that's something I admire. So they don't have a victim mindset.

So I'm not always sure if these individuals are aware of their disability. Like, they might be aware that they're different, but I'm not exactly sure if they're aware of it. That's something I have to look into.

But the point is, no matter what, I've never met one of these athletes who had a victim mindset. There was nothing that they couldn't do that they didn't put their mind to, so it's very inspiring. My fifth lesson here is, if you have a voice, use it.

This kind of goes hand in hand with the you matter, but the reason I'm breaking up using your voice is, I've witnessed athletes with intellectual disabilities who are not very verbal, and I can see how it can be kind of frightening where these individuals might be taken advantage of, and it's a little bit out of their control. They're just not verbal individuals, so it has made me realize that whenever I am able to speak my mind, whenever I am able to verbalize what I am feeling, I should just say it, because I have a voice. There's nothing stopping me except my own intrusive thoughts from speaking up and using my voice, not just speaking up for yourself, but also speaking up for others.

If you see some sort of injustice happening right in front of you, don't just sit there and be quiet, because there are individuals out there who just do not have a choice. They just are non-verbal, and they do not have a choice. They can't even express their own feeling.

So why am I hindering myself from speaking up just because I'm overthinking something or what somebody might think of me? Working with individuals with sexual disabilities allowed me to appreciate that perspective where I do have a voice. I am verbal.

I am able to share what I'm thinking, so I should just do it. All right, the sixth lesson is that there are so many ways to communicate and to show that you care. As we've mentioned previously, individuals with intellectual disabilities are still able to learn and socialize and communicate, but they just might have to do so in a different way.

It's just about finding what works best for you, and this is a theme that I think is very constant within this podcast, is about taking things that work best for you and for your life. You can apply this in your relationships with other people, in your relationship with yourself. Just find what works best for you.

Find the best ways to communicate with the people around you, with the people you love. There's no one size fits all, and there's no right way. There are different ways to do it, and you just need to find what works best for you.

And just because somebody's having success one way, it doesn't mean it is the only way. An example of this is I worked with an individual who was a little bit on the stubborn side, where he didn't always want to listen to what a coach was telling him. For example, if we were doing drills, and we had to dribble the ball and then shoot, he didn't want to, let's say, he just wanted to shoot the ball.

And his mother came to me and said, if you tell him statements such as, do this first, and then we can do this, he will be more likely to listen. And to my surprise, the simple act of just shifting the words I use and saying, okay, first we're going to dribble, and then we're going to shoot, okay? And mentioning that maybe two, three times, he listened, and he followed the drill, and he was able to practice just like the rest of the team.

So that's a very simple example, but honestly, it's just understanding how people communicate, and that way you can better connect with them, you can better communicate with them, and you can build stronger relationships that way. And even learning this for yourself, learning what works best for you will help you build trust within yourself and love yourself, and build a stronger connection with yourself. So another subpoint I'd like to put with this is that yelling will not get you anywhere either.

Very rarely, you will hear one of the volunteers yell at the athletes with intellectual disabilities, no matter how much they don't listen. I'm not saying we just let them be loose and do whatever they want. They still listen to an authority figure, but not through yelling, through maybe a different tone, where you're trying to be a bit more serious with them if you want to grab their attention, or you want to make sure that you convey an important message.

But we never yell. Yelling is more likely to make the individuals not listen to you and kind of yell back and become a whole frenzy. And this is something I wish we all apply in our everyday lives.

It's almost seen as wrong to yell at an individual's intellectual disabilities, but why is it not wrong to yell at your family or your partner? So yelling is not going to get you anywhere. If anything, it's more likely to make the other person agitated.

It's more likely to make the problem worse than it really is. It's more likely to make kind of the ugly side of people come out for no reason. So find the best way to communicate with yourself and with the people around you.

And there's honestly, there's no, there's never really a good reason to yell at each other ever. So keep that in mind. All right, the seventh lesson I'd like to bring to you today is that we should not put people in boxes, and we should not have different limiting beliefs about people.

And this highly applies to individuals with intellectual disabilities, because I have been so amazed over my time volunteering with these folks at the things that they can accomplish and the things that they can do. You might have these thoughts about people with intellectual disabilities that they might not be able to, let's say, play sports or engage in group activities and such things. But by doing so, you're placing these people in kind of a box, and you're placing them within this limit, and they cannot go past this limit.

And that's not fair. That's not fair to them, and that's not fair to the view that you have of them. And outside of individuals with intellectual disabilities, I think we subconsciously might place different people in these boxes based on our beliefs, based on past interactions with them, based on experiences that we may have had.

And I think if we all just took a step back, and were more open and receptive to just looking at the people in front of us, being open to looking at what they are showing us, and being more encouraging that way, everyone will be better off. Rather than setting a mental block about that person's ability in our mind, we're going to then fall into like this confirmation bias thing, where you're going to be looking for the evidence that is supporting what you're thinking about that person, because your brain wants to be right. Rather, if you come in with an open mind, and like a clean slate, you let that person show you what they can and can't do, you're removing those limiting beliefs.

That's something I've seen a lot when working with these individuals with intellectual disabilities and that I'm trying to apply in my own life with people outside of my volunteer work. So yeah, don't put people in these boxes and these limiting beliefs. People are capable of more than you may think.

Lesson number eight, enjoy life at a slower pace. Let that sink in. So we live in this world where everything is go, go, go, go, go, go, go all the time.

It's easy to get caught up in the rush and things you have to do, and whatever these lists we make ourselves, and work commitment, and family commitments, and all these things. But sometimes you just need to take a step back and enjoy life at a slower pace. And I say this because I find that all individuals with intellectual disabilities naturally do this.

Obviously, because of their disability, they have to kind of learn a bit slower and differently. But at the end of the day, they're enjoying life at a slower pace. And I think by spending time with them and sort of matching that pace, I've always been more present in those moments.

I've appreciated those moments, and I better remember those moments. Being in that slower pace, I'm able to appreciate the people around me in those moments. Focus on what's exactly in front of me in that moment rather than than not really being there and having your mind be absent and just doing things out of habit and routine just because rather than intentionally acting.

Enjoying life at a slower pace is an important one. It's something that I've seen in almost every athlete. I think it's something we can all learn from.

All right, my ninth lesson, to stop trying to fit into society's expectations of us. We give people with an intellectual disability a sort of a pass because of their intellectual disability. And what I mean by a pass is sometimes they will act in a way that may not be, quote unquote, normal in society.

And we kind of don't really look at them differently because we say, oh, it's their intellectual disability. But what about everybody else? Why do we put on ourselves the societal pressure to be acting and behaving a certain way because of what people might think about us?

Why can't we give ourselves the same pass and the same kindness and the same grace that we are giving individuals with intellectual disability? Sometimes, I don't want to undermine that individuals with intellectual disabilities can face like prejudice or can face discrimination or can face differential behavior or even bullying and things like that. That's a whole problem in and of itself.

I don't want to undermine that and those issues. But I'm saying in general, those individuals with intellectual disabilities already know that they don't fit in what we call sort of normal in this society. And because of that, they don't really care how they act.

They just act how they're feeling in that moment. They're being very vulnerable and very true and very authentic. Whereas I feel like a lot of us put on, put these societal pressures on ourselves, and we don't always do the same, and we're not always our most authentic selves, and we're not always acting like our true selves because of what people might think about us.

Imagine if we can all live our lives without the need of having this façade or this face up to please society's norms. So that's the ninth lesson to stop trying to fit into society's expectations of us. The last lesson that I would like to share with you today is to not compare yourself to others.

This is important because we all have different strengths, we all have different weaknesses. There is no right or wrong way to live. Just because one way is working for somebody, it doesn't mean that it has to work for you.

And just because one person is finding success and doing certain things doesn't mean those things are going to work for you. Now, in the context of intellectual disability, I bring this up because let's say, let's talk about, let's say, the basketball team that I work with. There are individuals there who are very well adapted to playing basketball.

So they are really good players and they understand the concept of basketball, and they're able to follow the rules and play well. Whereas you have other individuals who get lost in the chaos of running back and forth, don't know which basket to shoot in, who don't understand the premise of the game. They are more like the cheerleaders of the game.

They understand that they have to cheer on their team. Those cheerleader individuals were comparing themselves to those basketball players. They would feel like they're failing, they would feel like they're not doing well, and they would feel like they're not enough.

Whereas that's not at all how these athletes live their lives, at least in the context that I've seen within basketball. If anything, they are proud that they are the best cheerleaders out there. They are proud that they are good basketball players, but maybe not super verbal.

They are proud of their strengths. They honor their weaknesses and they're not scared of them. They say, yeah, I'm not good at that, but so what?

They don't compare themselves to their teammates or the other people around them. They understand that they each have different strengths and weaknesses, and they understand that comparing themselves is not going to get them anywhere. That's something sometimes I don't think we individuals who don't have intellectual disabilities think about.

We all we do, or at least all I do sometimes, is compare myself to other people. And then I feel down about myself when I'm not measuring up to somebody else's expectations or somebody else's life, where it's not even the same skill. You can't even compare the two.

So yeah, there's more than one way to live. We all have different strengths and weaknesses, and that's a beautiful thing, something to embrace. Very quick recap about the 10 lessons.

So one, celebrate the small wins. Two, a little patience goes a long way. Three, you matter and don't be scared to take up space.

Four, do not have a victim mindset. You can do anything that you set your mind to. Five, if you have a voice, use it.

Use it for yourself. Use it to stand up for others. Just use your voice if you have one.

Six, there are so many ways to communicate. Find what works best for you and use that to strengthen your relationships. Seven, don't put people in boxes or in these limiting beliefs.

People are capable of more than you think. Eight, enjoy life at a slower pace. Just take a step back from all the rush.

Nine, stop trying to fit into society's expectations. Remove that societal pressure off of your shoulders. And ten, don't compare yourself to others.

We all have different strengths and weaknesses, and there's more than one right way to live. Or there is actually no right way to live. Anyway, those are all the lessons for today's episode.

A little bit of a different type of episode today. There was no scientific paper, but I hope that you took something away from my lessons, from my observations, from what I've learned over the years of volunteering with individuals with intellectual disabilities. I hope you learned a little something about intellectual disabilities if you weren't aware of what they are.

And if this is something that might interest you, feel free to take a look at the Special Olympics website to see how you can probably volunteer in your community and make a difference in the life of these athletes, who are honestly, yes, I'm volunteering to help them, but they've helped me probably way more than I could have ever helped them. So thank you all for listening. I appreciate your time, and I'll see you next week on another episode of Vita with Alita.

Take care, everybody.

From Vita with Alita: 10 LESSONS I'VE LEARNED FROM PEOPLE WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES, Mar 21, 2025
https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/vita-with-alita/id1799200065?i=1000700259595&r=1638
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