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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

Called a cunt-wiu?

45 replies

NorrisToenail · 02/10/2017 19:22

I've namechanged.

Genuinely not sure here as I don't have much experience with people with disabilities tbh.

I work in a small shop and a woman and her son came in shortly before closing today. I remembered them having been in a few weeks ago and the boy (around 12 yo) was shockingly rude to his dm. Anyway, today he brought his bike in and the conversation went as follows.
Me-sorry, you'll have to take the bike outside.
Boy-no.
Me-you can't bring bikes in here, it needs to go out
B-it might get stolen
M-you could wait outside with it
B-no I'll just pick it up. (Picks bike up)

This went on for a few minutes, I got a little impatient with his refusal and said bike out now and opened the door. His dm then came over and said 'he has autism you know, there's no need to be rude to him' I explained I wasn't being rude then the boy said yes you were, you cunt. His dm said come on ds let's go.

I've a feeling there'll be a complaint against me now for being disabilist and I'm not sure if I could/should have handled it differently.

OP posts:

HappyGoFucky · 02/10/2017 20:14

My daughter has autism and goes to a school specifically for children with ASD. My daughter (and a lot of the other kids) are so fixated on rules she would never swear. Some of the other children swear like troopers.

They all know it’s not appropriate behaviour though.

I would make allowances for the fact that he potentially wasn’t really understanding you well and his mother is probably run into the ground but I don’t think you did anything unreasonable at all. He could just as easily have been a nasty little shit - just because he has autism doesn’t mean he’s incapable of being unpleasant knowingly either.

Either way you had no idea and didn’t do anything that would offend or upset me if I was on the receiving end

EJD277 · 02/10/2017 20:31

bialy I've seen maybe one post which could be classed as judgmental but I get where you're coming from.

With regards to my own personal experience, and it was not aimed as a personal slight against the mother in the OP, DD1 us 13 with an emotional age of 8 - one day I am going pass away, hopefully not for a long time, but its going to happen and most likely before DD1. Its bloody tough and tiring but what chance will she have as an adult negotiating the social world if I'm not helping her learn those social interactions now and I'm not there anymore to say to whoever she has autism.

BlackeyedSusan · 02/10/2017 22:48

some rules are non negotiable. no bikes in the shop. and preferably no swearing. (aware of tourettes)

BlackeyedSusan · 02/10/2017 22:49

bloody hard work enforcing those rules though.

TheHungryDonkey · 02/10/2017 23:32

Actually the impatient bike out now was not helpful. Reading it a second time, the mother was trying to deal with it. Sometimes that just takes time. In an ideal world the bike shouldn't have come into the shop. The child's logic was that if he picked it up the bike wasn't connecting with the shop.

I do know a child with ASD who absolutely would have said cunt in this situation. He learned it from a child at school calling him a cunt amongst other deligtful names. It's something the mother doesn't allow and works on but is not a magician.

It's marvellous that everyone else has a high functioning child whose autism clearly isn't as much of an impairment as this ones is. But it's a fact that some children with autism behave like this with shattered mothers who are doing their best.

bialystockandbloom · 03/10/2017 00:01

Thehungrydonkey spot on. Accommodating autism (or other neuro differences or LD) is fine, until it presents as unpleasant to the nt world. The quirky but beautifully mannered autistic child is fine, and allowed out in society, but the one who's stressed and swears - not so much.

I really do wonder when this kind of thread comes up (which is depressingly often) quite what the OP is trying to achieve. Is it really so puzzling that a child with autism should behave inappropriately? I mean I'm sure I wouldn't particularly like being called a cunt by a stranger but if I then learned it was by a 12yo with autism I'd just shrug and think "ah that's because he has autism", think myself lucky I wasn't that boy, and feel a bit of sympathy for that mother doing her best. The last thing I'd do would be to come on MN looking for validation.

JonSnowsWife · 03/10/2017 05:46

I suppose I'm wondering if I had have known about his autism beforehand would I have acted differently? I'm not sure

How on earth would you know before hand? What's the mother supposed to say upon entering? "sorry this may or may not go well, he's autistic"?

The suggestion of non verbal signs from a PP is a good idea. Literally every shop here has them and they cost pennies to print off and stick in the shop window.

Notevilstepmother · 03/10/2017 06:03

OP you did nothing wrong.

FrancisCrawford · 03/10/2017 06:11

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

MrsNeedsCoffee · 03/10/2017 06:14

OP, sounds like you were being reasonable.
This boy's mum should not have let him in with the bike.

However, maybe she was already on the receiving end of one too many meltdowns that day and she just hoped for the best when going into your shop.

Also, I'm obviously not sure if this is the case in your situation, but when my youngest is anything but completely happy, he loses the ability to talk, as well as other basic skills. This kid could have lost his filter in a situation that was probably upsetting for him. So try to have a bit of compassion and not judge too harshly.

No one deserves to be called a cunt when they're doing their job, but by knowing it was more than likely just this 12 year old coping with his own stress/emotions, you can hopefully not take it personally.

MrsNeedsCoffee · 03/10/2017 06:23

I would also consider that maybe the mum is kicking herself now for not apologising to you, but at the time, she may have been very stressed/embarrassed/in a hurry to prevent her ds having a meltdown.

I can't count the amount of times I've shut my mouth and said nothing when my DS was having a meltdown in public. Because if I'd said anything, I'd have burst into tears, or felt like they'd think I was pathetic for making "an excuse".

I have two children with autism. The eldest is "mild" and before the youngest came along, I'd have said "oh but he knows cunt is a bad word and wouldn't say it, so if you're autistic child says it, they are naughty."

Then my beautiful, clever youngest was born. And he isn't so "mild". It's harder for him than it is for anyone dealing with him though.

MrsNeedsCoffee · 03/10/2017 06:25

*your autistic child. Not you're. Damn!

TheKrakenSmith · 03/10/2017 06:48

I'm ASD with PDA, and I definitely would have responded the same way as that boy at that age. If he's anything like me, he may have been absolutely full of rage if he could not understand the rule or why he was being forced to do something that made no sense to him. I'm a bit better now, but I've still had a complete strop and been inconsolably angry when refused a cab, or something that seems silly in hindsight.
I'm not saying YABU, just trying to explain from my perspective how that may have affected me. I don't think you could have changed what you did.

RavingRoo · 03/10/2017 07:00

Next time he comes in give him a logical reason behind why you’re saying no to the bike. Most kids with autism mild enough to be able to ride a bike and go shopping will respond better to that.

JonSnowsWife · 03/10/2017 07:51

Next time he comes in give him a logical reason behind why you’re saying no to the bike

This.

DS (ASD & ADHD) needs explaining to him why he can't do x and y. It only takes a minute.

DS took something into school recently, it took me a good few minutes to convince and explain to him why he cant have x without it ending in a meltdown the teachers would be dealing with all day.

TheNaze73 · 03/10/2017 07:58

I think you were put in an awkward spot but, handled it well

Nikephorus · 03/10/2017 08:57

Sorry but any parent should be taking notice of what their child is doing and as soon as his mum saw the interaction she should have been over there explaining. OP was perfectly reasonable the whole time. I can see why the child didn't want to leave his bike outside but if his mum knows he struggles in those situations then she needs to be supporting him. And she would have known you don't take a bike into a shop. Everyone knows that. Autism explains why he didn't want to obey the request / instruction but doesn't mean that him swearing is acceptable and his mum should have known that.

Original poster

NorrisToenail · 03/10/2017 09:05

Next time he comes in give him a logical reason behind why you’re saying no to the bike
I will absolutely do this, thank you.

I realise now that the 'bike out now' wasn't helpful but this exchange had gone on for a while but then and I'll admit to getting impatient. His dm was there the whole time btw, she too was telling him to take it outside and he was saying no to her as well.

OP posts:

JonSnowsWife · 03/10/2017 09:26

I realise now that the 'bike out now' wasn't helpful but this exchange had gone on for a while but then and I'll admit to getting impatient. His dm was there the whole time btw, she too was telling him to take it outside and he was saying no to her as well.

OP. I once had an hour long battle with DS who usually wears odd socks, well on silly sock day at school, he wanted to wear a pair of matching socks, as that was 'silly/odd' to him and wearing his normal odd socks just wasn't right! 😂

Trust me we have short fuses too some days. Completely understandable.

Kleinzeit · 03/10/2017 09:28

Well, you didn't know, so you behaved pretty reasonably. You were not being rude to him, his mother was wrong about that. But if I had known he had autism I would have behaved differently because I would have been weighing up the risks of a full-blown meltdown involving a thrown bicycle in my shop and trying to keep everything super-calm and getting them served and gone as smoothly as possible. But I'm pessimistic that way. The fact that he had been so very rude to his mother would be a "red flag" to me that this was a child who needed careful handling. You were not at all unreasonable to get impatient but unfortunately sounding impatient doesn't always have the usual effect, it can escalate irrational behaviour so I wouldn't have tried it on a child or teen if I knew they had autism. It sounds as if he did not understand the rule and he was trying to do the right thing by lifting the bicycle up. Stating and explaining the rule might have helped though it might have been too late. I would probably have let it go but quietly told the mother something like "we don't have space for bicycles in the shop".

I could understand that her priority as a parent might be to get her DS out of the shop before anything worse happened and that might have been more important than apologising to you, which might have triggered a meltdown in itself. But I would not have accused you of rudeness, you were not rude.

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