To think that when people post "of course I don't mean those with special needs"

[BumptiousandBustly]

They are purely saying it to prevent a flaming, not because they ever consider that the actual people they are judging might have special needs or being dealing with kids with special needs?

I think it's very easy to make the disclaimer but I doubt many of the people who make really think about what it means to have sn/be the parent of a child with sn.

What pisses me off in equal amounts is the chucking in of 'PC'. As if you're just making a politically correct concession by acknowledging people with sn. It's not fucking PC to do this, it's just being a thoughtful person.

But y'know, as a pp has said, it's not on her radar as she doesn't have a child with sn

I think you have a point too, there probably are people that kind of pay lip service to thoughts of children with SN rather than actually thinking about it, but in general I think MNers are fairly clued up. I tend to just take posts at face value and think that if someone says they are not referring to a child with SN, then there is a hog chance that they really aren't referring to a child with SN.

Hog=high!

until i joined mn i had no idea so many children had sn,and by talking about this i have a better understanding more than what i had pre mn

thekidstule that is great to hear

Well what I have noticed on here is that no matter what you put, someone will always say "but my child has special needs" so therefore I am allowed to speak to the teacher every day/overly praise them in public for standing still/like Mr Tumble/insert whatever scenario you can think of etc etc etc...

Maybe that's the case though, gallifrey. Not sure what your point is?

Proudnscary, I'm much more aware of SN - and the range of different SNs - because of MN as well. And I've noticed people saying things I wouldn't have noticed before... and sometime I even say something back (depending on the situation). Don't know if it ever has any effect though.

Just saying...

Yes those pesky special needs people, crop up everywhere you look don't they

There is no winning on this subject, is there?

People used to not give SN any thought at all. Parents of children with SN understandably took offence. So people started thinking about it. And now they think about it to the extent where they explicitly say so in their posts.

And that's still not good enough.

Tell me OP, what would you like us to write? Or are we not allowed to discuss behaviour and parenting at all on this parenting website?

YABU. If you don't want people to make assumptions about your thoughts/motives (e.g. that you are a performance parent), don't do it to them (e.g. assume that people haven't REALLY THOUGHT about SN and are mentioning it flippantly).

Maybe we should all have to tick a box when starting a thread in AIBU: something like "YES I have considered that they might have special needs FFS" would probably do the trick.

I think people do consider SN when posting. For example, there was a boy on a flight I was on. Sheer unadulterated hell for him, his DM and everyone else on the flight. However, I am no expert but think he may have had an ASD (I did work in this field but cannot diagnose him). I might have posted an AIBU about him if I wasn't fairly sure that a) he had an ASD and b) his DM was working harder than I have ever seen a human working to try to help him through the flight.

Had I posted an AIBU about the fictitious child who behaved this way and I didn't think he had an ASD, I would doubtless have got loads of YABUs based on the fact that he might.