This I Believe…

I believe that any person with a disability shouldn’t be treated any differently from a person without a one. Because it’s not their fault they have that disability. And it’s not fair to anybody that they’re treated differently. People are treated differently at school with teachers and classmates and also at home with parents and siblings. And no matter what age they are people with disabilities have day to day struggles that any person without a disability never will understand. I don’t have a disability but my nine year old brother Justin has ADHD which is a learning disability that causes him to have trouble focusing in school and other things. Every morning he takes medicine with his breakfast that helps him pay attention in school the whole school day through. But by the time he gets home from school his medicine from the morning has began to wear off. That can be a problem because he is in 4^th grade and he gets a ton of homework and he can’t focus on any of it once he gets home.  So it takes him forever to finish his homework, especially in math. This frustrates him a lot because one of his favorite things to do is play video games; we just got a Nintendo Wii for Christmas and he loves it but my parents tell him that there is no Wii until he finishes all his homework. He complains everyday how it’s not fair when my other brother who is younger with no homework gets to play while he works. Not only does he get special attention at home but at school to, when the other kids have 20 spelling words he only gets 10, he also gets extra attention in math and reading because he moves slower than some of the other kids and has trouble focusing. Almost everyday my brothers and I fight over how it’s not fair that Justin gets special attention from my parents. It doesn’t seem fair that if we need help with our homework my mom is too busy helping Justin with his, and then we end up getting in trouble for bothering him.  Sometimes we just like to bother Justin and we get in trouble but if he brothers us he never gets in trouble because he has ADHD. This makes me wonder if kids bother him at school and if he has any friends that are nice to him because I don’t know what I would do at school without all my friends. Sometimes I wonder how he feels about his disability and what problems he has everyday with kids at school making fun of him because he is a little slower than them at math and reading. Justin is nine so I’m not sure he understands that he has a disability yet but eventually he will. I think that every person no matter what age if they have a disability that they have everyday struggles with people not treating them the same as everybody else. I don’t think there is any reason to treat somebody differently just because they’re not the same as you because it’s not their fault they were born disabled and they can’t change that. I think the only time somebody with a disability should be treat differently is if it helps that person in some way. Like Justin’s teacher gives him fewer spelling words then the other kids each week, and he gets extra tutoring in math, most of the other kids in his class don’t get any of that special treatment. I think that type of special treatment where its helping the person is ok. But treating them differently because you think there weird, or stupid, or have some disease that’s not ok because they’re people too.  

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