To HATE the way my friends educate their children?

[Littlefrenchmummy]

I love reading things on mumsnet, especially this section. Today I was confronted with a situation that happens so often in my life and really gets me angry... You ladies are very honest so tell me if Im being a bitch or if you would feel the same.

Today my husband and I caught up with some old friends, like us they have a 4 year old boy. From the minute we met to when we left he trantrumed. He cried for EVERYTHING and not once was disciplined. (By that I dont mean punched in the face btw, I just mean told to behave).
He cried because he could only use his bike and not his scooter (sat on the pavement and screamed for 10 mins while we waited. Eventually parents gave in).
He cried because we crossed the road before him.
He cried because we were talking.
He cried because he couldn't get juice at the restaurant even though his parents were ordering him the juice.
He stood on tables, rode his scooter in the restaurant, shouted constantly.
He wouldn't speak to my son, only watch cartoons on his parents phone, wouldn't share the crayons to draw even though he didn't want to draw.
Kicked his brothers pram while he was sleeping. Etc etc... And all his parents were saying was "OH NO, if you do this again we are going to get cross!"

I just can't bare it. Its so horrible to sit through this, you can't have a conversation, my son isn't having fun, people at the restaurant are staring. I never want to hang out with my friends again. I love them but I hate their child, or more exactly I hate the way they educate him and turn him into complete dick head.

I have so many friends like them... so so many. Some worse, some less, but the result is the same: hanging out with them is painful. People who think you dont need to educate your children, that they have 'difficult' kid who cry a lot. They think its normal that if their child screams their name in the middle of a conversation, 10x times during 1 conversation, they should always stop and say yes darling instead of teaching them not to interrupt and wait while adults are talking.

I know some children are more difficult than others and that disorders exist. One of my son's is difficult and has a terrible character, still he doesn't behave like this. If I let him he would but I dont. I also have friends who have children with disorders, but in the cases Im talking about, its just complete lack of education.

Im loosing so many friends over this. I stop answering calls and make excuses not to hang out with them because I can't tell them how to educate their children. Who can tell a mother in the face that you dont like their child's behaviour? How awkward would that be?

We have made such a cut in our friends and now I am so picky. it sucks !
But why aren't people educating their children to behave?

Am I being unreasonable to feel this way or do other parents feel like this?

Anoint is saying others aren't important Rabbit.

farewell asked our take on the child's behaviour and I said it wasn't naughtiness.

You are making this into something it isn't and are being bloody unfair IMO.

Anoint=no one. No idea where that came from.

Anyway im off to properly watch 24 hours in A and E.

No interest in having my..asked for..opinion condemned and twisted for hours as per usual Rabbit.

farewell I don't think that anyone can answer you really because there is no way to tell from your posts what sorts of issues this child has and whether or not her reaction is reasonable.

It does sound as if he is very difficult to manage and perhaps she just doesn't have the strategies to cope with him. She may step in initially just because she feels she must for show, knowing that it isn't going to help but she'll get judged for not doing something. She might just hope that this time it will work, knowing that if she goes in heavy all hell will break loose. She might just be absolutely exhausted and just not have the internal resources to be more interventional. It's also possible that she has some social communication issues of her own, not at all unusual for parents to be assessed when their children present.

She might well not have been given much in the way of support or strategies to manage him (goodness knows many parents struggle to manage neuerotypical children, so finding a child with autism difficult is hardly surprising). Resources for parents are scarce and getting more so, as are resources for children - I wonder whether this child is getting the support he needs at school, or indeed if he is in the right environment at all - school can be a very stressful place for some children.

She might also be a not very effective parent of course, there is no reason to think that parents who have children with SNs are likely to be better or worse parents than anyone else.

Sometimes people on the spectrum do not use correct facial expressions so what appeared as a smirk may not have been meant as one. My son can be smiling and distressed at the same time.

farewellfigure - Magic shows tended to be problematic for my two boys. One unexpected event after another can be exciting for most children as they will enjoy wondering what on earth will happen next. If you are a child who likes/needs to know what will happen next, they can be unsettling and upsetting.

None of us know the boy you refer to. We can only make guesses as to why he acted as he did. The rhythm of the sword banging may have been soothing. It may have been a case of the child attempting to have some control over this series of unpredictable events. Equally he may just have had no idea what was going on and was bored.

If he was likely to become violent, the mother may have decided that it was safer for everyone around him if she just let him be. She might not have wanted to attempt to hoik a kicking and screaming 4yr-old over her shoulder while a roomful of people watched and potentially judged. She may have been feeling wiped out after another night with no sleep. We can really only guess.

My son was a nightmare at Magic shows and would either get very stressed and start making repetitive noises or if the magician was particularly slow/obvious he would shout out how he was going the magic

farewellfigure The mother might have decided that after her threat failed, her choices were to precipitate a long violent tantrum with a four year old who was holding a rubber sword in the middle of a group of other kids, or to back off and let him get on with it and no-one at the party gets hurt. I couldn’t safely remove my DS from a room by the time he was four and “taking things out of his hand” was high on his long list of triggers.

Though I personally would not have even tried a threat. On the one hand the rule that you don’t use threats unless you can follow through applies in spades, and on the other hand the mere fact of threatening anything at all can make bad behaviour worse. But the important thing to understand is that unless you know how to adapt ordinary parenting strategies for a child with autism, and for that individual child’s needs as well, they can easily make matters a whole lot worse.

And yes, kids with ASCs often have facial expressions that don’t match their feelings. I remember that smirk – for me it was the red flag that said “I am in a blind stupid panic” and my response was usually to get him to fuck out of there before anyone got hurt. And never mind the social niceties or performance parenting. Realistically, if letting the kid bang the sword helped keep him calm then that might be as good as it gets. Later on his mother may quietly decide that magic shows are not a good idea for him.

I did attend a lot of ASC-specific behaviour management & communication sessions, and I also went to heavyweight parenting classes, and I did learn how best to manage my DS. But it’s not as if all that was offered to me the instant he got the diagnosis, and it’s not as if I got good at it instantly. It took years.

I’m not saying all this applies to the kid but I am saying that you have no idea what applies and what doesn’t. The kid's mother may not know all the strategies yet but she knows more than you do and her parenting doesn’t require your seal of approval. It does require your respect.