REA-L Conversations Podcast
REA-L Conversations is a podcast for families, allies, and advocates who believe in a world where people with intellectual disabilities live full, contributing lives in community. But staying on this path isn’t easy; funding systems pull us in different directions, safety concerns cloud our vision, and ableism shows up in ways that take our breath away.
Through honest discussions, real-life stories, and critical reflection, we unpack what it means to stay true to a vision of inclusion, even when it's isolating or hard.
We tackle big questions:
- What gets in the way of hope?
- How do we hold the line on inclusion when others choose a different path?
- What does it take to build trust and stay in the conversation?
This isn’t a space for easy answers or polished talking points. It’s a space for raw, necessary conversations that push back against dominant culture.
🎧 Tune in and be part of the conversation. Because the path to inclusion is one we walk together.
REA-L Conversations Podcast
Developmental Age Thinking: Why It’s Time to Let It Go
Why limit someone's potential based on old stereotypes?
People with intellectual & developmental disabilities aren't eternal children. They're valued community members with much to offer.
Dive into our latest episode as we dismantle the myth of developmental age and explore the harm it causes to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Through heartfelt conversations, we reveal why it's time to recognize and encourage all people to be valued, contributing members of our neighbourhoods, towns and cities.
Join us as we challenge outdated stereotypes and discuss ways to foster truly inclusive environments.
Hi, I'm Marta Carlucci, and this is real. Inclusion isn't easy or well understood. That's why on this show, we invite families and allies who are intentionally exploring how to create regular, equitable, and authentic lives in their cities and neighborhoods. We want to strip down the barriers and unhinge the myths about the contributions our family members make to your community. Through storytelling and reflection, we encourage families to be the change that is needed to ensure their family member with an intellectual or developmental disability is a fully included, valued, and contributing member of society. Are there success stories we can learn from? Come, be brave with us and explore the endless possibilities. Today we're talking about a concept that has caused real harm to the people we love mental age. Or what many professionals call developmental age it's a socially constructed idea that reduces a person's identity to a comparison with a child, and it's too often used to justify limiting someone's opportunities, independence, and relationships. It's not families who are the main targets of this thinking. It's our sons, daughters, siblings, and friends, adults who are treated like children because someone decided they function at a certain age. As families, we've witnessed this firsthand. Sometimes we've heard it said to us by professionals, educators, and even other parents, and sometimes if we're honest, we've absorbed the language ourselves. Without realizing the harms that it can create today, we wanna open that up to question where this idea came from, how it shows up in our lives, and how we can begin to let it go for the sake of building truly inclusive and equitable lives. Let's get into it. Are you okay to talk about, this developmental age thing? Mandy's been having to deal with it, recently in the school system, and we know it comes up a lot. People we encounter often have an unconscious bias in regards to our family members who have an intellectual or developmental disability. And, mental or developmental age is often used as a way to limit our family members' participation in certain spaces and places, and also to limit, uh, certain relationships with, people without disabilities.
Mandy:We did a private psych ed and I didn't give any of it to the school other than the Strategies for success. And they were really mad about it.
Marta:How dare you not give us all the intricacies and private information about your child.
Mandy:Well, because they wanted to see the results. And I was like, it's not necessary. What you need is the strategies for success. And I'm happy there. There were like, I think a page and a half of strategies that I thought were useful and and I shared that.
I remember, when my daughter had her psych assessment on the last page, he did mention a developmental age, and I remember ripping that page out and, uh, not giving it to the school because I didn't want them to see her as younger than she was. I wanted them to see her as, the same age as all her other classmates. Of traces back to the early 19 when IQ testing was first introduced. A French psychologist named Alfred be created the to identify children who needed more support in school, not to label people for life. In fact, he warned that intelligence was not fixed and that these scores should never be used to rank people or limit their futures. But that's exactly what happened. Across many countries, including Canada, the US and Germany IQ scores were taken up by the eugenics movement, which prompted the idea that some lives were more valuable than others. People were sorted into categories based on how their scores compared to so-called average ages. Over time, these categories were given labels such as idiot moron. These terms may sound jarring now, but they were once used as official medical classifications and they were used to justify institutionalizing people, denying them basic human rights and forcibly sterilizing them. We still see echo of this mindset when someone says he has the mind of a five year. It might sound like a simple description, but it can carry the weight of this history. It suggests that a person's capacity is stuck, that they can't grow and that they don't deserve the same opportunities as others. Using age-based labels like this can lead educators and others to expect less. To see a person's potential is limited, and when expectations are low, so are opportunities.
Jocelyne:I will say though, this is many years ago, the language was different and it can hurt and they can be wrong.
Mandy:But where do they get taught how to diagnose people? Exactly where is that in their university education? Where does that section Yeah. Of their curriculum show as an educator that they're able to diagnose people's developmental age,
Marta:His developmental age is 14 because that's how old he is. There is no such thing as a developmental age. It is who you are. Yeah. He's lived on this earth for 14 years and he is experienced life for 14 years. And he responds to life based on his 14 years of experience. And that's how old he is. He's a 14-year-old boy. Period. I find it interesting because I think in a meeting we were in Mandy, that the person was trying to explain it was connected to the level of learning that the person was at. And that's so far from the truth, and I think I used an example of myself. I wasn't a good student. Like I didn't get my university degree. Until I was 55. And learning was a huge deal for me. I wasn't learning at the same rate as everybody else. Are you meaning to tell me that? I was developmentally, four years younger than everybody else. No one would make that assumption about me. So why does this happen to our kids? Just because they have a label of intellectual disability. It's like the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. It robs them of the life that they should be living in this moment. At the age they are. Yes, this is a key point. Chronological age matters because it's tied to lived experience, autonomy, and rights. Just because someone learns differently doesn't mean they're younger. Maturity by how they learn. So why should people with.
Mandy:friendships aren't based on age you see it in the world When you see an elderly person hanging out with a 20-year-old or me and my husband, we're not the same age. There's gaps and you see it in marriages and all different things and to say that somebody isn't mature enough to talk to someone who's 80, it just makes no sense.
Marta:Yeah. The book Platonic talks about this. It's a really good book about making friends, most of the time we don't even know why we are, like how it came about, why you chose that person to be your friend. There's something that happens. Nobody really knows. I mean, there is intention in all relationships too. There's usually one person who, instigates it they do the ask,, When you finally click, like I can explain that with my other friends. Like I might be able to explain it in general terms. Maybe they had a child the same age and that's how we connected. Like you said, Mandy, there was like something of interest. To use*** that as an excuse to remove somebody from potentially creating relationships and friendships with people is just wrong.
Mandy:There is a potential that. Our children aren't exposed to many different interests, so that they haven't developed their own interests.
Marta:And that's usually because they've been segregated or not been allowed to be.
Mandy:Yes, absolutely. And so then they don't have exposure to meet other people where there's common interests, they're, again, they're being segregated yes, there might be a bit of nurturing of things that you have to think about at first help get your child in places and spaces where there's common interests, we do have to do some of that legwork., My kiddo is into birdwatching. There are not a lot of 14 year olds that are into birdwatching. I was listening to CBC radio and there was a woman that they were interviewing and she is local here in, in bc she runs birdwatching for youth. Because it. Can often be pigeonholed as a older activity. So I'm gonna explore that one a little bit'cause maybe there are some other kids, but she said when she was a kid, it was so exciting to Bird watch and she is super passionate and loves when she gets to talk to youth that are into it as well. Those are the kinds of things that we're always kind of like, where is the access point? Where is the point to gain some connections with people.
Jocelyne:Every year around Christmas there's a bird count. And he would find someone to pair him up with someone and just That would be amazing yeah. I hadn't even thought about those.'cause I know nothing about birds. I love birds. I'll investigate that'cause Yeah, that's, that would be my kid's jam for sure. Yes.
Marta:Is a great example of how interests bring people together using mental or developmental age to decide who someone can hang out with, shuts down potential connections. Instead, we should be looking for shared interests and letting friendships grow naturally just like we would for anyone else. What about volunteer hours in high school and connecting that to interests?
Mandy:We'll not be doing any recycling for our volunteer hours. I can guarantee you that.
Marta:Tell us why.
Mandy:Well, often recycling is presented as a very easy activity to do and that anybody, regardless of their developmental age, can recycle. And I would rather my kid, volunteer for the. Earth club or environmental club and did volunteering in a larger capacity than school recycling, unless that was the initiative that the club wanted to do.
Marta:So I think what you were saying, Mandy, around recycling is that recycling is typically there's actually recycling clubs and often the recycling club is designated two students who have a label of intellectual disability. So that's where the issue was, right? Like, there's some people, who love to do recycling, and we don't wanna, say that no one could do recycling. But yeah, it seems to be this overriding idea. And I love what you said oh, well it's easy. So I'm sure that this group of people can manage that and let's give them something to do and they can pick up garbage. Issue really isn't recycling itself, it's the assumption that only people with disabilities should be doing it, or that it's the only thing they're capable of. That's what mental age or developmental age thinking does. It narrows the lens limits contribution and sends a quiet message. We don't expect more. And help people find meaningful roles that reflect their real interests, and they really should be age appropriate.
Mandy:And it's this notion that the school as well are going to start down here. Yeah. And so I'm always setting the expectations very high because I know that if I set them low, then the school's gonna go even lower. And so this school has suggested that they are a little afraid of the expectations that I've set, and they don't want to fail my child or let me down or disappoint me. It's a slippery slope, right? Like I wanna give them some grace to be able to feel at ease with my kids' education. But I don't want what often happens, like we had in elementary school is walking the hallways.
Marta:If a student walks into school without a intellectual or developmental disability label, they're given the benefit of the doubt. They're assumed to be capable until proven otherwise, but students with disabilities, with intellectual and developmental disabilities are often treated the opposite way. Assumed to be less capable from the start. That's about bias, and it's a bias that's reinforced every time someone. Yeah.
Mandy:The narrative is often we don't want to overstress them. I'm like, all students are stressed, all students are stressed, and he needs to experience it. Yeah. Protecting is harmful. We're overprotecting, it can be really harmful and people can get hurt in really bad ways, and we've experienced that.
Marta:Well, that's a wrap. Thanks for joining us today. If this conversation brought up feelings for you, frustration, validation, even anger, you're not alone. The idea of mental or developmental age might be deeply embedded in our systems, but we can question it, challenge it, and change the way we think. As Norman Kunz, disability Rights Advocate says, labels are not a diagnosis, they're a prognosis. They tell us more about what others expect from a person than what the person is capable of. Respecting someone's actual age is about dignity. It's recognizing that people with intellectual disabilities have the right to be treated as full human beings, adults with histories, preferences, agency, and the ability to keep growing. Let's keep learning, unlearning, and listening.'cause when we know better, we can do better. Oh, and thanks Jocelyn and Mandy for joining us today and being part of the conversation. If you liked what you heard, and you're looking forward to hearing more, please follow us and subscribe. You'll find us on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or Google Podcast. Drop us a line. Let us know what you think. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for joining us and being brave.
