Talk Openly and Honestly

I was born in the mid 1950's and was the last child of ten. I had many strikes against me. I was the youngest, being disabled with a speech problem.

When I was nine years old, I moved to a hospital where I went to school and got therapy. As a teenager, my body was changing, but nobody hardly ever talked about sex. I knew the parts of the body and why they were there. I went home on every holiday and long weekend. My family never talked about the birds and the bees when I was around. My sister who was the next youngest in the family, we only skimmed the surface about that subject. It might have been the fact that I was the youngest of ten kids and had a severe disability.

When I moved to another residence, there were a lot of younger people than I was. We had a dinning room and people were always talking about many subjects, telling jokes, talking the weather, what they did at school, or telling what they did with their family on the weekend.

I remember one evening we were crammed into one dinky room like sardines talking about sex. Some vocabulary went over my head, I felt stupid. Bold as I am, I asked some questions about words they were using and some residents were thinking what planet did I come from? I didn't know what bisexual, lesbian, or gay was. I sure found out in a hurry.

I would like to tell parents with teenagers who have a severely disabled child and uses some kind of communicating device. Talk to them openly and honesty and tell them about sexual, physical, and mental abuse. You know the saying, "What they don't know can't hurt them?" In this case is farther from the truth!

Parents don't think their child can make love, get pregnant or even raped. Parents tell their child how to prevent being robbed. So why not tell them how to prevent sexual and physical abuse.

If your teenager is in high school, the able bodied students might talk about all kinds of subjects including sex. If I knew when I was in grade seven or eight about every detail about this subject. I wouldn't have felt so out of place with my fellow students or friends.

If AAC teenagers know about everything about sex and preventable measures they will have a lot more confidence in themselves and grow up to be responsible and caring adults throughout their entire life. They should have sexual vocabulary in their communication system or word board with pictures in a binders and put these in their wheelchair bags. I wouldn't want to have it out on my tray all of the time.