to expect that my DP can get on with his work in clients house, without having to put up with their children

[lucyellensmum]

or more to the point, not having to worry about 1 year olds hurting themselves on his tools because their lazy arse middle class parents cannot get off their lazy arses and occupy them whilst they have the builders in!

[mylittleimps]

we have been completely renovating our house (and now finished [grin[ ) so my ds's are used to having tools around and know they are completely out of bounds. if we have someone in doing the work, i ensure breakfast is out of the way, boys ready and out of the way before work starts, and they are not allowed to be in the area of work at all, they may ask to look but i accompany them.

when the hallways were being decorated and it would have been impossible not to be in the way i took the ds's out for the days the men were in. nightmare for me in terms of giving them a cooked dinner each evening!

i accept a chop saws etc need to be turned off at source but as for leaving tools around, they can't be putting tools back in the van/out of reach inbetween uses etc, windows and doors need to be open. anyone who suggests otherwise obviously hasn't a clue about this sort of work! if you need to get someone in then you have to accept it's not your home for that time, it's a work site. (end of day it's different regarding not leaving anything dangerous lying about without agreement)

i would suggest this OP is about lack of common sense/understanding on the parent's part. i can understand why it is so frustrating for your DP.

i understand the difficulties if you have a child with SN but i still think you have a responsibility to occupy the child to allow a workman to get on with it and if you are mid job you camn;t just down tools and work round one person when there are other jobs to go to (and i would rather have a workman that overruns than cuts corners)

i know that some trades people aren't worthy of that title but the ones that are have difficult and demanding jobs.

[gess]

I think this sentence "i understand the difficulties if you have a child with SN but i still think you have a responsibility to occupy the child " shows that you have very little understanding of severe autism.

occupy the child? Do you know how many thousands of pounds we have spent on therapy to try and teach ds1 to be occupied? It just doesn't work like that. That's so far from how it works...... The last time workmen overlapped they came to look at our roof (unanounced) I let them up and locked them out. DS1 screamed and clawed at the door, hit himself and attacked me until they came out.

People do not work on our house unless they come at a time when ds1 is out. Full stop. If they don't want the job fine, if they do, they work in school hours only.

[lucyellensmum]

i have to agree with gess, the comment re occupying SN children was thoughtless. My original post reffered to a lazy cow with a perfectly normal child, whom she seems to let do as he pleases and dps comes home incredulous as to the lack of apparent care.

I don't have any experience of autism but appreciate that having such disturbance as building in the house is a huge deal and would need to be discussed in detail with the tradesperson and would imagine that there are some that in all honesty would find it difficult to accomodate, actually gess i think your website idea is a good one.

[gess]

Even the guy who came to measure up for blinds. He wanted to come at 4pm so I said to come at 4.15 as ds1 would be working with his therapist by then and might not know he was in the house. The therapist had to cancel, and my god. The guy was tyring to measure blinds, ds1 was trying to shove him and his bag out of the door (and he's strong- aged 8- god knows what he'll be like at 18), I was trying to have conversation with the man about the different types and neither of us could hear ourselves speak because of the screaming. That was someone measuring, not trying to do anything with tools, or paint, or windows.

When I said to him "the only thing is you'll have to come during school hours, when ds1 isn't here", he said 'absolutely no problem at all".

I don;t have anywhere else that ds1 can go. Funnily enough there aren't that many people who can handle him, and respite services are being shut down, plus I have 2 other children and cannot manage to take all 3 out alone.

[gess]

I have a review website lucyellensmum (autism products) - so adding a database of workmen etc would be quite easy. And probably useful. The guys who did our fence recently were great. Actually I did semi review them here, diidn't mention them by name, but someone did email me to ask who did it, so I guess its the sort of information that would be useful for people.

I can imagine that mothers who let their kids just get in the way are annoying. DS3 is a bit of a nightmare but I just take him out if he's being irritating & getting in the way.

[mylittleimps]

my comment wasn't insensitive (or meant to be so i'm sorry if it came across as such)- i wasn't writing it wrt to people coming unnannounced - that is completely unacceptable - and by occupying i meant by them being out of the house/way at the arranged work times and that could mean at school - i hadn't meantioned anything about arranging with workmen when to come, if you ask workmen to come when your child is going to be at school then that is you taking responsibility if they choose to ignore you and come at their own timings then it is not your fault if they didn't get any easy time working (they're unlikley to do that twice!) i was just making the point about it being difficult mid job to down tools - ie it's not the workmen being difficult (i've never met one that hangs around unnecessarily!)

the comment i made about the work over running was just in my experience and not aimed at SN children households where the needs are obviously different (perhaps badly grouped with other comments) but as a number of you say there are workmen out there with experience and therefore empathy to this and it makes sense to use them.

[SofiaAmes]

I'm sure that back when dh was doing building work for someone other than me , if you had booked him and explained that you had a sn child and therefore specific requirements about times, noises, etc. he would go out of his way to be helpful. In fact he worked in a lot of households that had non-sn children and would often come back telling me stories about how he let the kids help him. But would also come home with stories about nightmare kids whose parents didn't look after them and let them get away with murder.

[Peachy]

We had a lady come round for a five minute chat last wek about feeding the cats whilst we're away (even the cat is SN LOL soc ant go to a cattery). In that time ds1 managed a huge meltdown, atatcked one sibling and had to be restrained during discussions. I can honestly say I ahve no idea what ds3 (the mroe severe, albeit more passive one) would have done- fortunately he was with the CM, but if you're trying to restrain one child you just simply dont ahve arms and legs for another.

And LOL Lucyellensmum- glad I came back to you posts after they were both there or i'd have been handinga round popcorn