Asking DS’s neighbours to keep an eye on him

Well said @Ilikeadrink14 and @jamiejamiejamie .

How dare you? What a disgusting breach of his privacy. You have NO IDEA who they will tell or whether they will use this information against him. You are living in cloud cuckoo land if you think telling strangers about a vulnerability will mean they definitely want to help out. Sincerely hope they are not scammers, criminals or bigoted against people with disabilities.

Hope you read every response and learned your lesson and never behave so irresponsibly again.

I completely understand why you did what you did. You have spent your whole life guiding and protecting your DS. It is all we know. The transition to adulthood and independence is such a worrying time for parents and we often get it wrong (I do at least). My DS is 21 still at home I know I'll be a nervous wreck if and when he does live independently. My ds hates talking about his autism to others and I've overstepped a few times. We protect and worry so much it's all we know. My ds feels we talk too much about his disability so
I now respect his wishes. Be kind to yourself
Its rough, people don't really understand what
You have gone through to get to this point.

I have an ASD teen and I think you were very unreasonable. You breached your sons privacy and put his neighbours in an uncomfortable position.

Is op coming back?

Ok, we have had pages and pages of people screaming at this mother for what she has done. I have been reading this in disbelief because, regardless of what has gone on, the people on here are coming across as unpleasant, nasty and blaming. The mother has, presumably, read all these posts. Have any of you given a thought to how she must be feeling now? If I were that mother, I would be absolutely devastated given the accusations and abuse hurled at me. Apart from anything else, there is nothing new in the posts, each one is more or less a slightly differently phrased version of the one before, delivered by a pack of baying hounds.
I am not condoning the mother’s actions. However, I do feel that being criticised, blamed and vilified in this way could have a very nasty effect on her. Let’s hope that, on top of her worry about her son, all this has not driven her to do anything stupid.
This post is appalling.

Where do you live? Trumpton? Thinking someone is a bit batty is definitely not the 'worst that can happen'.

It is inappropriate to tell strangers these things about your son. And hugely unkind to put this kind of responsibility on his neighbours.

It sounds like you’re a typical worried mum that is looking out for her ds. How did the neighbours react when you told them? I would appreciate knowing if it was me and I would be happy to keep an eye out. If the neighbours were unfriendly then that’s different.
Do you think your ds would mind them knowing and keeping an eye out for him? I wouldn’t tell him now, but perhaps in future, discuss it with him first?

Your Son is an adult and you need to let him be one. He works and he can drive so is obviously able to cope. You had no right to do what you have done. I know you done it through concern but you were in the wrong. Let your son adult.

Agreed.

My son is ND and moved out at 22. It wasn't all plain sailing at first but he was quite capable of phoning me if he needed help with anything. I can't even imagine anyone thinking this was a good idea.

Fair enough to introduce yourself and to give out your own number due to son 's first time living away from home

No, it would be really fucking weird for any parent of a grown man to do that.

Your son is a grown man with a full time job, a car and his own place. Stop infantilising him like this. I’m cringing.

Dreadful, totally dreadful.
Even if they are the nicest people, the fact you asked them to keep an eye on him is so wrong. What if anything happened they would have dreadful guilt.
Not sure what can be done now. Especially if your son finds out!

Your poor son. He has a job and can drive but you think he’s not safe living on his own. Surely if you think he needs babysitting and is a danger you should also tell the dvla as what would he be doing for the neighbours to ring you.

No. The worst case is that she's delivered her son in to the hands of some really unpleasant and unscrupulous people and made them fully aware of his vulnerabilities.

Hopefully, the neighbours will just think she's a bit batty and ignore her.

Best case scenario, they pretend it never happened.

Ah don't over think it. Worst case the neighbours think your a bit batty , best case they ring you when there's a problem x

You told random strangers about your DS's vulnerabilities without knowing anything at all about them, unbelievable.

My son is 26 with ADHD, and if I had shared this information with his neighbours, I'm not sure he would have spoken to me again.

Massive overstep on your part

That's still really weird.

You don't know these people from Adam, and now they know your son's medical history and vulnerability.

It's not fair on them or your son.

Agree on both points

Privacy and responsibility to people who shouldn't have it

So unfair on the neighbours, they aren’t there to look after him!!

Nevermind your son, you need someone looking out for you, to stop you doing absolutely batshit things like this. Massively out of order of you to do that and you want to hope that he never finds out.

Massively overstepped. It's his personal information and you shouldn't be sharing it. If the neighbours are decent people it's not a fair ask and if they're not decent people it could come back to bite him. My DD would be mortified if I'd told neighbours she was autistic, my DS would ignore them completely if Id done this, other DS probably wouldn't care.. All my DC are autistic and there's no way I'd share that without their agreement because it's not my personal information to share. Also even if you ignore the fact you shared personal things about him with people he doesn't know but will have to live alongside you were extremely naive to imagine only neutral or positive outcomes from sharing this. There is still lots of discrimination against people with Autism and you have no idea what his neighbours are like.