Brief Final Thoughts…

Abstract

In our endeavour to seek an understanding of dis/abled childhoods, we have produced a discursive text that challenges the norm. It crosses disciplinary boundaries and troubles ideas that have been taken for granted. This was our intention. We set out to widen our understanding of disabled children’s childhoods, not close them down. Indeed, we railed against compartmentalising debates by deliberately opening them up for discussion and debate. In doing so, we have challenged the orthodoxies fixed within the fields of disability and childhood studies. Through emphasising inter-connectedness both within and across disciplines, and refusing to prioritise one set of ideas over another, we hope that we have unsettled the more traditional conception of childhood. Drawing on Goodley and Runswick-Cole’s (2016:2) theoretical ideas of being human, we have extended and expanded what childhood means by ‘dissing’ (or disrespecting) the ‘normative, rational, independent, autonomous subject’.