Was i making a deal of nothing?

[onewayanyway]

Ds is 9 and autistic he struggles massively with change to routine/ new things. Every Saturday he has a bowl of ice cream as a treat. This week we had ran out. Ds was upset, I apologised to DS and suggested we go to the shop together and choose some and he can have it later. DS accepted this. Dh said I made it into a big deal and should have acted like it wasn’t that important.
i asked dh what he would have done and he said gone to shop and bought some. So same result?
I feel like it’s ok for ds to have feelings and be upset and if he knows we will help him resolve it he can learn to feel ok
Dh thinks we need to act like things aren’t a problem so DS can learn to do the same.
what do you think?

I don't think you made it a big deal and I think your solution of taking DS to the shop to choose some is the right one as it's teaching him to manage his problems himself so if there's no ice cream he goes to get some rather than there's no ice cream someone else will deal with it.

Dh thinks we need to act like things aren’t a problem so DS can learn to do the same.

I think that's what you did. You reassured your son that the problem (running out of ice cream) isn't a big issue, it has a simple solution.

There are other problems that aren't easily solved. You are teaching your son to differentiate so that he isn't exhausting himself on the little ones.

I’m assuming it’s because I apologised but I forgot to buy it so I’m fine with acknowledging that

I don't see the issue with apologising for something, again you're teaching your son if you forget something you say sorry and fix it, a good lesson to learn!

I wouldn’t be apologising to a kid for forgetting ice cream. Too bad.

Harsh. Especially for an autistic kid.

Why? Does it teach the child something valuable if you don't apologise? Does apologising diminish you?

Making someone apologise is punishment through humiliation, and a power play.

Apologising freely is generosity and modelling responsibility.

It teaches the child that ice cream availability cannot be guaranteed in an uncertain world. And that you are not his servant.

In principle yes but not over something as trivial as this because where does it end. You’re always on the back foot to the kid. Mums have enough to juggle without bowing and scraping over some missing ice cream. Kids need to learn disappointment and resilience.

Yes , this!

I feel like you've missed a part out as your husband said he would also go to the shop to get ice cream. How long was you apologising for and sorting out going to the shop

Neither of you are wrong, I can see why ypu did as you did, but you were placating, and I can see wny your husband is saying if you shrug it off, he may learn these things are not as big a deal as he thinks.

you just have different approaches. Maybe your husband thinks you placate too much and as your child is getting older helping him with resilience will be a good thing for him.

So. I said sorry I forgot to replace the ice cream to ds and suggested going to the shop and then I checked if he was okay. This took less than two minutes, Dh said stop making a big deal out of it so I asked him how he would handle it and he said he would go shop and replace it. So the only difference in mine and dhs responses is i apologised and checked ds was ok.

agree with DH, DS will expect to be pandered too

the real world be will soon be a shock

You didn’t make a big deal of it, your husband is the one who is making it more than it needs to be.
some people’s answers on here are beyond me, they have no empathy and have obviously never dealt with autistic children.

You handled it well. I would have done similar. Modelling making a mistake, apologising for the mistake and then fixing the mistake is a useful lesson for a kid with ASD. Not doing that just to show you don't pander is silly and teaches nothing except from the kid's POV that you are unreasonable.

hmm I can see you DH's point.

some weeks there wont be ice cream, and he needs to learn that sometimes in life you can't have what you want and you need to compromise - that's just the way life is.

in this situation, I probably wouldn't have offered to go and buy ice cream with him unless we were already planning a trip to the shop. If the shop wasn't already on the plans, I would have offered him a choice of other things we had in the house for his treat.

its not really a massive deal as a one off, but if you are always going out of your way to ensure DS has what he wants I can see why this would grate on your DH.

I think it depends on how often this sort of intolerance to change/disappointment happens, what ‘upset’ means for your son -are we talking annoyed? Crying? Meltdown? And how often you apologise/fix to placate him.

in isolation this incident doesn’t sound like much but if it’s just one of a larger pattern which perhaps your DH doesn’t agree with then I can see why he’d be frustrated.

my brother was like this growing up - everything was a drama and while, especially as an adult, I can see he was struggling I don’t think the way my parents folded to him did him as many favours as they thought. It certainly didn’t do me and my other siblings any.

I agree with your DH, your DS needs to learn not to think it’s someone’s fault if minor things go wrong, or he will expect teachers and employers to be apologising to him and checking in with him over trivial issues later down the line and might turn into one of those people all over MN who feel wronged if they don’t get a fuss made of them over tiny things. A quick ‘oops we ran out, let’s get some more’ or ‘you can have it in 30 minutes, I just need to go to the shop…’ is how I would handle this with autistic DS. I wouldn’t want the black-and-whitism of apportioning blame to be DS’s key takeaway from this non-event.

My child isn't autistic but has a complex condition and many food related issues (strict diet, rigid food and meal times, lots of rules in place regarding food for both my child's safety and their feeling of security. This is all written into their EHCP) so if I forget something or we run out then it sends my child into a meltdown.

It's not the same for my NT children and I think posters are missing the significance of the OP's child being autistic here.

In my case it's not pandering to my child, it's more like meeting a basic need. If we didn't have xyz food item for my child, in their mind it would be akin to having no food for them at all. I appreciate it's a unique situation but I'm just pointing out why it's not as simple as "kids need to deal with it" for some children.

I don’t think people are missing the significance, tbh - just that it’s not always essential to avoid disappointment at all costs, simply because they are autistic. Sometimes it is - some children will need that that’s for sure, but sometimes it’s not. Autism has many challenges but it’s not always a blanket excuse.