At a family bbq today to celebrate my little sisters birthday. Just her, her dp, our parents, my family (me, dh and 2 dd's) and my brothers family (him, dw and ds).
My eldest dd (nearly 7) has asd and anxiety disorder so normally struggles a little when all the family are at my mams-it's not that big a place and she gets quite overwhelmed but she was coping really quite well today, speaking to people, playing with people, eating and joining in.
Anyway she was playing a game with our youngest (her sister), she's can be quite bossy when she plays and she likes things to be certain ways due to her autism but they were playing well together (her sister is quite good at not putting up with her bossiness and helps her to learn to play).
My db decided to join in the game, which incidently was a 'mums and dads' game. Youngest dd said to him 'I'm the mum, your the dad' and then my eldest piped up 'I'm Judy' and then repeated it several times as she does in all her games.
Anyway db clicked on she was repeating herself and started saying 'no I'm Judy' for a laugh knowing it would wind my dd up...which it did as you can only have one 'judy' in the game (again autism makes her a stickler for having things 'just so').
At first she came to me for clarification 'mum I'm Judy aren't i?' Yes darling 'but uncle p said he is Judy but I am aren't i?' Yes darling - cue me explaining to db that she likes to be that particular character and please don't wind her up as it upsets her. He retorted that you can have more than one character with the same name and proceded to try to explain to dd why you can have more than one person with the same name-which was completely lost on her as she was in game mode so just didn't have a clue what he was saying.
He carried this on for 15+ minutes, his dw told him to stop winding her up, my dm told her to stop winding her up and he carried on until the point where my dd shouted at him in frustration 'no I'm Judy! Not you you can't be Judy!'...I could tell by this point that she was on the edge of going into a meltdown-caused by him winding her up so much, you could visibly see how frustrated she was!
But instead of backing off he shouted back at her 'no I'm Judy!' And started laughing at her reacting to him again.
I snapped at this point, told dd to stop shouting and come to calm down as we don't speak to people as she was (she did stop shouting but started pacing as she was too worked up to sit), and I turned to him and told him quite harshly to 'enough now stop winding her up, she's got autism for crying out loud she doesn't understand that your tryjng to joke and is getting upset and I'm the one who is going to be left to deal with her melting down all because you think it's funny'
He then shouted at me 'what you think your the only one who knows about autism? I can work with those kids to you know!'
To which I told him I know my daughter and that he was upsetting her and again reintegrated that he was pushing her into a meltdown and that it was me who has to deal with it not him.
He then got stroppy, told both kids to go away and leave him alone as he wasn't allowed to play with them anymore and went and sat at the back of the garden shooing them away everytime they tried to speak to him for the next 30+ minutes despite both my children getting upset with this.
Was I wrong? Is it a life lesson that dd has to learn? I know obviously she does have to learn that not everything has to be her way or the way it is in her head and we work hard to do that with her but she cannot help how OCD she is about how she plays and her sister in this incidence was happy for her to take her normal role in this game (her sister does say no to her being Judy sometime and dd will give the role to youngest sometimes too so she is learning a bit about give and take) I felt uncomfortable by what he was doing tho, almost like watching someone be bullied but then his reaction made me feel like I was wrong (plus the fact no one even backed me up).
Wibu?