I Have the Mind of an Infant: Mental Age Theory in Libraries

NOTE: If you're new here, welcome! When I write about accessibility, you will find that I use the terms "people with disabilities", "PWD", "the disability community", and "disabled people" interchangeably. This is something I deliberately do to challenge our institutional insistence on "person-first language."

I have this thing due to my cerebral palsy where the muscles in my right hand constantly want to be clenched in a fist. This runs the spectrum from annoying, since it distracts people, to frustrating, because if I’m holding something in my left hand I’m basically immobilized, to incredibly painful. All of my shoulder muscles are nearly constantly tense. Add to this the practice of mirroring; which is where my right hand just really wants to do anything my left hand does due to my mixed-up-rewired Frankenstein of a brain. This results in things like having to ice down my hand after work if I’m writing all day by hand, my right hand deciding that WE TOTALLY NEED TO CLENCH A TIGHTER FIST THIS IS A LOT OF WRITING WE’RE DOING. Standardized tests were a nightmare.

“This thing” is actually a leftover from the Moro reflex, a reflex useful to infants to cling to a parent for survival. It looks like this should go away by the time a child is 6 months old. I’m not big on developmental timelines, since there can be a lot of parental anxiety about that, but I’m thinking 35 is a safe age to say this shouldn’t be happening.

My brain is developmentally disabled, and my body performs in a way that mimics a baby. So, I have the mind of an infant.

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I’ve chosen to open this post this way to demonstrate how misleading mental age theory can be, and how wrong we are when we talk about developmentally/intellectually disabled adults like this in the library. I know that there are people reading this who are already thinking, “But you’re not like [insert Person You Know Here!] You’re high-functioning/verbal/educated/etc!” First of all, please see this masterpost of how functioning labels can be harmful, and I reject your desire for me to separate myself a community that is fighting for access, because we’re stronger together. Additionally, we developmentally/intellectually disabled people are more alike than we are unalike. 

I’ve talked to multiple people online, particularly nonverbal ones, whose caregivers misunderstand and/or misrepresent their abilities due to an inability to effectively communicate with them. I want to point you to two articles that can help you further understand the extent to which this is an issue:

“Non-speaking,‘low-functioning’” by Amy Sequenzia talks about Amy’s frustration with functioning labels. Amy describes her experiences with IQ Tests, and how performance on the test is not necessarily indicative of mental age.

“Mental Age Theory Hurts People with Disabilities” by Ivanova Smith gives a brief history of mental age theory. Ivanova laments that people with developmental/intellectual disabilities are regularly assumed to never acquire independence, pursue education, or have intimate relationships.

Please read those and come back.

Okay, so: how does this relate to libraries?

I hope you’ve already started turning your brain over these ideas and implications for libraries. Here are some ways I want to encourage you to do, and think about challenging your institution about, right away:

Talk to people with developmental/intellectual disabilities: Say hi. Not to the abled caregiver they are with (okay, you can say hi to both).*

Talk to adults with developmental/intellectual disabilities like adults: People don’t want to go back to places where they feel condescended to/patronized. Sure, they may come back, because their caregiver wanted to go and so they are taking them. If a caregiver tells you that the adult doesn’t understand what you’re saying, realize that this may not be the reality. Continue to talk to the adult even if the caregiver answers for you. Possible script: “Thanks for helping us. Since this is [name]’s book request, though, I’d like to continue to communicate with [pronoun] as directly as I can.”

Run programs for adults with disabilities out of the adult department rather than the children’s department: Or, truly, anyone with the most experience/comfort with the populations could best serve the program. Just understand that it is not a children’s program, even if they are engaging with media or toys with children as the intended audience. There are plenty of abled adults, for instance, that would attend a Harry Potter event at every opportunity. We don’t say it’s because they’re not “smart enough” to engage with media from the adult section, or that the demonstration of this behavior we associate with children makes them like a child in all other ways.

If you are going to have a storytime that includes adults with disabilities, schedule one that is separate from your preschool/family storytime: Developmentally/intellectually disabled adults may like to spend time with kids for reasons that lots of adults do: they’re friendly and non-judgemental; they have interests in common (tell me you’ve never had an extended conversation with a kid about dinosaurs or Star Wars that’s left you PUMPED). Not because they think they are the same. Hell, I bet there’s a ton of developmentally/intellectually disabled adults who HATE kids and wish they’d just leave the premises. On the other hand, the ableist framing of developmentally disabled adults in society paired with ableist social norms may get you complaints from parents and caregivers in storytime, and may cause a negative experience for everyone. I agree with those parents on one thing: that storytime is not for them. Developmentally/Intellectually disabled adults deserve to be there, just like everyone else, and they also deserve their own programming and/or to be expected in adult programs.

It may come as a surprise that adults with developmental/intellectual disabilities are people, just like you are a person. I hope that one day that’s no longer the case, but until then please help by educating and reminding yourself and your staff.

* I’m talking to the abled people who are Just Fine specifically ignoring people with disabilities because you are uncomfortable: Do some work to overcome your internalized ableism. It is ingrained into the fabric of our culture and society depends on it to marginalize and oppress over multiple identities, and that is not your fault. You need to work on it, though, please.

Want more on accessibility? Click here for more in the Accessibility Series.

Are you a disabled/neurodivergent/chronically ill library staff member who would like to guest post here? Click here for more information on writing a post of the accessibility. Posts on accessibility by abled members of the library community are not accepted.

The Accessibility Series was made possible by a grant from Awesome Without Borders.