ADA Simulation- being disagreeable

For my ADA experience this week, I had a behavioral disorder that caused me to contradict and argue with people over the course of a four-hour time frame. In order to have contact with people who could communicate back and forth with me, I knew I would need to fulfill this assignment during my toddler lab practicum because at any other time of the day, I would be at home alone with my baby daughter. I was worried to begin this simulation because I knew that I would be creating tension within my new lab of friends and I didn’t want to set a tone for the remainder of the semester by being disagreeable.

I decided that because I would be causing conflict within a group of peers that I needed to inform my teacher about the assignment so that she wouldn’t think I was being unprofessional and rude in class. She actually aided the simulation by giving me opportunities to role play with by having open disagreements with her.

I was surprised at how difficult it was for me to openly argue or contradict people because I felt like I was being really rude. It was hard for me to have someone talk to me about one of their ideas for our class and then shut their idea down by being the opposite opinion. At one point, I decided to use the phrase, “I don’t agree with how you are doing…” to see how my peer would react. My peer just kind of laughed at the way I said it, but two girls who overheard me say it gave each other looks that said, “Well that was a rude and weird thing to say.”

During this point in the semester, we are making decisions about how to organize the room and other basic decisions for how we want to function as a lab. My co-teacher asked me if I wanted a butterfly on my name bag. I said, “I don’t like butterflies.” So then the other girls in the lab took turns at suggesting other bugs that could be on our name badges such as bees, dragonflies or ladybugs. I came up with a reason for not choosing any of them. One of my co-teachers finally said, “Does someone besides Mandy want to choose which bug we should have on our name badges?”

I found it interesting that because I was being argumentative, many of my peers started to act in the same way. I overheard many of them talking to each other and arguing over which would be the best way to do something. I wonder if it would have been like that if I had set the tone that way initially. Doing this simulation made me realize how hard it is to have friends when you are disagreeable. Nobody wanted to ask my opinion by the end of lab and I felt like I had been a jerk for four hours.