Tag: sexed

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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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Teaching Abuse Prevention

While there is debate about the actual prevalence, people with disabilities are more likely to be abused than their nondisabled peers. There are a few reasons why and this is by no means an exhaustive list:

  • They may exhibit behaviors that people assume require them to be restrained.
  • They are “nonverbal” and unable to report the abuse
  • The abuse is coming from a caregiver and if the victim reports the abuse, they may lose access to care
  • When they do report abuse, they are not believed because they have a disability
  • They have not learned the vocabulary to report abuse
  • Words that will help them report abuse are not programmed into their communication devices
  • They are unaware that what happened was abuse, so they do not report it as such.
  • They are more likely to require assistance with self-care tasks (which can make it easier for those assisting them to abuse them)
  • They are isolated and do not have a strong support system to help advocate for them
  • There is over-focus on teaching “compliance”

In the minor reading I have done, I have found abuse prevention programs that focus on using behavioral skills training where individuals with disabilities are taught how to respond in a potentially abusive situation (this is modeled and then they do a role play practice). Some other curriculum teaches individuals how to make decisions that could decrease the likelihood that abuse would occur. In this curriculum, they look at scenarios and review what decisions should be made in order to stay safe. (“On a side note, while I agree that there need to be specific curricula and teaching practices to help individuals with disabilities, I don’t think that we should be putting all the responsibility on them to keep themselves safe.) However, the majority of curriculum that I have seen are not conducive to individuals with moderate/severe/profound disabilities; especially those that have communication deficits. Many of the programs I have seen use a lot of language and verbally mediated instruction.

The majority of my work is with adults who have disabilities; many of whom require help with basic self-care tasks. Unfortunately, this increases the likelihood that they will be abused. It can be difficult to teach the concepts of “private places” and “private parts” to people with disabilities who require extensive support. This is because, staff and caregivers often violate the privacy rules that we teach when we help with self-care tasks. When I teach the concept of private places, I teach that a private place may be “Private +1”. A “Private+1” place is a private location (i.e your bathroom) with an additional person that you choose who is helping you with very specific tasks. Then  I go over what specific tasks my client will need help with and what that help will look like. For instance, if a client needs “help in the bathroom” we specifically talk about what that means; does it mean you need help wiping your bottom after a bowel movement or you just need help sitting on the toilet? If my client is able to wipe themselves independently, but a staff member/caregiver is coming in and saying they will help and starts touching my clients bottom, this should be a red flag.

We also talk about the people that will be coming in to help them. Unfortunately, due to the nature of living in a group home, my clients may receive help with self-care tasks from people they are not familiar with. There are specific strategies staff can use to help teach new staff members how to safely do this, but that is beyond the scope of this post. For now, we talk about how a variety of people will be helping and we describe what that “helping” should look like.

Lastly, we make a plan that includes trusted and safe people. We review that your “Safe” person does not have to be your family. If my client was abused/neglected by family members, I do not want to teach that their family is who they can go to for help. I avoid using phrases like “If someone hurts you, tell someone in your family”. We talk about their “chosen family”. We list the people in their life who they trust and are close with. It is vital to have your client list more than one safe person.

Some questions to consider:

  • Am I specifically teaching vocabulary related to abuse prevention?
  • What words/phrases should be included when teaching abuse prevention?
  • Do I feel comfortable teaching this vocabulary (i.e. am I comfortable using the word rape, vulva or penis?)

Abuse prevention is a big topic, and one blog post isn’t going to do it justice. But I wanted to make sure that people have access to visuals or at least a jumping off point. If you are interested in visual/social stories to help you teach some of these concepts, check it out here:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Private-Plus-One-Teaching-Privacy-to-Individuals-with-High-Support-Needs-12700079

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Who defines “Creepy”?

Question: How do you define “normal” behavior versus “creepy” behavior? Answer: It is all about intention

The other day I was trying to create a visual for a client that explained the difference between behavior that is “normal”, behavior that could come off as “creepy” and behavior that was “harassment”. I usually start by just making a list of behaviors and then sorting them myself into the different categories. Here is what I came up with:

However, as I am finding with most things, sorting behaviors into black and white categories isn’t feasible. Furthermore, it doesn’t teach skills. Now, here is why my list doesn’t work:

  • Going to someone’s house without being invited:
    • People come to my house all of the time even if they aren’t invited (someone selling girl scout cookies, my neighbors with my mail that was accidentally delivered to them, people from my church)-. Some of these people I may not want to see, but their behavior isn’t really creepy.
  • Giving gifts to someone without it being reciprocated
    • Some people are gift givers and some people aren’t. Someone may be giving lots of gifts because that is their “love language” and someone else may be reciprocating but in other ways (time together or words of affirmation).
  • Calling/texting multiple times a day without reciprocation
    • My husband has a bad habit of responding to my texts, but nonetheless I text him relentlessly. He doesn’t consider this creepy. My pharmacy sends my reminders and I never reciprocate those texts. And some neurodiverse individuals don’t respond to texts because they simply forget or are distracted. They may not consider your behavior of texting them multiple times a day as creepy.

The point is, someone’s intention is what makes their behavior creepy or not creepy. So, this is what I have learned:

  • Help the client identify what their intention is. I have noticed that we spend a lot of time getting neurodiverse individuals to identify other people’s intentions, but they often don’t know their own.
  • Talk about “normal” and “creepy” behaviors in the context of their intention. Make it personal.
  • Help them to understand and communicate when they are not feeling comfortable. If we are too black and white we may teach neurodiverse individuals that even if they feel uncomfortable they should stay in a situation because it technically hasn’t reached the neurotypical definition of creepy yet. It is important for all of us to understand that our level of comfort will be different from someone else’s and we should respect that even if we don’t understand it.