Deference: A young person who seems to defer not only to parents,: but peers and everyone else, is showing the danger sign of low sexual self-esteem. Make no mistake about it. Self-esteem is sexual esteem, and to ignore that dimension of development while trying! to provide more education, more experiences, more special train’ ing or therapy, will never completely overcome a self-esteem prob-| lem. There is no escaping the fact that sex and love education is al fundamental part of self-development, the development of the! child’s reputation with himself or herself.

Developmental Retardation: Much has been written about learning disabilities and other developmental problems. Unfortunately, little is written about the sexual dimension of such problems. And impact as well as a cause of some developmental problems is deprivation of sex and love education, on the part of the child and/ or the parents. When we begin to “work” on our children, to correct them, therapize them, drug them to slow down or drug them to speed up, to tutor them, test them, and place them, we sometimes forget their needs for sexual education. I have spoken for years throughout North America on the topic of sex and the impaired child. I have learned one important rule: the more the impairment, the more the need for touching, holding, and closeness and for information about sex.

Marriages who raise impaired children have their own unique stresses and joys. It is an extra challenge to remember and find time to provide good sex education when providing life experiences and education itself can demand so much energy. Parents of impaired children sometimes struggle to find enough time, even any time, for their own sexual lives, let alone find time for sex education. It is important to find this time, even at the expense of other opportunities for the child, for his or her sexual life is at the apex of overcoming and/or coping with these special disadvantages.

I have found that the questions asked of me by some of these child òåï are the best, most basic sex-education questions of all. I have included their questions here, with my brief answers, so you may see how important sex is to them, and how important those “ÂÀßÓÅ” facts really are, and how the most basic of questions can teach us all about sexuality. The questions from teenagers and their parens ts were different from the following questions only in complexity of expression, not intensity of the need to know. Try to answer each question as a marriage before reading my answer. Try to relate each question to your own life, even if the questions come from children with developmental problems. There is a wisdom and a lesson in the simplicity and honesty of these children’s won-deringgs about sexuality.

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Rheumatoid arthritis is characterized by painful, swollen joints that feel warm to the touch and are often stiff. The stiffness and pain are usually worse in the morning. Various blood tests are used to confirm the diagnosis – they look for certain factors in the blood that are characteristic of rheumatoid arthritis.

Inflammation is the cause of the problem, and the part to be affected first is the synovial membrane, although the inflammation later spreads to other parts of the joint. The synovial membrane has an important role to play in the joint, because it produces the fluid that lubricates the joint. The synovium, which surround the joint, is filled with this fluid. In rheumatoid arthritis the synovial membrane is invaded by large numbers of immune cells which cause the inflammation.

The presence of all these immune cells suggests that there is an infection in the membrane, and early theories about rheumatoid arthritis invoked some bacteria or virus. But despite many years of searching, no infectious agent has been found. An alternative theory suggests that the body is mounting an immune reaction against its own proteins – in other words, that rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease. Some recent discoveries tend to support this idea. A third theory suggests that there is an overgrowth of cells in the synovial membrane which attracts the attention of the immune system – this idea is currently being tested.

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