When we were in Catholic school back in the eighth grade, a priest took all of the boys aside for a talk about sex. He talked a lot about the hazards of self-stimulation. All my friends looked really guilty and worried. Me, it didn't bother me at all. Afterward, one of my friends asked,"Jacob, didn't that talk bother you at all?"
I said, "Heck, no. I never did that thing. I don't even know what self-stimulation means."
My friend said, "It means masturbation, you know" and he made a motion with his hand.
My mouth just dropped open and I said, "Man, I am going to hell!"
This story has probably been repeated in any number of schools around the country and it is notable by the absence of certain things. People with disabilities make two common types of mistakes. One is the failure to determine when we do things in public and in private. Even in the eighth grade, Jacob and his friends were well aware that people do not masturbate in public. How did they learn this? No doubt, they did something, touched themselves when they were young, and a parent or other older relative snapped, "Don't do that!" They didn't quit doing it but they learned to do it in privacy. That is a rather abstract concept, privacy. Learning that bad is a relative term is an abstract concept, "It is very, very bad to do this in church but not so bad to do it in your room."
When I worked in a group home for young people with mental retardation and would see one of the residents touching themselves in the living room or other public area of the home, I would take him or her by the arm, or push the person in their wheelchair into their own bedroom and say,
"You do that in here, not in the living room."
The boys had also learned that there are certain words you don't say or gestures you don't do in certain people, like priests, but they are okay with your friends. Notice that Jacob's friend did not attempt this explanation during the class.
Sex, Disability and Social Mistakes