Behaviors that challenge disability studies

Abstract

How should we think about challenging behavior? Behaviorist approaches tend to dominate the field, but new approaches make power, inequality, and resistance central to their analysis. I explore four approaches that resist dominant behaviorist approaches: embracing neurodiversity, recognizing inequality, seeing resistance, and loving redemption. Stories about my experience with my autistic brother expose limits in each of these four approaches. Building on critical autism studies, I propose a new interdisciplinary field of Challenging Behavior Studies that makes power central, embraces multiple perspectives and complexity, and aims to improve the quality of life of all those affected.

Keywords:

• challenging behavior
• intellectual disability
• neurodiversity
• critical autism studies
• care theory
• siblings

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Accessed June 1, 2017 http://autisticadvocacy.org/about-asan/about-autism/

2 These are the different diagnoses that my mother told me that my brother received from doctors over a period of eight years.

3 https://autisticadvocacy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/AutismSpeaksFlyer_color_2017.pdf

4 https://www.autismspeaks.org/science/science-news/autism-and-health-special-report-autism-speaks

5 http://www.bls.gov/home.htm

6 https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes311011.htm#nat

7 http://www.templegrandin.com