Autism and ‘lazy parenting’

So you are saying it is perfectly fine to discriminate against adults with SEND because they are adults. Says it all really.

Teachers do have the right to say no - yes they absolutely do and no the teachers do not have to give their own personal time at all. Meetings after school are unpaid and in the teachers own time. They are under no obligation at all during their own unpaid time. So it is not during their employed time. They are doing it because they want to help. Shame that you think it is ok to harm them in return for their goodwill.

Just because a parent has a sense of entitlement doesn't make it acceptable to treat anyone as less than.

If we want an inclusive world that means we want it for all. So sad that you want it for some and want to actively discriminate against others in their own time.

It's like you just don't understand how the world functions.

Children are service users. They have a right for their needs to be met whilst using that service, in this case the service is school. So the teachers are obliged to meet the child's needs, including making allowance for or providing special measures for, the child's disability.

The parents of that child aren't providing a service to the teacher. So there's not the same obligation to meet the teachers needs. If the teacher has needs due to disability it's for their employer to accommodate those needs, not the service users or the service users relatives.

Just because a teacher has needs that doesn't mean they have the right to demand members of the public (in this case the child's parents) meet those needs, there are no laws to that effect.

I agree with that. Though people judge parents regardless, but yes when kids "seem" to behave badly, that's just another stick to beat parents with. There will also be good and bad parents, parents with autistic children aren't any worse

I think the difficulty is when you say ‘My child is autistic’, that means a different thing to when someone who’s child is taking their A’levels and they’re looking at supporting them to go to university saying ‘My child is autistic’. Different needs, different challenges, different priorities.

Having said that I would say your child has high needs
My son can also toilet and has loud vocal stims he also can't read or write or speak at all he's 15
I'm not playing disability top trumps
As that's not helpful but I also don't think a blanket statement of it's all just autism is helpful either.

Spikey profiles exist and no system is perfect.
And some people can and do fall between the categories.

Let me ask where my child could sit on a "scaled" definition of autism:
Mute when overwhelmed
Violent
Cannot read or write at age 13
Can toilet
Verbal
Loud verbal stims ?????

Autism doesnt fit neatly into boxes.

I get what you are
saying on some ways
I have said this before on various threads I'm on a DLA Facebook group and every day people are putting in claims for very tenuous reasons and honestly I think some people join the group to get ideas about what to put on the forms to substantiate their claim
But putting in a claim means nothing you need evidence that backs up the claim .

You’re right, autism doesn’t rid people of human weaknesses, but it sure attracts dicks ready to judge them to the hills and back based on no lived experience of autism and who hold us to a standard that other parents are not.

Quite a blanket statement. I think a couple of people have said there will be good parents or bad parents, autistic children regardless. There will be truthful people claiming benefits and there will be chancers. Having kids with autism doesn't rid people from the weaknesses all humans share. That said, I also completely agree parenting an autistic child can look different to the norm.

Rubbish

An autism diagnosis does not get you dla, extra uc etc. 4 in our house and only 1 gets pip and extra UC. She was told to apply for both, the latter by the department that allocates it.

Sorry @x2boys I was quoting @MageQueen. Yes, I know it's not about the diagnosis itself but there is a whole industry around diagnosis and how to get benefits for ASD/ADHD. A lot of money being made in various ways.

Not sure who your quoting but a diagnosis of ASD does not guarantee DLA it goes off need.

Exactly this. And wanting diagnosis to pursue DLA/extra UC/no benefit cap etc.

As I said, some are and some aren’t.

i work in education and encounter challenging behaviour all day long. Some teachers are great at handling behaviour and others aren’t.

Facing challenging behaviour isn’t the determining factor it’s a combination of personality and the training/help/research/self-reflection to continually face new challenges and adapt to them. Plus having the emotional reserves to cope (so when your life is in tumult it’s a lot harder to cope and that’s true of parents of autistic and non-autistic children).

There very much is if you talk to a range of professionals who diagnose and who work with service users (and service users)

Autism isn’t cancer. The two are entirely different.

I wonder how it works in diseases like cancer. I suppose there are levels there. I'm guessing having stage 1 cancer doesn't mean it's hunky dory, some days you'll feel as terrible as someone in stage 3. But it's a way of knowing the severity of the cancer and how likely it will kill you. Though perhaps no ailments should have levels at all?

As I said thank goodness you aren’t deciding what is and isn’t low need. What I’ve described re my dc has been described as high need by various professionals and services.

Yes, I often look back at my schooldays and realise that we were there in the numbers that we are there now, but things felt a bit easier maybe, and more of us didn’t reach crisis point in the way that’s happening now. We were definitely there though.

My son was home educated for a few years, that was a total game changer for him. If he’d managed to get through the school system I’m certain he’d be completely off the rails now. Being at home meant that he was with people who understood him and could meet his needs. We had no violent meltdowns at all once out of school. My dad is very similar to him, but school in the 40/50s was much easier to get through.

I absolutely believe modern life to be an issue. We weren't designed to be sitting at desks for hours on end or on computer games or stuck in houses day after day and then wonder why we struggle? I don't think it comes as any surprise. Nor when you look at trauma either and how that can present too. Again a result of modern life.

It stands to reason that humans aren’t all the same. I do think that for many of us it’s living/existing in unsuitable environments that disables us. That’s not to say that ASD/adhd aren’t disabilities, they are, but I wonder if the context of modern life is a factor.

Absolutely. And in lots of different ways. Modern life might well be one factor. Another is how many children with ND were simply missed/abandoned by the system? Looking back as an adult on kids in my school - I wonder how many of the "naughty" or "stupid" ones were really just ND and weren't accomodated in our environment? At our school reunion, one was very open about subsequently receiving a diagnosis and how that has reframed his understanding of his schooling and how he has gone on in life - with a successful career, a family etc.

DS' doctor has made the point to us repeatedly that part of the problem is that at this age, children have little control. But that many of ht ethings he finds difficult he will be able to avoid or find ways to mitigate that are more natural when he is older. But that our systems are simply not set up for that currently.

It is interesting. I know a whole family who were pretty much all diagnosed bipolar, over 3 generations, until one was rediagnosed as autistic and adhd, and from that point all realised that that was far more appropriate for all of them, and the strategies that tend to work for ASD/ADHD worked far better for them than chemical/drug regime that many of them were on. It’s been life changing for them.

It stands to reason that humans aren’t all the same. I do think that for many of us it’s living/existing in unsuitable environments that disables us. That’s not to say that ASD/adhd aren’t disabilities, they are, but I wonder if the context of modern life is a factor.