ABSTRACT
Drawing on our work in the developing area of disabled children’s childhood studies, we expose the ways in which disabled children’s lives are often overshadowed by what we describe as the tyranny of the norm and by mundane, everyday disablism. However, we also seek to celebrate the lives of disabled children and young people. We do this by describing the ways in which they offer the potential to disrupt narrow and normative assumptions about childhood and development, and demand us to think again about children’s lives now and in the future. Using a range of studies with disabled children, young people, and their family members and allies, we seek to re-orientate research inquiry, moving away from professionals’ concerns about children’s deficits and lack to focus, instead, on the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of disabled children and young people.
