Straight Spouses of Transfolk

A disability does affect people around it, and the burden falls on parents up until the child becomes able to take on the task of compensating for it personally if they ever do. So that can be very disruptive, and it's hard for parents to compensate for cognitive differences when they have no clue what's going on in the kid's head and the kid can't tell them. It's not like, say, missing legs where you can just get blueprints that say "Your bathroom needs these dimensions to accommodate a wheelchair." Of course parents are stressed.

What's not okay is harping up parental concerns to the exclusion of the children's concerns, or speaking for someone who has in fact learned how to talk.

One of my new favorite activism photos is one of autistic people lobbying for the right to speak for themselves -- and one of the guys was holding a sign written in speechboard icons instead of English text. Because he wanted to express himself the way he normally communicates. So. Much. WIN.