Random child hit my baby

[bluehatbaby]

Name changed. Don't usually post this kind of thing. Really angry. I was waiting in the queue at shopping centre toilets. My 8 month old son was crying and I was (still am) super stressed out as was bursting for a wee and had hysterical child to contend with. Woman stood next to me with child I would say was about 5. She kept saying 'naughty baby naughty baby' - I ignored. Thought she was quite cute. She then turned and smacked my son on the top of his head, hard, at which point he screamed the fucking place down. The woman grabbed her daughter's arm and said nothing to her. I in all fairness went a bit nuts and told her to control her child. She snapped at me 'she's fucking autistic you stupid cow' and dragged her daughter by her hood out of the toilets.

I literally don't know how to feel about it. Pissed off. Ds has now cried himself to sleep and has a red mark on his head.

AIBU to ask mn for some words of wisdom as I'm not very calm and just want to cry.

@CherryPavlova you should be ashamed of yourself posting that.

Autistic people have enough to cope with in our daily lives (yes I’m autistic too) without people spreading misinformation and accusing us of having psychopathic tendencies.

Usually autistic people only get triggered by noises that hurt their ears or other forms of overload.

Every day I have another reason to see that many people are STILL ignorant twats about autism.

poster roundbottomflask We’ll have to disagree. Children with disabilities are done a huge disservice if we dismiss all their behaviours as something that can’t be helped. It is stigmatising of disabled people when unchecked behaviours are condoned and not addressed.
A child with ASD traits in full meltdown might be out of control and need to wait until they’d finished before apologising but a child standing in line winding themselves up is not. It could have been deflected. A baby being hit should not be dismissed as ‘this is something autistic children do’ so it’s fine.

It doesn't raise any interesting questions at all, Cherry.

OK, perhaps one - "What the fuck?"

‘It is stigmatising of disabled people when unchecked behaviours are condoned and not addressed. ‘

It IS stigmatising of disabled people when others suggest that autistic children grow up to be arsonists with absolutely no understanding of the condition whatsoever

MooninMantra it’s not misinformation; it’s published by the Royal College. Are we afraid of evidence?
I don’t recall suggesting anyone had psychiatric tendencies. I think I said autistic tendencies.
If one reads the article it is clear that people with ASD traits commit fewer offences overall but that when people with the label commit offences they tend to be related to their autistic behaviour and can be quite serious.
I would hold form and ask do we think serious crime committed by someone who is labelled autistic should go unsanctioned?

That autocorrected. It should read psychopathic not psychiatric tendencies. You are choosing to misinterpret; nobody is suggesting this at all. I am asking a question based on RCPsych information.

Your posts, Cherry have F all to do with a 5 year old autistic child who lashed out due to sensory overload.

You are trying to stigmatise autistic people - stop being disingenuous about it.

CherryPavlova yet again repeating something over and over is NOT necessarily indicative of winding herself up

Echolalia; the unsolicited repeating of vocalisation made by another person.

Im hiding this thread. It has made me so angry and I’m pregnant & don’t need the stress.

MNHQ are you going to allow yet another nasty thread which enables the bashing of autistic people?

If people are going to use this thread to talk about irrelevant crap then so am I.

Hey, Moomin I am currently eating a waffle, have you had breakfast yet?

'If one reads the article it is clear that people with ASD traits commit fewer offences overall but that when people with the label commit offences they tend to be related to their autistic behaviour and can be quite serious.
I would hold form and ask do we think serious crime committed by someone who is labelled autistic should go unsanctioned?'

This is irrelevant to the OP which is about a child behaving aggressively, but hardly committing a 'serious crime'. The point at which we treat people with a neurological or psychiatric disorder as responsible for criminal acts may be an interesting one but is not relevant to this thread (or to threads about learning disability, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, dementia or any of the other disorders where this issue could rarely come up). Bringing it up here is implying that autism in general/ behavioural problems in a young child with a developmental disorder are closely related to criminality. They are not.

Would people think an adult with ASD traits who killed people because of an arson attack due to an obsession with fire should be forgiven without sanction?

No but I would expect their circumstances to be taken into account and for them to be placed in a secure support facility rather a general prison.

when people with the label

It is not a label.

I sincerely hope you don't work with anyone with disabilities, let alone people with ASD.

I ALSO HAVE STRAWBERRIES.

Echolalia; the unsolicited repeating of vocalisation made by another person.

DS went through an obsession with The Ramones and would chant "beat on the brat" over and over, doesn't mean he was about to beat on anyone. He would also observe the world around him in a sort of stream of consciousness running monologue "car .... Cash point... Flower shop.... Lady in a blue coat .... That man dropped rubbish, that's naughty, he's meant to pick that up...", etc

😥😥😥 I understand a little bit more now how hard it must be to navigate life as an autistic person. Hats off if this is the minefield people have to face on a daily basis.

'I do feel bad for the other Child as she will learn/mimic her mums behaviour and use that as a frame of reference to workout what is socially acceptable or not Also by doing that her mum had just taught her to use her autism as an excuse.'

The problem for many autistic people is precisely that they find it very difficult to use other people's behaviour as a frame of reference to work out what is socially acceptable. They are more likely to learn explicit rules and sometimes apply them rigidly; or to imitate actions without understanding; or especially with able autistic people to form their own principles and apply them, sometimes being thereby more 'moral' than others who are more influenced by conventions. And most autistic people are unlikely even to have the concept of 'using it as an excuse'. (1) Autistic people are usually poor at lying and manipulation, because of their difficulties in predicting other people's mental states; (2) There would be little point in many cases in 'using it as an excuse' as many people are more intolerant of someone with a developmental disorder than of a child seen as currently being naughty.

Fair play to you sticking with the thread bluehatbaby, a lot of posters wouldn't have been back.
The lack of awareness on ASD on this thread is astounding though.

As soon as I read that the little girl kept repeating herself, I thought the girl may have autism. Yes the mum should have apologised but as for a telling off that would trigger full meltdown mode as others have already said.
I have actually been in this situation, my son who has ASD hit a baby sat in a pram whilst we were in queue. There were no warning signs that I was aware of at the time, although thinking back, it was busy, the hum of people chatting away, the stress of the queue may have been a bit overwhelming. However, I could not have predicted that he would randomly hit the baby beside us. I apologised and quickly got my son out of there, tbh I was mortified.
Thinking back to when my son was 5 years old, going to a shopping centre was a very very difficult experience, it still is now but back then it was really very difficult. We have had filthy looks, people staring, kids mimicking my sons noises & behaviour and people very obviously talking about us. As well as having to deal with challenging behaviour the feeling you are being judged by others can be so overwhelming. I have burst into tears whilst out and about on many occasions when my son was young.
We don't know how this mums day had been so far and perhaps she reacted differently simply because of the stress of the day. Who knows, eh?
Some of the comments on here are very saddening to read as parent of a child with autism. Some people really have no idea.

Autism is a Medically diagnosed condition as are things like Down Syndrome, Epilepsy, Dementia, a broken wrist, Bipolar etc etc. Would you call all other medical conditions a label?

A label is something you see on a jar of jam, tins of beans, on an envelope, even something you put on your luggage before going on holiday.

Autism is NOT a label.

'Having "some traits" doesn't mean a person is on the spectrum. And there's no such thing as being on the spectrum somewhere either, it's not like a line that runs from NT, having traits, being "mildly autistic" and high functioning to severely autistic at the other end. People who meet the triad of impairments are on the autistic spectrum, and only them.'

This is a little controversial. Quite a few people do think that there is a spectrum, and that, for example, non-autistic close relatives of people with autism often show autistic-like traits to a greater extent than people with no autistic relatives. See Simon Baron-Cohen's 'Autism-Spectrum Quotient' test for example. I am not endorsing any particular theory on the matter; just saying that the controversy exists.

Of course, you have to meet specific criteria to have an autism diagnosis, and it is not appropriate to give armchair diagnoses of oneself or others as 'a bit autistic', due to some eccentricity, social awkwardness, or sensitivity to noise or other sensory issues. But that does not mean that one cannot have some degree of autistic-like characteristics without being autistic.

sorry for you op. i would take the baby for check up and be careful from now on around children.

@SylviaAndSidney I woke up this morning and thought about how the red mark on my son's head is gone, and he's happily playing downstairs. The mum I encountered yesterday may also be having a lovely morning but she's probably going to encounter dozens if not hundreds of difficult situations with her daughter. She was a total arse towards me but am seeing now how hard things must be for her. This thread has made me feel pretty sad. I don't know much about ASD so haven't been able to chip in too much but am going to do my research now. It's clearly important.

Autistic children cannot be disciplined the same way that NT children can

When I was at junior school looking back there were obviously a couple of autistic children in my class but they were disciplined the same as everyone else. They were made to conform the same as everyone else. Obviously it was bloody hard for them but they towed the line the same as everyone else.
Is it doing them a disservice, as
Cherry says not to discipline them?
How come there weren't autistic kids in the supermarkets years ago having meltdowns like you see now? Genuine question, I'm not being goady, just trying to understand.

TBH the sooner professionals (medical and educational) stop referring to Autism as a label the better.

We have heard doctors, Paediatric consultants, Physio's, teachers, Specialist teaching advisors, MABS, Camhs, Educational Psychologist all use the word label around us.

Every single time i said that "Autism is not a label" and they soon found the correct words to use in front of me.

usernameuser maybe because Autistic children were not in the same place at the same time as you, or maybe because they were often in institutions or specialist residential schools and only came home for the summer holidays, or maybe because they were kept at home out of sight because their parents were ashamed of them.