# My client's pedophile hysteria **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 7, 2010, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-clients-pedophile-hysteria/528078 "2010-02-07T23:11:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![not\_alice](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/not_alice/32/7283_2.png) [@not\_alice](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/not_alice)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2010, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-clients-pedophile-hysteria/528078/21 "2010-02-09T22:38:31Z")
Perhaps the mom has good reason for her concern. Has he been molested in the past? Shown poor judgment? Has she been molested? Anyone she knows? What is the underlying nature of her concern? Maybe it is valid? ---
**Author:** ![Serenata67](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/serenata67/32/10646_2.png) [@Serenata67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Serenata67)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2010, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-clients-pedophile-hysteria/528078/22 "2010-02-10T02:04:56Z")
> [@tdn](#): > > I used to be a bank teller. \ > > Sometimes students would come in alone, but most often they came in with a parent. And the parents usually came in two varieties. Type I would generally let their child make his own decisions and just offer some guidance. Type II would intervene and let their child make no decisions at all. > > It was interesting to observe the children of Type II parents in the following weeks. They were generally the ones who got interesting haircuts, wore unconventional clothing, and reeked of various drugs. > > Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it was interesting to see what sorts of decisions they finally made once they were allowed to. As a bank teller, I was thinking of the same type of story. And that’s the kids who have all their facilities about them (well, when they’re not “experimenting”). I can only imagine what it’s like for the kids with disabilities and their parents. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2010, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-clients-pedophile-hysteria/528078/23 "2010-02-10T02:41:43Z")
> [@not\_alice](#): > > Perhaps the mom has good reason for her concern. Has he been molested in the past? Shown poor judgment? Has she been molested? Anyone she knows? What is the underlying nature of her concern? Maybe it is valid? If the OP had said “abducted by aliens” rather than “pedophiles”, would the point be clearer? It’s not that the bus is happy carefree place - it’s the pedophiles don’t target fully developed 16 year olds. ---
**Author:** ![Salem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8c91f0/32.png) [@Salem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Salem)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2010, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-clients-pedophile-hysteria/528078/24 "2010-02-10T03:25:52Z")
Thank you, Munch. The very definition of pedophile-- an adult who is attracted to prepubescent children— makes the mother’s fear irrational. The young man is 16 and fully developed, as described by the OP. Pedophiles would not be interested in him. Yes, he could be sexually assaulted, he could be physically assaulted, abused, taken advantage of, lost, etc. but the mother’s voicing her concern, not of all those things, but about him being targeted by someone who would seek out PREPUBESCENT CHILDREN, not a 16 year old fully developed young man. Get it? THAT was the OP’s point. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2010, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-clients-pedophile-hysteria/528078/25 "2010-02-10T22:15:40Z")
Take first things first. Are there any real reasons for the parents worry? Can the child take the bus with the parent along side with them, and offering no help? Perhaps once the parent realizes the child is capable of doing things on his own he can do it without her next to him. I would be less worried about outright sexual perversion and more worried about normal sexual feelings. Does the child display any sexual intentions? Is he sexually aware of himself? It’s less likely someone would attack him and more likely they would take a teen, who has sexual feelings, and use him. Why force the teen to have sex, when he may want it anyway and you can con him into doing it without force? Taking a bus should be relatively easy. You can shadow a bus so if he gets into trouble you can bail him out. And frankly bad things do happen to people. I got jumped and someone smashed seven of my teeth. It could’ve been anyone, disabled, female, male, I was just unlucky to be where I was when these thugs wanted to bash someone. It’s about minimizing risks not eliminating them. Like it or not, one day mom will be dead and no one is gonna help that kid, so she needs to start letting him do what he can. And those tasks he cannot do, she needs to know now, so she can make alternate arrangements when she’s no longer around. And unless she knows something we don’t, it will happen ---
**Author:** ![AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2010, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-clients-pedophile-hysteria/528078/26 "2010-02-11T06:47:28Z")
> [@](#): > > Independence is a learned trait and I have MANY times seems parents sabotage the efforts of their (again neurotypical) children because the thought of the child’s independence is emotionally painful. I can’t really see that parents of disabled children are immune from this. Very true, but a lot of parents of disabled kids tend to REALLY not encourage them towards independance. There was someone (wheelchair boy) I knew from college who would make his mom and dad drive two hours to pick him up every single weekend! (and there was a bus available) Matter of fact, before I became friends with him, he had never been off campus in three years. Trust me the oversheltering that disabled kids go through is ten times worse! ---
**Author:** ![threemae](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f9b8f/32.png) [@threemae](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/threemae)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2010, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-clients-pedophile-hysteria/528078/27 "2010-02-11T08:26:35Z")
> [@Marienee](#): > > My husband teaches physics and has a student who is autistic who appears entirely normal at school and then falls apart entirely at home. One of his accomodations is that he can’t have certain kinds of homework because he literally is using all his energy to keep his shit together at school and needs the time at home to…well, disintegrate. Where he is safe. > > Which is not to say that the other theory is impossible, people do hold their kids back in all kinds of ways without realizing it. Hmm, so that’s autism? A selective inability to perform academic tasks in a home environment (related to psychic exhaustion) coupled with completely normal relation and academic capacity at school? Not really what’s in my DSM-IV or what’s proposed for the DSM-5 or anything else really, but alrighty… ---
**Author:** ![melodyharmonius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/melodyharmonius/32/21310_2.png) [@melodyharmonius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/melodyharmonius)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2010, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-clients-pedophile-hysteria/528078/28 "2010-02-11T14:35:13Z")
> [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](#): > > Very true, but a lot of parents of disabled kids tend to REALLY not encourage them towards independance. There was someone (wheelchair boy) I knew from college who would make his mom and dad drive two hours to pick him up every single weekend! (and there was a bus available) Matter of fact, before I became friends with him, he had never been off campus in three years. Trust me the oversheltering that disabled kids go through is ten times worse! Recognizing that we are talking about physical handicaps and not neurological - I would like to say that I had a friend Sherry in college who was just the opposite. She had to use walking sticks. She refused to live on the bottom floor of her dorm - she said walking up the stairs was good for her. She also refused to use the handicap parking spot when we went out to buy her shoes (which we had to do quite regularly, as she had to basically drag her feet to walk.) Her parents actually might have been more protective than she was - but i think they realized that it was no good to stand in her way (she would literally plow you over, sweet smile on her face and all.) ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2010, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-clients-pedophile-hysteria/528078/29 "2010-02-11T21:34:04Z")
I don’t find it surprising that the mother was fearful of pedophiles and perverts. Her fear is that her son will be taken advantage of. Pedophile is obviously the wrong term, but there are certainly people who will pick up on her son’s younger mental age and lack of awareness. A person taking advantage of a 16-year-old with delayed emotional maturity isn’t technically a "ped"ophile, but it’s certainly someone who would use the teen’s emotional immaturity to his benefit. The teen’s size has little to do with it. I hope you’re able to continue to improve his independent living skills and cut her apron strings. It sounds like you’ve been a great help to him since you’ve been in the picture. Good luck helping mom to back off and let him grow. ---
**Author:** ![AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2010, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-clients-pedophile-hysteria/528078/30 "2010-02-12T08:11:53Z")
And yes, there are super independent disabled folks, but a lot of disabled since childhood kids are really sheltered and not independant at all. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-clients-pedophile-hysteria/528078.md?page=1)