Ellie, really?
A campaign stating that diabetes can be cured, and you can 'turn back time' on your diabetes - you are honestly happy with that? The fact it loosely mentions the word diabetes, ignoring the fact that type 1 is autoimmune and the clock can't be turned back?
You say it's about using the most easily identifiable factors - a factor which has NOTHING to do with type 1 diabetes so how is this relevant at all? I feel really sorry for the type 1 child that will be bullied today because their classmates have seen the ads and think that they need to lose weight to stop being diabetic. I also feel bad for charities like JDRF who may feel the backlash in terms of donations - if people think this is caused by weight, and therefore lifestyle choices, people may think twice about donating as they will see it as not as worthy as other charities.
And what part of the advert mentioned that diabetes can be curred? The advert says lowering your risk factors of getting diabetes! No cure and lowering risk factors doesn't imply that it can be done for everyone!
To say that explaining the difference between T1 and T2 will prevent a T1 child getting bullied at school is very much wishfull thinking, the bully will just bully in a more educated way won't stop them... Children bully because they percieve the other child as different or weak not due to the lack of understanding! All education does for the bully is create another weapon in thier arsnal
Education and/or understanding never prevented the bullying, the ridicule or the torment that I became accustomed to as an child nor does prevent it happening today! And those reading this actual post are probably bullying me now, educated yet totally marking and criticising as they read!
I was born with a speach impediment, something that's invisable as long as you don't speak, which well isn't going to happen at school, within 5 minutes of my first day of school I was marked by my peers... I spent several hours a week for many years at the speach therapist learning to verbally communicate, not easy when the words you hear are clear as a bell, but to the rest of the human species they were garbled untranslateable noise..
You would think that an educated adult who should be understanding, would prevent asking a child that couldn't communitcate verbally very well to answer a question in front of the class, then request answers repeated to see if they could understand what was said! Nor would you think an Educated man would make a 7 year old child stand in front of 400 peers, so that an explination to the errors of being late for school and apoligise for disrupting assembly, it would terrorise many an adult without a speach impediment let alone a child with one, but this happened to me
😱 Gave me the motivation as a child to train my brian to work with sound to enable to verbally communicate so you really can't detect it...
Times were different when I was a child, and unknown at the time another unseen condition linked to my speach impediment a condition that is actually better understood than diabetes but causes me more problems with what can be deemed at worst bullying and at least ignorance.. And a lot of educated people who think they know, would already used it negatively against me even before I ever wrote this post!
I'm dyslexic!
Bet a lot of you assumed or even deemed me as being unintellegent or should I go for thick! because I can't spell, I miss or mix up words or get things ass backwards...
See proves my point, you've used a preconception that if an individual can't spell they are thick! Even though you know about dyslexcia and understand the problems that is faced by the suffer.. Made no difference at all to your perception of me..
And people will do the same with diabetics, doesn't matter how well they are educated about the difference between the two types, they will always make the judgment until they personally know the individual and the individual explains!
