DS escorted home by the police - WTF?

[ReanimatedSGB]

He's 13 and a half. He hadn't done anything wrong (as they were at pains to assure me) but someone 'reported that he seemed to be lost and potentially vulnerable', so they had asked him where he lived, brought him home, asked for my name and phone number...

It's 5pm, on a lovely sunny afternoon. DS was coming home from school. He said he had been chatting to someone about trains and train stations (he is a transport nut) - and now this? WTF? I did say to the police that he likes transport and likes to watch the trams. I am not going to insist he stays indoors all the time - why should I?

I have never really had someone help me when I didn't need help no, especially not a policeman.
The only time would be as a teenager when a boy wanted to 'walk me home' from a party. But that wasn't because they thought I needed help...

Try being non NT and physically disabled. You get lots of offers of help which don't get me wrong it's appreciated and sometimes accepted gratefully but alongside that there are those who don't allow you to politely refuse, they either 'help' (by physically grabbing my chair and pushing me on one occasion) without so much as asking or ignore the refusal.

It removes your self agency and sometimes makes things more difficult than they were to start with.

Then there are those who take advantage of your perceived vulnerability to suit themselves (someone taking the brakes off my chair and shoving it out of the way of the aquarium tank I was looking at) or actively trying to exploit you (offering to input my PIN at a checkout and asking what my PIN is - like I was going to tell him ffs).

So I can relate to how SGB's DS feels. Helps that I know him, I suppose.

PS none of the above means I want people to stop offering help - I've tried to talk about this before and been told that I should be grateful for unwanted help and that I was a 'sour bitch' - that's not what I'm saying here.

You both seem to attract a lot of attention . I've literally never had a random man waltz up unsolicited and insist on carrying my bags or walking me home.
It's not really the everyday occurance you seem to think; maybe that's colouring your view and making it seem less odd than it actually is?

I have had plenty of people try to help me and need to be very firmly, sometimes physically, told no when they have seen me as in some way vulnerable or incapable. It's very annoying. As a child, strangers of all stripes telling me what to do, what I wanted, etc. As a young woman men offering to walk me home to "keep me safe" (!) as well as telling me (incorrectly) how to do my job, picking things up for me that didn't need moving, putting them down in unhelpful places, etc. When I had children there were lots of older women who would occasionally try and "help" me parent - sometimes I think because they thought they were being helpful, sometimes because they seemed to think there was only one way to parent and I wasn't doing it, sometimes a bit of both. All without asking or with asking but ignoring my response.

Not that it was a daily occurrence at any point, but over the many tens of thousands of hours I have spent in public there have been a few occasions when this sort of thing has happened.

Where on earth do you people live?

My childhood experiences were in a small town in the Midlands. Young adulthood in that same Midlands town, a northern city, London and the US and the motherhood experiences were in London. So a range of places. I have always spent a lot of time out of the home and on my own though and always engaged in the public sphere a lot. I suppose someone who is more of a homebody, more introverted or tended to stay with groups they know a lot would be less likely to encounter most of those scenarios.

Mmmm, I'm neither a homebody or an introvert, just don't attract strangers intent on interfering in my life
Seriously; imagining this only happens to people who don't skulk at home all day!

I have always spent a lot of time out of the home and on my own though and always engaged in the public sphere a lot. I suppose someone who is more of a homebody, more introverted or tended to stay with groups they know a lot would be less likely to encounter most of those scenarios
Er, no. Very much out and about and literally never happened to me or anyone I know.

I have always spent a lot of time out of the home and on my own though and always engaged in the public sphere a lot. I suppose someone who is more of a homebody, more introverted or tended to stay with groups they know a lot would be less likely to encounter most of those scenarios

Yeah...no. That's not it.

I can literally think of no situation where this COULD happen to me. Unless I was staggering around drunk (which never happens).

Unwanted advice and being hit on does not in any way equate to being escorted home by the police.

It's bizarre. I'm autistic yet even I can comprehend that just because something is outside of my own experience doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

I can't understand it, it doesn't exist

I can literally think of no situation where this COULD happen to me.

If you're that poor at thinking outside your own experience you probably shouldn't get involved in discussions about situations that you have not been involved in. You can add nothing to them and you seem keen to get nothing out of them.

So you just want to talk to yourself then?

Its not normal for such things to happen. If you are attracting that much attention, its not them, its you

Nice way of othering disability there.

I wouldn't call it a normal occurrence in the sense of it happening to me all the time. It is far more normal for people to be polite, listen to a refusal, actually identify when help is useful, etc. So "normal", no. but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. And given that the help that is offered, refused and provided anyway inevitably ends up being a nuisance, it seems unlikely that I am just silently crying out for that attention.

I don't think any of us who have been subjected to unwanted 'help' are claiming that it happens every day. But it does happen. Some people are just fucking meddlers - whether they are bored, whether they have read some inspirational shite about 'doing a daily kindness' (whether the recipient of the kindness likes it or not), whether they are a bit too invested in their image of themselves as a good person who 'isn't afraid to step up'... or whether they have slightly more dubious motives.

But most people who offer help and are not self-important arseholes will cheerfully accept 'I'm fine, thanks' and fuck off out of your hair.

There's a woman in a wheelchair who works in Sainsbury's. I only help her if she asks, eg to tap a button on the self checkout she can't reach, or when kids have pushed her wheelchair away when she's at the till. I don't want to offend.

Some BTP are just extremely helpful and may have thought that's what they were being/doing here.

I was recently at a station, looking at the boards as I figured out the best way to my end destination. I had my children with me. An officer offered help. I told him where I wanted to get to. He then gave me directions for walking there and told me how long it would take. Then he walked with my children and me as it route took us past a hostel that sometimes had less than pleasant characters hanging around outside.

I had been planning on jumping on the train one stop. So I suppose I could have seen this help as unnecessary interference and been annoyed. I didn't. I saw it as kind and helpful. My children thought it was fantastic to walk and chat to a police officer (they are too young to understand the difference between BTP and other types).

Acts of help and kindness should be received in the spirit they are given. Yes, sometimes that is a patronising, arrogant spirit. But more often or not than not it's just a person trying to help and be kind!!!

I've had a woman step in to 'help' me on the tram because I looked too young to be on it on my own. I was in my early twenties and was sat minding my own business, absolutely fine. Luckily there was no authority figure around for her to point me out to, and it was quite funny for me really, but she clearly felt proud of/excited by her good deed rather than feeling she'd interfered or that her risk assessment skills could use work. So yeah, it happens.

Who has othered disability, Bishop? Op hasn't claimed to be disabled?