Ordinary, everyday lives
and the ways in which professionals brush past people who matter
My hairdresser and I were joking around at my latest hair appointment about the sociology of hairdressing and the hair salon as third space and a site for facilitating social cohesion. It was a light-hearted conversation that gently poked fun at my academic bent. We laughed a great deal and proposed ever-increasingly ridiculous titles for possible papers.
The laughter was a welcome release; we’d just had a fairly serious conversation around the challenges they’d been facing regarding their child’s schooling. The main one being, my hairdresser who is warm and funny and generous, felt dismissed, patronised, and condescended to when interacting with their child’s education team.
I was firstly stunned and then appalled as they shared some of the commentary and invasive questions they had been subject to at the school gate and in more formal meetings with school staff. Was the school well-meaning? Yes, of course. Did their interactions leave my friend feeling supported and valued? Absolutely not.
What made a difference? What shifted this situation?
Firstly, being heard, listened to, and affirmed. Affirming my friend’s feelings as valid, acknowledging that they had been treated poorly, and recognizing that they had every right to feel angry about it all.
Secondly, having access to “professional language” to push back on what was happening. I wrote a fiercely professional formal complaint regarding the discrimination, the failure to uphold their dignity and rights as a parent, and detailing all the ways in which this school community had breached their obligations. I emailed it to my friend saying, this is how I would respond - please use the words and languaging how you think would best support you/the way you would like.
That was literally it.
When we caught up again (for the next instalment - and of course the next hair treatment!), we debriefed.
They took the words I provided, made them their own, and successfully advocated for a formal apology, a change in attitude, and a proper assessment and referral for their child.
The comment that broke my heart a wee bit was,
“I used your words from the email you sent and they took me seriously, in a way they hadn’t before. They listened, and they treated me respectfully and apologised, I’ve never had teachers do that before!”
I’ve been thinking about this so much since then.
Literally all I did was listen, take my hairdressers words and experiences, and give it a ‘professional’ glossy exterior.
While I am always happy to assist any parent of a disabled child, it unraveled something in me that a parent had to change their language to one that professionals understand and/or are familiar with to be taken seriously.
It’s not parents who need to change.
It’s those with the professional degrees and access to the fancy glossy language who need to change their attitudes to working class grassroots folk.
*I’ve edited a few things for privacy reasons. Needless to say, there are intersecting areas of marginalisation here beyond class. Make of that what you will. The underlying premise remains - the professional class had an awful tendency to be dismissive of parents from certain backgrounds.
**Yes, this post is rather more coded than I would like. Think about why that might be.
Thanks for publishing this. I too voluntarily advocate for and with friends whose children are neurodivergent, supporting them through the funding process. All too often, they’ve engaged authentically with these services and been fobbed off with a funding amount that is not sufficient in funding necessary supports for each individual child. I help them understand the unwritten rules of what the agents are looking for and how to elicit the language required to express the child’s current level of need. It’s quite an academic process which I love, although I’m endlessly angry that this intense level of work is required to prove a child’s support needs. I find it cathartic though, and I think it helps in Little Sam’s recovery, as I was an undiagnosed autistic mute child.
This reminds me that the consumer organisation wrote a booklet called letters that Work. So people could get resolutions in the consumer space maybe the disability sector could write a similar handbook with a glossary of terms that need to be used to get appropriate action in funding