Entitled Parents

It's Your Fault that my Disabled Son Grabbed Your Boobs

At the time, I was a 15 or 16 year old girl (given where my birthday falls I'm not sure how old exactly) volunteering with an organization who helps people with physical and mental disabilities learn different skills, interact with other people like them, get out of the house and do something fun, and improve upon their social skills. I don't have a degree or anything like that, but the people who run the program do. My fellow volunteers tend to be much older than I am which sets me up for a few different things; one, on a positive note, the trained instructors have taken me under their wing and given me extra training on days that aren't particularly busy.

Two, for many of the younger students we have here, I'm closer to their age group. It seems to be a good thing; when I have to ask them to change a behavior or improve upon something, I'm less of a teacher scolding them for messing up and more of a big sister or "mom friend" helping them out or giving advice. A lot of them don't have many friends their age or struggle to make them, and others with behavioral issues feel like adults are yelling at them all the time. And, because I was a kid not too long ago myself, it's easy for us to play together as peers and equals. Many of them have the mentality of a younger child.

The bad part that comes with that is, for some of the teenage boys who are starting to get hormones and impulses that they don't necessarily understand, I'm someone their age who's female and I have boobs and whatever and it catches their eye on occasion. Usually they don't know any better; it's new to them and they don't understand what's appropriate or what's not, and if they're older, nobody has told them what's appropriate and what's not. Some parents are afraid to discipline their children because of a diagnosis or disability, some are too overwhelmed and don't know how, some completely underestimate the level on which their child can comprehend things, and others, unfortunately, use the diagnosis as an excuse to never enforce rules or teach skills at all.

Lastly, keep in mind that I'm an unpaid teenage volunteer so I am doing this because I want to and I love all of my kids. The parents know this because I wear a t-shirt with VOLUNTEER emblazoned in enormous letters across the front to distinguish me from one of the teachers who deal with major issues, paperwork, etc. I call it "work" because it's easier. I have an actual job in retail now (it's a joy) but I still spend any free time I have volunteering. I miss it so much when I have to spend a week away, and I get a little flutter in my chest when one of the students say they missed me too.

We do all sorts of different camps and classes where I work. I get along well with kids and they tend to like it when someone's their age, so I tend to help out in those classes the most.

So. It's one of the summer day camps, and since we do a lot outdoors, it's blazing hot. That summer it got to 114 degrees F one afternoon. So I wear t-shirts, usually my uniform t-shirt, which is an adult size (not many kids work there) and can hang a little funny around the collar sometimes and hang down like a v-neck, but no cleavage is ever shown; I'm about 5'9" but I'm really, really skinny. I had a brain injury a year and a half before this so I lost all my muscle mass from spending almost 18 months unable to leave the safety of a dark room, and while I've gained some of it back, I had an eating disorder (and still do). So you get the picture. Weirdly fitting shirt.

Now that the background's out of the way, here's the story.

S is one of about six or seven kids in the group, all with severe learning disabilities. Right off the bat, it's easy to see that he has a crush on me; he's around my age and like I said. Hormones + boobs = impulses. For the first couple of days he wouldn't leave my side, but once he figured out that he'd come back and see me the next day, he relaxed a little. Along with S, there are three others in the mid-late teenage group. The younger kids kind of float around from person to person, but sometimes they're a little bit too high energy or something like that for the older ones. I hang out with S a lot, but I can't neglect the other three in our little posse, so I try and divide my time equally.