I would be really grateful if anyone could give me some advice. My niece is 16 and has autism and some physical disabilities. Our two families see a lot of each other and my three sons have a great relationship with her. We have always taken our annual summer holiday together. Now the kids are older there are two problems I have been worrying about as we plan this year's holiday. My niece has no concept of personal modesty so she will often walk around naked and sometimes tries to take off her clothing in public. She is fully physically mature. Occasionally she will begin to masturbate but will stop when told to. When she has her period she will sometimes take her pad out and drop it on the ground. We have managed to cope with these issues up til now, but now my oldest son is 12 and is going through puberty himself I feel increasingly uncomfortable about how this might affect him. My other sons are 10 and 8. Another problem is that recently she has had occasional outbursts of violence when she gets frustrated, and has hit me a few times. She has never hit other children or teenagers, only adults, but I am worried that if we are spending a prolonged time together she may hit my children.
We all love her very much and I feel guilty having these feelings, but I am starting to dread the holiday a bit. I wonder if anyone else has been through a similar predicament and has found ways to sort it out. I have mentioned it to her parents but they seem to feel there is nothing they can do and that my kids will adapt to it as they have to other behaviours in the past, but I feel the sexual dimension makes this different. My sister and her husband tell my niece to stop these behaviours, but though she stops at that point, the same behaviour recurs. I would be grateful for advice, thank you.
