Incline Treadmill For Fat Loss - "Developmental Delay" or "Mentally Retarded?" Getting Off the Euphemism Treadmill
But other times, a euphemism is intended to decrease the emotional hurtulity inherent to some terms. That is why pediatricians have now been advised not to call "obese" children, but "overweight" or "risk of overweight". This is another reason why we prefer "delayed development" to "mentally retarded".
Why? What is so bad about the word "obese?" Well, people have negative associations with "obesity", then felt that a more gentle word, more gentle will dissipate this painful emotional luggage and maybe even serve to change our attitudes to obese children. Thus, "political correction" is born, in which the absurd word acrobatics is mandated, that we can soften our prejudices.
A small problem: it does not work. The negative connotations of a word do not come from the word itself, but of people's pre-existing prejudices. Changing offensive words is a non-STOP-GAP solution, because eventually the politically correct euphemism acquires the same negative luggage than the ancient word. This called the "mat of euphemism" by Steven Pinker, the neuropsychologist. (A patient was recently ridiculed by a lot of children in the playground that pointed and shouted, "overweight!" Do you think he now experiences the word "with overweight" as kind than "obese?" ).
Nowhere to the euphemism mat was clearer - and more disarrayment ineffective - than the terms we use for people with development disabilities. In 1900, the terms "imbecile", "moron" and "idiot" were introduced to define a person's level of development. These terms were seen as a major breakthrough in its scientific accuracy. But since our society is not kindly for people with disabilities, all that we call them, these terms - initially devoid of offense - became insults and had to be discarded.New terms came and were ("lame", crippled, "" disabled, "" disabled, "" delayed ") on the treadmill, until someone decided that even impliccious a problem was inhumanizing. Thus, the term" differently -Ariscado "was created. In addition to her absurd and her insensitive trivialization of what is really a hard way to hoe on many levels, politically correct crowd really thinks such a term will improve our attitudes. This would be so easy to do it. To think about what a term will come after, after "differently-ablether" becomes an unacceptable insult.
Another problem with euphemisms is that they amplify the undue negative power of the ancient term and banned. If "retarded" is now an unhumable insult, he will hurt even more when thrown into his son. Finally, euphemisms are confused for children. So your dead puppy "went to sleep." This is much less hard than "died", right? But explain this to the five-year-old who is afraid to fall asleep, so that she finds the same destination as Rover.
Go ahead and use euphemisms everything you want with your children. But remember, when bets are high, avoiding explaining to your child about harmful words just promote your power to hurt. In that case, it is ok to embrace simple, direct and unambiguous terms, to teach your vulnerable child that "sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me", and teach all your children who are injuring others with words It is unacceptable.
But do not count on clear and unequivocal words of pediatricians because we are always developing developing in not always giving you non-varnished truth. Excuse me, I would like to write more, but I have to carry out a non-entirely benign procedure on a consumer.
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