What do people think the word "retarded" means?

A customer at a counter in a shopping mall food court got upset during a transaction. As she walked away, she said to her companion, "That was so retarded!" I looked at my five-year-old son, who has Down Syndrome. He did not notice or care about the comment. But I did. Flippant comments like that perpetuate the mistaken notion that "retarded" means "stupid" or "dumb."

"Retarded" comes from the word retard, which means "to hinder, delay, or slow the advance or progress of; to be delayed." My son has mental retardation, which means he will develop slower than typically developing children. Notice I said "typically," not "normally." Humans typically develop along certain measurable lines, but mental retardation occurs as a normal human trait from time to time. Just because my son has mental retardation does not mean he is stupid. I won't go into a brag session on the things he can do, but suffice it to say that his behavior shines at times in comparison to his "typically developing" peers. His retardation brings me no shame.

The ARC of the Midlands, a group dedicated to advocacy for the rights of citizens with disabilities, makes a concerted effort to remind people that the fullness of humanity includes people born with disabilities and those who become disabled through accidents.

In 1993, a young man named Ben Ptak reached the final round of the National Forensic League Original Oratory contest, notwithstanding his living with cerebral palsy and having to use a wheelchair. In his remarkable sixth-place speech, he mentioned a startling reality. "The community of the disabled," he said, "is an open community: People join it every day." He went on to ask why the community from which they come (and into which all children are born, abled or disabled) can't accept them as freely in return.

October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month. Our family's awareness of Down Syndrome certainly increased since our son's birth six years ago on Oct. 26. Mostly, we became keenly aware of how people with Down syndrome or other disabilities matter so little to society at large.

"Attitudes are the real disability," proclaimed a T-shirt for sale at the National Down Syndrome Conference in Pittsburgh this past August. I couldn't agree more. Since the 1990 passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, much has been done to improve the legal rights of people with mental retardation and other disabilities, and their access to public places. Now if we can only improve how people see, feel and speak about them -- as extensions of ourselves, fully human, fully alive. And yet different from you and me, as in the color of our hair, eyes or skin.

We need to give people with disabilities access to society's most important place: our compassionate heart. Such an attitudinal change begins with the individual, one at a time. And it starts with something as simple as watching how we use words, like "retarded."

Reprinted with permission from the author. The Rev’d Canon Timothy Dombek is Canon to the Ordinary to the bishop of The Episcopal Diocese of Arizona in Phoenix. You can reach him directly at: timothy@azdiocese.org.