So many times we use words without thinking how they can affect someone because we say them without the intention to hurt or humiliate and that makes it okay to us to say them. One of these words so commonly used is retard.

So many times we will say “I left my phone home today, I am such a retard… did u actually do that you are such a retard”. This is all said without any intention to be disrespectful or hurtful but it’s just one of those words that has unfortunately sipped into our vocaburaly.

Unfortunaely this word hurts people, especially people with intellectual disabilities and developmental disabilities. The fact that a word is meant to be an insult automatically makes it offensive.

The special Olympics sponsored SPREAD THE WORD TO END THE WORD day to make people aware of how hurtful this word is which prompted one mother Ellen Seidman to start a crusade to stop using the word, she posted on her blog a message about her son Max who had a stroke as a baby and asks not to call her son a retard and set up alerts for tweets containing the word retard.

People can justify anything if the say they had no ill intentions. But it’s just not that simple because the truth is words can be hurtful, offensive and insulting whether we mean them to be or not.

Ellen Seidman’s blog Cleary tells why we should not use the word retard, it’s hurtful to special need people and their loved ones. It is a word that should be eradicated from our vocabulary. People have a write to say whatever word they want but it is also necessary to take into consideration of the rest of the people around us who can and will be hurt by our words.

I am ashamed to admit that I was one of the many who used this word until I realized that there are people out there with this condition and who have family and friends that care about them and offended by this word. Sometimes you will throw the r-word around playfully to a person with a sibling or child who is maybe autistic, disabled or mentally disabled and end up offending them or hurting them without realizing it, So I decided to stop .

Reading Seidman’s blog only made me even guiltier that I ever used the r-word. She says using he r-word only makes people like her son Max seem “stupid, dumb and a loser and to her son is like any other kid”. words are powerful, we should think twice before throwing words around.