Tag: disability

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Relationship Safety Skills: Teaching ages and age groups using Discrimination Training

Many professionals working with individuals with disabilities are familiar with discrimination training. This type of training helps individuals distinguish between different stimuli. For example, teaching someone to recognize letters in their name or identify animals involves discrimination training.

This concept can also be applied to more complex areas, such as recognizing age groups (e.g., baby vs. adult, toddler vs. teenager).

Why is this important? Being able to estimate someone’s age is crucial for safe dating and relationships. Consider these scenarios:

  • Scenario: An 18-year-old with a disability begins texting a 14-year-old without realizing their age.
    • Potential Consequence: The 14-year-old’s parent reports them to the police, potentially leading to a criminal record or even placement on a sex offender registry.
    • Solution: Teach the individual that dating minors can lead to legal trouble. Use discrimination training to help them recognize who might be underage.
  • Scenario: A 28-year-old with a disability has consensual sex with a 16-year-old without knowing their age. Later, they argue, and the 16-year-old reports them.
    • Potential Consequence: The 28-year-old could be charged with statutory rape, as the 16-year-old is legally a minor.
    • Solution: Educate the individual on the “age of consent” and the legal risks of relationships with minors. By incorporating discrimination training, individuals with disabilities can better understand age differences and avoid serious legal consequences.

Tricky Situations with Age Discrimination

  • Visual Clues Aren’t Always Reliable
    • You can teach age discrimination using general clues, such as grey hair often indicating an older adult or braces usually meaning someone is a teenager. However, these clues aren’t foolproof—some 40-year-olds have braces, and some 20-year-olds have grey hair.
    • Solution: Start with clear and obvious examples to help individuals learn the concept. Then, introduce multiple examples to show exceptions to the rule.
  • Different Words for the Same Age Group
    • Age groups often have multiple names. For example, a toddler might also be called a “kid,” “kiddo,” or “preschooler.”
    • Solution: When teaching age discrimination, include different terms that refer to the same age group. If you start with “kid,” also teach that “kiddo” and “preschooler” mean the same thing.
  • Visual Cues Can Be Misleading
    • Judging someone’s age based only on how they look can lead to mistakes because appearances can be deceiving.
    • Solution: Teach individuals to ask for someone’s age when in doubt. Role-play scenarios to practice how and when to ask appropriately.
  • People Can Lie About Their Age
    • Even if someone asks another person their age, that person might not tell the truth.
    • Solution: Teach individuals why someone might lie about their age and how to spot signs of dishonesty. Encourage critical thinking and awareness when interacting with new people.

Check out this free resource about discrimination training when teaching about age groups and ages.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Discrimination-Training-Ages-13178190

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Executive Functioning Skills Impact Social Skills

I recently conducted a training about how to teach online safety skills to individuals with disabilities. Before I went there I looked into the pros and cons of online relationships. It is pretty easy to identify the risks (i.e. potential exploitation, bullying, etc). But as I did some research I thought it was interesting what the benefits are.

Many people (with and without disabilities) have executive functioning deficits. This means that they might lose things, not show up on time, fail to plan, lose things, lack emotional control, etc. I used to think that executive functioning skills were specific to school/work. But I realized that they are also paramount when it comes to social skills. See the table below for a breakdown of the executive functioning skills and how they related to social skills.

So, having online friends can actually help mitigate these executive functioning deficits. See below for how:

Some qualitative studies were done to see how neurodivergent individuals experienced online interactions. One participant said, ““With photos and names listed, I can keep track of my friends even when I have trouble with names and faces. All the background information of my friends are available for me to reference. Friends provide updates with which I can use as a context to re-establish contact with them where necessary.” Interesting….

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Why Should Neurodivergent Folx get Sex Ed?

Sexual Ableism- have you heard this term before? It was a new one for me. I know what “ableism” is. FYI- ableism is “discrimination and prejudice against disabled people based on the belief that typical abilities are superior”.

I think that when we aren’t directly impacted by things, it is easy to dismiss them and not see them as a concern. For neurotypical people (of which I am one), it is easy to live in a world of privilege and not think about those who are impacted by ableism. Jo Moss, the author of a blog about disability and ableism, further says, “I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of living in a society that devalues my worth and sees me as an inconvenience and a burden – subhuman even”. Take a moment to think about how it would be to live in a world where you are seen as a “burden” or an “inconvenience”.

Now, sexual ableism is “a system of beliefs that discriminate against people with disabilities in dating, intimacy, and relationships, suggesting the very presence of a disability implies inferiority.” We demonstrate sexual ableism when we:

  1. Assume that people with disabilities are “asexual” or don’t have sexual desires.
  2. Insist that people with disabilities need to supervised and monitored in their relationships
  3. Seeing people with disabilities as perpetual victims or perpetually vulnerable.

Here is where things can get a little complicated. There is evidence that people with disabilities are more likely to be assaulted and experience sexual abuse than those without disabilities. (It can be hard to get an accurate count, because there are instances of sexual abuse that go unreported, especially if the person who was assaulted has language deficits. However, Disability Justice says that 83% of women with disabilities will be assaulted; 3% of abuse involving people with disabilities is even reported.) So, perhaps it makes sense that we feel the need to constantly monitor and supervise them in relationships. Is constant monitoring and supervision our way of protecting people we care about? I would argue that keeping people with disabilities sheltered and not actively teaching them skills that will keep them safe is keeping them in a life of victimhood. When we do not teach comprehensive sex education to people with disabilities, we are keeping them in a state of victimhood.

David Hingsberger, a renowned disability activist and author, said, “Typical children [who receive sex education] have a number of concepts that will keep them safer. They understand modesty and privacy. They understand relationships and appropriate touch within those relationships. But they have something more, they have language. Protection from sex education leave a person effectively mute when it comes to speaking about their body” (p. 19 Just Say Know: Understanding and Reducing the Risk of Sexual Victimization of People with Developmental Disabilities). At the very least, sex education teaches neurotypical and neurodivergent alike how to report unsafe situations, confusion about what is happening, pain or abuse.

Read the next blog post to see how sex education does more than simply prevent abuse for people with disabilities.

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Able-Bodied Tears

I have grown up with this idea that I need to be in the forefront. That my value is determined by my ability to be seen and noticed. Not only is this damaging for my mental health, but I also think it is against my new views and beliefs on disability justice.

            I work with neurodivergent individuals. I remember a time when I would talk about how “special” they were to me. I would cry and all of a sudden, the narrative shifted from one about disability to one about me. It seemed almost equivalent to white tears…maybe they were “abled tears” (Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha in “Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice”). (For those not familiar with the term white tears, this is when white people start to cry when they are presented with information about racial injustice. While showing emotion isn’t bad, white people publicly crying about injustices done to BIPOC individuals shifts the attention to them and comforting them.) When I talked about the injustices done to my clients I would cry and the discussion was no longer about them and how to change systems/organizations- it was about me. It was about people comforting me and telling me how great I was and how patient I was. In addition to stopping the conversation, this also perpetuated the idea that I was this neurotypical savior, and I was sacrificing so much to help the poor disabled people.

            In an effort to change this mentally I have done a lot of reading in the area of disability justice and advocacy. I learned that if I want to be a disability advocate, that is not something that I get to decide. I don’t get to wear a disability justice shirt, throw some money at an organization and say “Look at me! I am a disability advocate”. No- the disabled people decide if I am an advocate. And if I am making the conversation about me and using them to make myself look better, then I am not being an advocate.

            One of the best ways for me to advocate for those with disabilities is to help lift their voices so that others can hear about their experiences. Specifically, this means that if I talk about what I learned from them I give them credit. I give them credit for talking about their lived experiences. I publicize what they have to say so that more people can be educated about the lived experiences of neurodivergent individuals.

            In order to be an advocate, I need to step back and get rid of this idea that my effectiveness and my worth is someone synonymous with how many people see me. Thus, I am going to start bringing attention to individuals with disabilities by quoting them, promoting their works and helping to increase their visibility.

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