Children scared of dogs?

[DozyDuck]

Ok back story: DS has ASD, for some reason he is terrified of big dogs. I don't know why, I've tried everything to help him get over it, the farm he goes horse riding at has big dogs and after a while he was fine with them but then only them. I've tried the dogs trust, and when he gets used to a dog he's fine, but again it's only the dog he knows, he's still terrified of other dogs, especially when they run at him (being friendly) he screams and tries to climb up me. Sometimes when out of a dog is walking near him and he's obviously worried, the owner can show him that the dog is nice and DS may throw a stick for it (never touch it) , but if a dog runs up to him he doesn't like it.

Anyway me and DS were walking through the woods this morning and walking behind us a bit were a couple with a walking toddler and a little dog, DS was a bit nervous of the little dog but it left him alone so after a bit he forgot about it.

Then from the other direction walked an older woman with a border collie. The border collie saw DS and obviously thought he'd like to play with him (I understand as a lot of children love it when dogs come over) and ran over to DS wagging his tail. I said 'ahh DS look doggy likes you' (but he hardly understands much so it was more the tone I was going for to try and make him feel better)

But DS screamed, kicked, climbed up me, the lady said 'it's ok he won't bite' of which the only word DS could understand was 'bite' which made him even more scared and I lifted him up and he was in bits while I told him it was ok and petted the dog a bit.

The dog then saw the toddler behind and ran to him, which the toddler loved, so I put DS down and started calming him. The lady then walked up to the parents behind us (obviously in earshot) and said 'it's nice to see children who aren't scared of dogs instead of those whose parents drag them away'

I didn't drag him away. I lifted him because he was scared and she didn't call the dog away and said 'bite' I got really upset and walked off.

AIBU to think that of a child is scared of dogs then it's scared of dogs, it isn't the parents fault, and if the child is obviously getting scared you'd call your dog back instead of slagging off the parents for having a nervous child?

DS isn't scared of anything else, he'd happily stand in the middle of the main road if he could. I don't know why he's scared of dogs. I can't help him :(

Was the woman being unreasonable or should I have done something different?

Thanks suburbandream I will have a look at things like that.

I am working on his fear of dogs that isn't the issue. I'm working very very hard at it as well. I know too well what it's like to have a fear of something that you can't avoid and it's not something I want for my DS

No, please don't leave your terrified child screaming on the floor!you said yourself that he is fine once he gets to know dogs so there's nothing wrong with the boy. Yanbu at all to be pissed off at that horrible woman, who the hell is she to expect everyone to love her dog on first glance. I love dogs myself but I also believe that dog owners should be respectful to the reactions of others.

Thank you kaliski (sorry if I spelt that wrong am trying to remember it on the iPad app)

I think he does need to learn to be less flappy when they run at him. But I don't like him being scared and I want to comfort him.... it's so hard when they have hardly any receptive language skills

Dozy, I was just about to suggest the same as suburbandream - can you teach your son to stand up, arms folded across himself and look up/away. I know it's counter-intuitive to stand still when the scary thing is approaching but as you'll be aware, it is much less likely to attract or upset a dog than screaming or flapping! I wouldn't recommend you crouching down before the dog approaches as many dogs are taught recall by their owner crouching down with their arms open.

Don't lose any sleep over what this silly woman may or may not think of you - what does her opinion really matter? You know you're doing the best for your son and that's all that counts.

dozy i have a large, very large black labrador who i absolutely adore.

BUT i understand that to small children he could be intimidating, and i do not allow him to approach any child. i think the dog owner was out of order.

imho you acted correctly. can i just say that you sound like a lovely mum. your ds is very lucky.

DozyDuck I really feel for you. I had a very similar situation when my daughter was younger.

She was absolutely petrified of dogs, to the point where she couldn't walk past them. I strongly suspect she is somewhere on the autistic spectrum, although it has not been diagnosed.

We worked hard on it it because the rest of the family had wanted a dog for years. I accosted anyone with a dog who looked calm and asked if I could introduce them. We started with her looking at a dog from the opposite side of the road, and eventually got her to the point where she would stroke one if I held her.

Eventually we got to the point where I could invite a friend with a dog to bring them to our house. At first she would not come downstairs, but over a few months we got her to stay in the same room and interact with them.

It wasn't easy, and took about 18 months all together, but we eventually got to the point where she agreed to have a puppy

It was the best thing we have ever done for her ( but wouldn't work for everyone) They are best friends now and she is totally confident around all dogs.

We have a lot of her friends around, and if they are nervous I tell them to turn their back on him, cross their arms and shout 'NO' with attitude. They practice it a few times with lots of giggling before coming in the house.

Most seem to be more comfortable if they have a job to do around the dog, so maybe if you find a friendly one you could ask if your son could throw the ball for it to chase

If you look at my profile, there is a picture of my daughter and out dog. 2 years ago she was even worse with dogs than you have described your son to be

Thanks everyone and it's good to hear success stories as it gives me hope for him

I'll try the standing firm thing, although I'm not too sure how I'll approach this with him not understanding :-/ maybe it's something I can ask at school in September.

I know I shouldn't get upset about people making comments but I do sometimes. Especially when he's done nothing wrong as such.

My DD was bitten by a school friends dog when she was eight., had ten stichs in her arm.The day after she had stichs out I had this with a silly woman who cuold understant why she sreamed when the dog came up to her.

Tbh when the woman said that I did think about children with allergies, my friends child getting severe reactions from dogs so she DOES drag her DD away from the dogs (her DD is only a toddler, not scared of dogs but severely allergic)

Oh - I think we've been here before. I have EXACTLY the same problem with my youngest dd. She behaves in exactly the same way. I haven't read whatever anyone else has posted, but trust me, I feel your pain.

Who cares what the daft old bint thinks? Just ignore the silly cow.

She'll get over it, (maybe) one day. Just keep trying, or avoiding dogs until they're older and understand a bit more. lol

I know the dog-lovers like to slag off children sometimes & blame the parents, but they can bog off. (Nice dog owners are all welcome.)

You've done nothing wrong.

She was probably embarrassed that her dog wasn't under control and got defensive because of it

She was a grumpy old trout, ignore her.

I keep a v close eye on my toddler around dogs, as she loves them but this translates into can't be trusted not to pull their tongue/pick their noses/whatever. If the owner thinks I'm being precious, they'd be way more upset if I stood and let my DD tease their dog with food / poking fingers.

I don't know much about ASD, but if DS is ok with pictures of dogs could you work on it from that angle?

As in find a pic of a dog he is ok with and work on that breed eg 'look! a pic of a Labrador, Goldy is a Labrador, you like Goldy don't you...? Shall we see if we can spot anymore labradors on our walk?' It may be that if he could start grouping dogs into breeds, he could then categorise some as 'friendly', instead of each one being a new monster leaping out of the bushes!

Good luck anyway & the woman WBU not you!

I hate dogs. Dont see the need of them as pets. I think all dogs should be on a lead & muzzled when outside.

How many dog attacks have we had and the owner says 'oh the dog is so friendly they wouldnt hurt a fly'.

I'm going to go against the tide a bit here and say that I don't see any reason why you shouldn't pick your DS up in this situation. When you're a child, dogs must seem enormous - I imagine most adults would be wary of a dog that came up to their shoulders!

One thought I had is that sometimes it's difficult for people with AS or ASD to generalise; so just because your DS has made friends with some dogs and isn't scared of them, doesn't mean that he is able to generalise that finding to all dogs, iyswim.

Please don't waste even one more thought on that woman. She was rude and insensitive.

My dog is normally totally uninterested in children, in fact she avoids them when we're out. Every so often though, she will approach a child and it is always a child that's scared. God knows why. I always call her away if she goes near a child, even if they aren't showing any signs of fear, and I'm always apologetic if the child is scared. That's what reasonable dog owners do.

I thought suburban's post was really good, and I second teaching him, if possible, to stand still with arms folded and look to the horizon. I also second not crouching down, as you would be encouraging an approach and also likely to be off balance - your DS would be terrified if a dog accidentally knocked you over.

I am really scared of dogs. My DS is really scared of dogs, and I really blamed myself for that until I had my DD, who absolutely loves dogs! In terms of helping my DS (and myself!) to cope with dogs and not completely avoid them, I seek out places where dogs are allowed, but have to be kept on a lead. Quite a lot of National Trust places and similar have this policy, which works really well for us. We all get to do outside stuff without me and him worrying about dogs bounding up to us, and he still gets to see dogs out and about, so I always make a point about saying look at that dog, walking nicely with it's family etc etc (ie positive reinforcement about dogs). If my daughter (and occasionally my son) wants to go and meet a dog it is also a good way to practice the 'only approach a dog if it's owner agrees' rule. Not quite sure what I'm going to do when my daughter leaves home and gets a dog as she frequently threatens to do - as she's only 7 I have a while to wait before I have to deal with that!

My middle child is terrified of dogs and the other 2 aren't. I grew up with dogs and am very comfortable with them, DS1 is a very nervy child and hates surprises.

Next time, why not say loudly, "you may want to keep your dog away, my child bites!"

Thanks for everyone's replies. I don't agree that dogs should be muzzled and on a lead, they should be trained properly.

I would love it if the dog thing worked the picture thing but I don't think he'd understand that language :(

Seems the incident has set him back to square one though as today on the beach a family with a dog was quite far away from us playing in the sea, dog didn't even look at him, and he kicked off about it.

Dog owners should not allow their dogs to approach people they don't know.
Op one thing that always helped my children is this.You know how children love picking up sticks.Well we would always find a big one for the scared child at the start of the walk and call it their 'dog whacker'. Of course they never actually whacked a dog but it just gave them a bit of confidence

Haha sanc he would actually whack the dogs though! And probably me.

My son with ASD didn't like dogs (actually not so much dogs as fur). Until we got our own, now he's not remotely bothered so I guess it is just exposure.

DS2 (NT) used to be terrified of dogs and would always run, so they'd chase him ('with me shouting 'DS2 STAND STILL')

I don't think you should encourage petting dogs though, my dog really does not like strange children petting him, particularly when he's on his lead (which is a shame as he's a retriever so people expect him to love it and I am always having to watch that kids don't just approach him).

Maybe teach him to say 'sit' (as I think it's probably the most likely command to get a response from most dogs, and if they're sitting they're no leaping around like lunatics being scary). Or teach him to stand still.

My dog is often off lead but I don't really allow him to run up to children, or adults (he's young so sometimes gets it wrong), and I would be apologetic if he did. So I wouldn't listen to comments such as the one the dog owner made, she should have been apologising to you.

social story?

Or take a big distractor out with you (this would never have worked with us as we didn't have any!). Then when you see a dog in the distance out comes the distractor do his attention is taken away from the dogs.

I would perhaps work on breaking the focus if a dog is miles away and never going to be a threat (our days out are currently often made difficult by ds1's obsession with car handbrakes, so I spend a lot of time trying to break that focus iyswim - if the dogs are causing issues miles away it's similar to car handbreaks causing issues from a distance for ds1 iyswim).

You didn't do anything wrong, what can you do with a crying child? I think the woman was rude too. Forget about it. Our son used to be really scared too, to the point that walking in the road was preferable to walking past a dog. We ended up getting a dog ourselves and now he loves them

Yeah I see what you're saying. He wasn't so bad today. A dog weed on his football (after the owner told him to leave it and followed by a massively red faced and apologetic owner) and DS thought it was hilarious and the fact that it was a dog didn't bother him because the fact that it had weed on his football was so funny (apparently, gross child)

So maybe a tactic like that would work 'eww I hope it doesn't wee on us again' so he will find it funny... Except I don't want any owners to actually think we think dogs wee on things all the time haha