To wonder how some people can lack total awareness when it comes to their children and behaviour

[Driftingthoughlife]

On holiday and tonight was the kids club talent show which they have been rehearsing for today and making costumes
Most of the kids are singing or dancing
During the show this little girl starts running and screaming on the dance floor which totally drowns the little boy on stage. At this point you can see people looking round wondering who this child belongs to.
The next child does a card trick- Cue the little girl running up on stage and grabbing the cards of the table and flinging them. At this point the kids club rep steps on stage and asked for parents of the little girl to come and get her- finally a women stand up and goes and gets her with a right grumpy face on
During the next act the little girls starts running up on the dance floor again screaming while a little girl is singing and the mum starts filming her running around!!!!

The girl on stage ends up in tears and again the rep steps in and asks that noise is kept down. The Mum storms into the dancefloor sweeps up the little girls and walks out glaring at the rep. We think that is the end of that
Two acts later the mum is back without the little girls and starts filming a boy on stage which we assume is her son. Half way through she actually turns round to the the table behind her and gives a massive “SHUSH” to them.
At this point everyone is looking round at each other some look annoyed some look amused at her behaviour.

After her son has finished she sits down and the next act which is 2 girls doing gymnastics starts. Suddenly the little girl runs back in with a guy chasing her (think it is dad) runs up to girls on the dance floor doing gymnastics and collides with one of the girls coming out of a cartwheel.
The Mum storms up grabs the little girl who is in tears storms back stage and comes out dragging her son with one hand and her daughter with the other shouting about the shit organisation and she will be complaining that her daughter got hurt. She leaves dragging the kids with the husband following sheeply behind.
Everyone is kind of stunned into silence until the rep who had come on stage to check the girl who had been doing the cartwheel was ok said “on with the show and the 2 girls started again”
Guess who we will be avoiding down by the pool tomorrow?

Sadly lots of parents like this exist. They’re the same sort of parent who will complain at teachers for daring to tell their child off and will endlessly make excuses for their shit behaviour. I don’t know why or how they’re so entitled and plainly shit but there you go.

Bumbalaya

Maybe the little girl had autism and this was the first break the parents have had in years?”

What’s that got to do with anything? Doesn’t give the family the right to mess up everyone else’s evening, who may also be having their first hard earned break in years for many reasons.

As a parent to two on the spectrum, one who has multiple other problems, I would never have allowed my children to behave this way. They would have been taken off to a calm space at the first hint of being disruptive.

We had a really interesting speaker from our autism advocacy charity only last week. She has autism herself and a child with autism btw, she said she is always mystified the way challenging behaviour comes up at her talks. She pointed out that challenging behaviour is not part of autism diagnosis. Behaviour is a form of communication so challenging behaviour most often relates to a child's/adults sensory needs not being met in the particular environment they are in and in the absence of other more socially acceptable means of communication being possible for the autistic person or being heard by the NTs around them challenging behaviours can emerge. Very interesting. My DS with ASD can exhibit challenging behaviour from time to time. We see that as our cue to figure out what is going on with him.

I suppose how that relates to the OP is that the mother was being a total pain by not addressing her DDs challenging behaviours by taking her to a more appropriate environment if that was the issue or for just not bloody parenting her child if that was the issue.

I’m so sorry to have caused offence, my SDD has autism and I know it can affect your mental health and sometimes the battles you pick are different to those that you’d pick otherwise but yes, I agree its hugely remiss to allow this little girl to do this either way.

I suppose I wanted to offer another point of view so that OP could consider the possible fragile mental health and/or stress levels of the parent before maybe confronting and it spoiling her holiday.

Obviously, the parents may have just been disrespectful alcoholics not even parenting when they should’ve been.

Again, I’m sorry if I’ve offended any parents of children with autism.
💐

A family member has 4 kids, one with autism.

They would ALL run riot at every family event, screaming, fighting, destroying things etc.

They ruined many a wedding, Christmas, BBQ, birthdays etc. It had fuck all to do with autism, the parents just sat back and allowed it to happen!

I remember a similar situation with a toddler running around on the stage and getting under the feet of performers - except the child was on reins and the mum was just following happily behind him!

The autism excuse is very selective on MN. Naughty children automatically have autism. Naughty mils or naughty dhs never have autism.

Anyway, thoroughly agree with poster upthread who spoke of "MUM GOGGLES" . What a brilliant term! I remember being with dsis years ago in a stately home and dn was dodging under the rope and sitting in all the ancient chairs and picking up the priceless ceramics. Dsis was smiling like the Madonna and looking round to exchange knowing parenting glances with appreciative visitors [cringe] .

Sounds like a classic case of, 'My child must be allowed to behave exactly as it likes, no matter where it happens to be, and sod everyone else.'
Unfortunately not as rare as it should be.

My son has autism and adhd and would NEVER be allowed to behave like that. It really infuriates me when people say things like maybe the child has autism as it just adds to the negativity around autism and judgements parents of autistic children already face.

My son didn’t get invited by his granny for years to family cinema trips of theatre shows partly because “he is autistic so won’t he able to cope or sit”. He sits way better than most of his neurotypical cousins do at places like that. He has also been subjected to his neurotypical cousin hitting him, kicking him and destroying his Lego as has his brother (who also go shoved into a fridge, doors slammed in his face and screamed at). The pareng of this child can not see how badly her child behaves so we just avoid them now. Some kids are simply badly behaved as there parents refuse to see that there behaviour is unacceptable or if they do stop them doing it.

Some parents and grandparents are crap at parenting.

I was once in an Ed's diner where a DGC was standing on the table stomping on chips. The GP seemed so proud.

There is a carvery near me, it has a family area that leads out to the playground, it also has an adults only area, the carvery is between the two.

On one memorable day a toddler wandered from the family area of the adults only taking off his shitty nappy in the process as he looked for his parents who were sitting in the adults only part.

And yes I was wearing my judgy pants that day.

Bored children and crappy parenting....nothing else to understand..sadly!

I agree with the parent goggles.

With the kids being off, I’ve seen this sort of behaviour almost everywhere. I’ve been very close to shouting out “get your f-ing kids” to some especially to those standing around having a chat while their kids run amok. I have two small ones under 5, 4 (who will be assessed for autism this summer) and 18 mo and I don’t allow them to behave in such a manner.

@IrmaFayLear smiling like the Madonna

I work in a school and this kind of parenting is becoming more prevalent. So many parents are so precious about their children, and will make complaints if you so much as look at their precious offspring the wrong way. In my experience it is a British thing as we live in an area with a large Eastern European community, and we always say how different say for example the Polish kids are to the Brits. The difference is staggering, both in general behaviour and manners (so, so polite).

I think this generalisation of British, Polish or whatever nationality children is purely anecdotal. I could tell you the absolute opposite from personal experiences in 2 different towns. The first one, my mum was a teaching assistant at a primary school with a large and growing number of Eastern European's. There was a lot that were very badly behaved, very very rude and disrespectful.

The village we live in now has a small number of Polish families that attend the local primary. My kids tell me some stories of how terribly behaved they are and I've seen for myself that a few of them are just left to their own devices and are rude and bullying. I challenged one of them (11 years old) after her was bullying my DS and his friends last summer. All I did is ask him to stop following them around swearing and move away from my garden. He was defiant, rude and obnoxious and then accused me of being racist.

In most cases it is definitely poor parenting. No matter what your nationality or background.

I think generally there are a fair amount of English people who have a massively inflated opinion of their importance

By and large, British children are unruly and undisciplined. It's a well known fact.

Can we stop with the goady inaccurate xenophobic comments please?

My nephew would be like this.

He’s not autistic, he’s just a little shit.

Entirely my sister’s fault who is utterly useless when it comes to discipline or anything to do with him that doesn’t involve ignoring him or posting photos of him on Instagram.

I agree that having a child on the spectrum is no excuse for lazy parenting. My nephew is autistic and quite often when we are out with them he can be very disruptive. My brother and his wife are not good at dealing with it and pretty much let him run riot regardless of how much he is disrupting or interfering with other people. Never having had a SN child myself I thought that was just how things had to be. However a few months ago DB and his wife went on a much needed break and his granny and grandad (SILs parents, not mine) were in charge. We met them at a play pub for lunch one day and he was a different child. The GP were affectionate with him but firm about sitting up at the table etc. When he got upset or noisy one of them would take him away from the group and stay with him until he was calmer. It was a revelation.

In one way it was probably easier for the GP to be so firm and patient as they only had to do it for a weekend. It isn’t their life day in and day out as it is for parents but it did show me that a lot of the behaviour that I thought was an inevitable part of his condition was actually also influenced by DB’s weak boundaries.

Hate parents like this, there seems to be loads of them too.

Not quite the same thing but similar. When DD was maybe 2, we took her to softplay. This lad, about 7 ish kept pushing her over. Parents just sat there beaming. It conitnued so I told staff, they basically said the woman had paid for their child the same as I had

I kept moving DD away from him but he would follow her. Mum still saying nothing. I eventually asked her is she was going to control her child and she gave me a mouthful about how it was softplay and DD wouldn't actually get hurt. Then went back to just beaming as he crashed into numerous kids on purpose, when he was too old to be in that area wnyway! (was for under 5s) He then BIT her on the shoulder. So I told him off. And suddenly she could get off her arse and storm over to tell me 'noone tells my child off but me'. I told her if she had sorted it then I wouldn't have to be involved as..he wouldn't have done it. She asked if I was calling her a bad mother and I said basically yes. Eventually staff chucked her out as she started on another mum after the mum also had to tell the kid off after he punched her child in the face. She swung for this woman though, I suspect she didn't do that to me as I was a lot taller, and a lot lager in general than this woman.

Some parents are just really really shit. I don't care if this sounds judgemental or not., Learn to control your kids, or don't take them out.

DD has Autism also (we obviously did not know when she was 2 though, and it changes nothing as she did nothing wrong), so I don't really take that as an excuse. Yes, it can make it harder for her to behave, but if she was assaulting children, or ruining something completely for others (as in the OP) I would remove her. Its easy enough done. Yeah sometimes it seems harsh as often she cannot control her behaviour, but there is no reason at all for everyone else to be disadvantaged, simply ass my child is Autistic. Definitely no reason to condone violence either or just sit laughing while she pushes kids over.

Unfortunately, when the badly behaved kids are grown up, they will have problems getting jobs as they probably won't have relevent qualifications, however this will be everyone else's fault. I had relations like this, one child is now in low paid employment and I think the other is unemployed ............

I’ve only read to the point where someone Bumbalya said autism. Can I just say my brother has autism and as a family we would never allow him to do that. It is not autism it is lazy parenting. They should have got off there arse promptly and left. End of. If my children ever start behaving inappropriately then they are warned straight away. If they continue then we leave - usually with them shouting no. I apologise on the way out to onlookers.

I know I'm generalising (and I hope it's not an offensive generalisation), but I've yet to come across a parent of an autistic child who had that kind of entitled "it's my kid's right to do what they like in public" attitude

Also this.

Seeing as the siblings are not behaving like this I think there is a good chance that additional needs of some sort are involved but the parents are not managing it well. A family members child with autism would do this if they were allowed to be in that situation and often did that sort of thing at school because there weren't sufficient staff to give them the support they needed.

In response to another poster, behaviours that challenge are part of some peoples autism, most frequently those with severe learning difficulties as well and it can be a major challenge to eliminate them. My own son has a lot of professional support around this and behaviours that challenge still happen when he is feeling unwell or tired etc. They don't generally happen in public because we keep him at home in that situation but some distressed behaviour still happen. It is also difficult because he goes from coping to exploding in seconds whereas some children have a slower more obvious build up.