Stop the R-Word.... - 5 Boys and 1 Girl Make 6

Today is the day! The celebration of respectful speech. You can get all the details right here r-word.org. You can sign the petition and make it known that you will not stand for people demeaning individuals living with developmental disabilities by referring to the person as a “retard” or adding the word “tard” to the end of any word. By calling others “retarded” you are saying that they are acting like my daughter or some one else’s son who by medical definition is Mentally Retarded.

You can make every excuse in the book that you don’t mean that and you are not calling my child or her friend that ugly word. I am going to break it to you easy, you are. You are absolutely calling someone else a demeaning word that unfortunately was created to describe my daughters developmental disability.

As a parent and a person who just 5 short years ago regretfully used that word myself. I understand there is a learning curve. I am thankful for campaigns like “Spread the word to end the word” because guess what? Most people are not lucky enough to spend their life with a person who happens to have a developmental disability.

The word is like a knife. It hurts me, it hurts my children and some day it will hurt my daughter. So since I believe in this big beautiful world lets do this together and stop using the word “retarded” and start respecting everyone. Stop the excuses. Educate yourself and your kids on respectful speech.

Here are at least 50 reasons why.