Hi-

I was reading Jan's comments (below) and he dose have a vaild concern.
However I have been in mentoring situations with people who have disabilities
other than CP before and it has never been an issue.  I think it depends what
you as the mentor make as an issue.  If you feel comfortable with your
disability that will make you a good mentor even if you and your mentoree do
not share the same disability.  If you both use wheelchairs you face some of
the same challanges.  If you use a wheelchair and your the person you are
mentoring has a severe learning disability you both face discrimination, you
may both have to deal with the issue of transpertaion.  There are many common
threads among various disabilities and those of us with CP who have so many
overlapping disabilities in so many diffrent areas can be of assistence in
many types of disabilities.   Now I did not say that you (the mentor) knows
all it is imposable to know all.  Even for those of us who have CP we can't
know evey aspect of every persons case of CP because the number of
disabilities that a person with CP can have vary so much.    There is  a
shared experience that all disabled people have.  You don't have to have the
same disability as someone to be able to advise them and set a positive
example.  You simply have to identify a commonality between the two of you.

Yours,

Anee
http://www.geocities.com/aneecp/

In a message dated 8/20/00 12:57:30 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<< That would be almost like my mother in some respects trying to grasp my
 disability but not really knowing the trials and tribulations I face.  (
 At least with you all we all are someway related in the cp field either
 by working in this field, being effected by  cp, or parents of children
 effected by cp.)  I guess what I'm asking myself is: do I have a right
 to tell this person I'm counseling or mentoring how he/she should feel
 or how he should approach life even though I know nothing about his/her
 disability or problems?   Just a thought >>