Neighbours Autistic daughter

Your poor neighbour. Sounds like she is doing everything she can as it is - leaving the house and walking the streets at midnight so that YOU won't be disturbed. And then the added stress of having you complain about her.

I have worked in social housing for a long time.

And seen it become a dumping ground of last resort for people with complex needs as other support services become more and more diminished.

No magistrate will evict. Not just because of the disability. And not even just because the sounds that affect you fall under the category of household noise which is permissable- especially as case law says there is no requirement for social housing providers to offer sound proofing due to the costs.

But because there is nowhere else in the system for the most vulnerable to go.

Unless there is suplus housing where you live, you won't be rehoused if you are already adequately housed and don't have an occupational therapist assessment showing your home is not fit for your needs.

And this same rehousing criteria aapplies to your neighbours.

If you have the means, apply for a housing swap - or if not, find other coping mechanisms until the girl is older and maybe calmer.

And although things may feel hard, try to appreciate your situation is likely to have a better outlook than that of the girl or her mum.

That sounds really hard OP and it’s not fair on you. If the daughter can’t be controlled then she needs to be housed at a residential home or school and not in the community sadly.

I’m so glad it’s not hidden now. Thanks for the education.

It’s likely a combination of several factors;

• heightened awareness meaning more children appropriately diagnosed and not mislabelled (as naughty or mentally ill for example)
• better infant survival rates
• there is a strong genetic component so that will be factor
• autistic people are more ‘visible’ and less likely to be locked away in institutions
• social media has allowed people who struggle with social communication to find each other and come up with a shared language
• society is less and less hospitable to neurodivergent kids, particularly if they also have a learning disability. Classes are too big, teachers are too stretched and too many people are in situations like this where housing is inappropriate which causes distress.

there are probably many others too, but it’s definitely not vaccines 😅

There are multiple contributing factors. For example...

Previously, people who were autistic and had difficulties with behaviour or mental health would be admitted to the old asylums - out of sight, out of mind. Now, people get to stay at home, which is generally much better for people. People used to keep their 'odd' children hidden to an extent, but now there's less drive to do this; in part, due to more opportunities for neurodiverse people to have a good quality of life in the community. So, there's greater visibility of neurodiversity in the community.

There are hereditary components to neurodiversity. Neurodiverse adults are more likely to have neurodiverse children. And more neurodiverse adults are surviving, living in the community, meeting people and having relationships.

That is possibly the worst answer I could have got to that question but I kind of had a feeling that something like that was coming. Thank you for the education, sometimes you need to ask the question even though you know you’re not going to like the answer.

No there isn't any medication and as for your truly offensive suggestion of drugging children or anyone with diazipam are you serious. As an autistic mother to an autistic child I can say that meltdowns are hellish from both sides but you know the one thing that would make them completely unbearable is being drugged during 1.
Please think about what you are advocating before posting such offensive bs next time

I’m an ASN teacher and have had to write letters of recommendation for parents for the council requesting a house with a garden for their autistic child in part due to nasty neighbours. One Mum was at her wits end, she had her car keyed, social services phoned a number of times and just general nastiness shouted at her due to the noise her autistic DS made in her flat. Her mental health was down the toilet. Add to that lack of sleep for years and a violent child and you can only have empathy for the poor woman. Sadly it’s a common occurrence. I only spend 6 hours a day with my children with ASD and it’s hard work I can’t begin to imagine how difficult it is if your life is caring for them. I have nothing but empathy and respect for my parents and do everything I can to help them.

When your world is so scary and overwhelming and the only way you can communicate it is by having a meltdown (and we don’t even like the word meltdown now it’s period of dysregulation) you need people who understand. It’s so sad people are saying institutions and medications for this young woman.

I do have sympathy for the OP as well, I don’t know how frequent the poor young woman is upset but ear plugs/music might help. It sounds like the Mum is trying everything she can if she out at all hours. A house with a secure garden and a big trampoline would be ideal for you both.

Not from the 70s, but happy to provide an answer.

Autistic children were banned from school, child protection laws were not as tightened, many forms of "punishment" were used as behaviour correctors, and many children suffered greatly from the trauma of that abuse that was permitted and were either kept at home indefinitely in fear of being beaten, masked very highly at the cost of their mental health, killed themselves, or were murdered, many teens and adults will also have been arrested and incarcerated because of a lack of legal and public understanding.

What if OP now tells you they are wheelchair bound and have no choice but to be in a downstairs flat? Would their severe disability be OK with you allowing them to rent now?

OP has put up with this for years. Years. How is it entitled to want to have some peace in your own home? You don't know anything about OP other than her mental health is suffering because she can't tolerate it anymore.

I empathise, I really do. And with both sides. The issue isn’t her autistic daughter, but that they’re probably in entirely unsuitable housing. The transformations I’ve seen in people who are given things like access to outdoor space and their own room is unbelievable. Could you work together and support mum to make a case for alternative accommodation? If her daughter has a social worker, they could be helpful in pulling together an assessment.

Realistically, what are you hoping to achieve here?

If the daughter is autistic and experiencing meltdowns, these aren't something she can control. She can't keep the noise down, and she'll be even more distressed by these experiences than you are. Mediation isn't going to change that. It sounds like her mum is doing as much as she possibly can to try to help, so mediation isn't going to be giving a neglectful or insightless person a kick up the backside to sort things out.

So, the options really seem to be: introducing things to reduce the noise (like soundproofing or noise-cancelling headphones), you moving elsewhere, or the neighbours moving elsewhere. Which of those would you prefer? (Given the dire state of housing stock, tbh I'd suggest just buying headphones and soundproofing stuff at this point...) If you know what your preferred proposal is for addressing the problem, then you can prepare your case accordingly.

I think it would be a special kind of awful to try to get a disabled child evicted from their home. An alternative could be to try to work with the mum and support her if she wants to move. Letters from neighbours that highlight how vulnerable the child is could help build a case for a move of tenancy. If she doesn't want to move, then you could ask for a move instead.

Not wanting to derail the thread but as there’s a lot of name calling now it seems as good a time as any. Is there anybody as old as me on here that can answer a question? In the 70s there seemed to be a lot less children with this as a problem does anyone on here know why it seems to be such a bigger problem now?

Passing over the fact you're suggesting that a disabled child be removed from her family for the benefit of others, there aren't places.

Local councils across the country are on their knees trying to fund placements for disabled adults who are in supported living because their parents are dead or in nursing homes. Even if you only pay staff minimum wage, it takes multiple people to safely provide the same amount of care one exhausted parent-carer does, in a day. Parent carers save the public purse a great deal of money.

Even when it is agreed that it is in a child's best interests to be in a placement, there aren't places. Tortoise Media has been following the case of a suicidal disabled teenage girl who has spent over a year in solitary confinement: Children locked away: Troubled 14 year-old let down – again - Tortoise (tortoisemedia.com)

Having an autistic teen, I would never want to live in a flat and particularly one that was not a ground floor for this reason, but I doubt they have much choice.

You need to find ways of coping (e.g. Soundproofing, headphones, white noise, ) Or move.

That's because this is a fairly common situation. Many of my pupils would have been very difficult to live next door to. In fact I know some were, because their parents told me of their difficulties with neighbours.

There's no need to make up OPs like this. It's a very real issue.

What if that "nasty neighbour" was a paramedic/ junior doctor who needed sleep and then had to go into work on fuck all sleep and made a mistake while treating you or your child.

I'm not really sure giving our emotionally dysregulated children highly addictive benzodiazepines that can be fatal to withdraw from, and cause significant brain damage over prolonged use is any better than institutionalising them to be honest, as that's often what was done in those institutions.

You are mean.

@Ashellwithin does the poor mum not have enough problems without a nasty neighbour adding to them????

I wouldn't even waste my time to be honest. You know exactly who and what you are for saying that. You don't need us to tell you, do you?

Yes but it's really too bad that we expect untrained parents to deal with severe issues pretty much on their own. There really should be massive infrastructure to support families with housing, respite, counseling, planning for the child's adult life / when parents are gone, etc.

I wonder, since everyone I know has medication for so many different issues, is there a medicine that would help calm people in the throes of a meltdown? Probably difficult or impossible to administer a pill in that situation, though. But something like diazepam? It can't be fun being the person having the meltdown either and a calming drug seems like a humane possibility. (I am not talking about turning disabled people into catatonic zombies for convenience, but just something to ease really volatile situations).

I'll second this!

I'm waiting with baited breath for their reply and what I hope will be groundbreaking, fantastic advice that we most definitely won't have heard of before.. in all of our years of doing next to nothing to help our children, of course.

I expect they're thinking of ADHD medication which has absolutely sod all to do with autism.

My DS has both and we are in fact waiting to hear from the ADHD clinic about medication after he finally received that part of his diagnoses a couple of month ago.

Contrary to what that poster may think - DS being medicated for ADHD isn't going to fix the autism or suddenly make him immune to all of the factors that make his life (and ours actually) so fraught.

I think they decided that institutionalising people with disabilities was barbaric.