To have pulled DS up on this?

[PartyRingsandPrincesses]

DS is 7 and has HFA/ASD.

After school we were at his friends house (I’m also friends with his friends mother).

The mother had put on some food for the DC - 3 altogether.

One of the food items was my DS favourite food - there were 10 small pieces to share and DS took 6 of the pieces leaving only 4 for the other two children to share .

I said to DS , you’ve taken nearly all the pieces and not left many for anyone else!

The mum said not to worry she will top up but I felt a bit

One of the other children wanted the last piece of something else but asked if any of the other children wanted it first .

My DS said yes and took the piece without even trying to negotiate or offering to the other child.

By the end I could see DS was getting more agitated (he finds people and sharing hard to cope with)

In the car on the way home he burst in to tears and said I’d embarrassed him.

I feel awful and I apologised and said I was trying to explain he shouldn’t take everything before others get a chance but next time I’ll tell him in private .

He was upset because he didn’t know .

I do find at parties etc he does take lots of different things and doesn’t always eat it all - I’m constantly reminding him to eat what’s on his plate first .

On the flip side , I do think he needs to be told , and I think he was so upset because he was just worn out and overwhelmed.

Does anyone else feel like this type of behaviour can be seen as grabby and selfish or is it just what DC do?

I know his ASD affects his understanding.

WIBU to have said something ?

You're absolutely right immortalmarble.

immortalmarble i don't think its about embarrassing him, nor is it an attack on disabled children. I also have ASD and its as difficult for me to understand why my own dad doesn't divide as it is for him to understnad why he should. I wasn't being naive about understanding the situation

Have you ever taught him rules of how to eat when other people are there?

If likes sums then this should appeal, plus the ASD side generally loves a rule.

I'm HFA and hate to share but also know da rulz so will get unreasonably cross by people not following them and taking too many slices of cake etc.

If you get him on side with 'you all take one piece each first, then go back' and 'it is rude to take the biggest slice' you may well find you have created a 7-yr-old buffet rule enforcer.

Having said that, the fact I remember these phrases so well, may be because my DM had to repeat them so many thousand times before she got anywhere Good luck!

It is all very well and good people listing what OP “should” have done, but there are so many socially different rules for social situations and explaining them all is just about impossible.

My son would take a question - “does anyone want the last sandwich/cake/chocolate” at face value. He is not a rude person. In fact, he is very very polite. But he wouldn’t understand that it wasn’t intended to be taken literally.

That’s where it is dealt with by the parent swooping in and a gentle but firm, ‘no, let Tom have that slice of cake, darling,’ job is done.

However what I am seeing here is an unpleasant collective glee that the disabled kid was put in his place. Won’t do that again, will he? Well, yes, he will. You don’t humiliate autism out of somebody. You send their often already precarious self esteem down yet another notch, you add another layer of confusion and despair, but you don’t add any real understanding about the many bizarre social niceties we have.

In short, shaming people isn’t a very effective or pleasant teaching method.

And not all people with autism are obsessed with and driven by rules.

There is one word that dominates our experience with autism. Anxiety.

Have a little think about how that might have happened.

I find it mortifying to discover I have done something wrong, unfair and impolite, and i feel this way even when I know I didn't mean to do it. Maybe he feels the same and being corrected about it in public became just too much of a guilt burden? My DD tends to react the same way so I tend to correct her in private and start by pointing out she did nothing wrong, it was a mistake and this is what we do instead.

Oh bless him. My brother has Aspergers, and absolutely has to be taught this sort of thing explicitly. Whenever food was set out to share, there would be a discreet nudge of 'buffet skills mate, buffet skills' from our stepdad, who took on the task!

I would reassure him that it's ok to make mistakes when we don't know, it's just that they're a way to learn. Then get practicing those bufffet skills mate, buffet skills. We had lots of meals with the food in the middle to serve yourself, so dbro got the hang of taking a fair portion and asking before hoovering up the last of anything, in a kind and safe environment.

He is also still only young - many a child would hoover their favourite food up. It's just he might need a helping hand in learning not to, where an NT child might just pick it up by themselves.

Ah bless him.

It's hard-all else aside, he's 7 & there was his favourite food!

I'm not sure that many 7yr olds would have been mentally calculating!

He left some for the others-was everything else divided out equally meaning that he would in fact have had more than the others?

Is it unusual to take more of what you like & less/none of what you're not keen on/don't like?

I think all small children can get a bit overwhelmed at 'shared' food -asd or otherwise. We've had parties where DN and DS have grabbed more than their fair share of the best bits for fear of 'missing out'.

My 6 year old does this tbh. No autism or SN. Just greedy!

I tell him to share and he can have another once everyone has helped themselves. He’s ok with it now but sometimes pushes his luck.

I’ve had a long chat with him and I apologised again and explained that adults make mistakes too .

He was more focused on something else at the friends house which had also upset him so I really think he was so upset because he was overwhelmed rather than my pulling him up

It's a bit of a stupid rule, though, to ask anyone if they'd like the last slice of something, if you want it.
Why does their want trump your want?

In fact the only logical reason for asking, is if you're going to divide the last slice.

I think yanbu to say to him, but I suspect the other child who asked if anyone wanted the last slice is unusually polite for that age. Often kids will fall on the food like a pack of wolves!

It is, but it is generally accepted as a polite bit of nonsense - a bit like apologising when someone barges into you and they apologise

I’ve no issue with teaching children to observe social norms and niceties. Yes, they are silly, but they are also a language of their own.

However, the glee with which some posters have swooped down here is pretty nauseating. Imagine a child with a severe visual impairment at a buffet who couldn’t see the food. Would you say, ‘huh, well, we’ll teach her a lesson!’ or try to help?

Apply that to a child with autism and you’re getting it.

None of us know what could happen in our future. Your next baby could have autism. Your grandchild could. And they might one day grow up to hate themselves as much as my son does, because hey, he’s got to learn.

Well, he’s learned all right.

immortalmarble I’m not sure if I’ve interpreted your post right but just to be clear , I didn’t shame my son.

I pointed out what he had actually done.

His perception was that he felt embarrassed whereas my NT children wouldn’t have thought more of it .

My last pp mentions something else which upset him (this was also “trivial” but not to him ) and that’s why I think he was oversensitive to my comment.

OP...

You obviously didn't set out to embarrass your DS..
I have a DS with ADHD suspected PDA.. Sometimes he gets things wrong. I still need to attempt to teach him the social rules..Sometimes he gets it sometimes he doesn't.. It doesn't mean I don't have to try.

You have been given some good advice on here of ways that may help your DS. You need to be kind to yourself . You never meant to embarrass your DS just guide him.

Immortal I’m ASD too. Embarrassment does help you remember the lesson. It might not be the best way, but it happened and it can’t be undone and it’s rude/tactless of you to go on about how much OP has upset her son as though she did it deliberately. He will get over it. Stop projecting your anxiety onto her son.

As for rules, many of us find rules extremely helpful to navigate tricky social situations. Divide food by people is a sensible and helpful rule.

If he understands enough to feel embarrassed, I can't believe he doesn't understand enough to stop doing it

Well, no. That’s the whole point. His additional needs don’t make him stupid, just social situations are harder to understand. That comment really is quite ignorant.

Well, I would have divided it. Makes sense to me.

Just read the update, it sound like it was the other thing that upset him anyway.

Was he very hungry? We struggle at parties because ds1 (5) only eats sausages. When there is party food out/a buffet he will pile his plate with cocktail sausages and nothing else. Now i feed him before we go anywhere. Even if we are going somewhere for dinner/lunch. It takes a lot of the stress out of it for him as he has a big appetite despite his extremely limited choice of food, so he doesn't panic that he will have to go hungry.

I actually meant the ‘he has got to learn’ type comments from some others, OP, worry not

it is all a learning curve

It is very much a learning curve !

One I usually tend to mess up with

OP, you’ve been given lots of good advice and support on this thread. I’m sorry if this has been mentioned elsewhere, and I missed it, but one ‘good’ thing to come out of your intervention is to the benefit of the other children there. If you hadn’t said anything, the fact that your child was taking more than his share and no adult commented would have seemed most unfair. (FYI my son has autism/severe learning disability)

He is 7, that + ASD = potential for a meltdown in this situation. I actually think he did well. I think you did well too. You saw what he was doing, pointed it out. You also picked up that he was struggling to cope.

He then got upset and you managed a calm chat about it, now you are working out strategies to avoid it happening again. You will work on it with him, he will improve and next time will be better.

I can really see so much positive in this. You both did good!