I heard something on the breakfast news earlier which has had me puzzling over it for most of the afternoon: apparently, increasing numbers of parents are having to wait longer and longer to get their children diagnosed with various medical conditions, including cerebral palsy. “Hundreds of thousands of children with suspected neurodevelopmental conditions in England, including autism and ADHD, face unacceptably long waits to be diagnosed, the Children’s Commissioner has warned.” What strikes me as strange is that, to my knowledge, having CP is fairly clear cut and unambiguous. You usually get it if your brain is starved of oxygen at birth; and it’s pretty obvious whether a child has it or not as it often drastically effects their ability to control their bodies.

The notion that parents would have to fight to have their kids diagnosed with it thus strikes me as pretty strange. Their child could, of course, have a relatively mild case of CP, where they are still able to control their bodies more or less normally. In such cases, however, I would have to ask, is it worth diagnosing the kid at all? What would be the point of essentially labelling them for life, setting them apart from their able-bodied peers, when they can integrate as well and as happily as any other child? Obviously, if a kid is going to need help and support throughout their life, such a diagnosis will be hugely beneficial; but if a condition they may or may not have does not clearly effect them, then what is the point?

But here’s the rub: all this adds to my growing impression that more and more parents actually want their children to have special needs. They want their kids to be diagnosed as having a condition, whether they actually have it or not, in order to access the various social and political advantages which comes with it. After all, as contemporary society becomes more and more competitive, who wouldn’t want their child to have a little extra help, or be seen as special? The problem is, where does that leave guys like me, whose condition didn’t need to be argued over? As I wrote here, with more and more people defining themselves as having some kind of disability, I can’t help feeling that the very notion of being disabled is becoming usurped, devalued and rendered almost meaningless.