Adolescent

After we watched another part of the Beyond F.A.T. City video, I began to reflect on my own adolescent experience in school. Richard Lavoie proposed three reasons why adolescence is the worst time to have a disability and I related each reason with my own junior high experience.

The first reason is that adolescence is the only years where you are expected to do everything well. As I thought about these years, I felt fortunate that I had a had a positive adolescent experience. I was involved in many sports, had friends, and did fairly well in school. During these years, I remember asking myself frequently, "why do certain individuals never play sports or why they would never do their homework?". This type of behaviour did not make sense to me and sometimes I thought they were just lazy. Now I think to myself, maybe they weren't fortunate enough to have a safe, caring home environment and could not focus on schoolwork; maybe their families didn't have money for them to participate in sports; maybe they had either a social, physical or psychological disability that they hid. There are a plethora of answers to my egocentric questions of a few years ago.

Secondly, adolescence is the only time when being different is automatically bad. If you did not have the right clothes or appearance, you were often ridiculed and/or excluded from the group. I remember buying the brands of clothing that everyone else was wearing and ensuring that I did not wear the same article of clothing two days in a row. For me, it wasn't difficult for me to melt into the group. For some people, they do not have the tools are resources to fit in and feel accepted.

The last reason why adolescence is the worst time to have a disability is because there is a recognition of permanence at this time - what you see is what you get. Even those of us who do not live with a disability and have a well rounded life struggle with our self concept. There are high expectations that are placed on adolescents by parents, teachers, peers and the media. If we fail to reach these expectations, we feel inadequate, worthless, our self concept is hindered. It is extremely difficult to reach these expectations if you have more barriers caused by a disability.

My main conclusion from my reflection is that adolescence is challenging even if you do not have a disability. It's hard to imagine what each day is like in the life of an adolescent who possesses a disability.