Was I unreasonable regarding young not with additional needs.

[Troubledwaters25]

I have named changed but a regular member.
I will give full story so I don’t drip feed and I am willing to be told I was in the wrong but I am say going over the incident on my head feeling bad that I may have caused upset.

DC2 is in hospital, where she has been for some time. She is very very vulnerable and in a cubicle for he down protection ( not only she due to covid )

In another room there was a boy who was in over night last night after after routine surgery. He has autism and is 9 ( mum had told me ) I should as she was also non verbal. he was very clearly unsettled and I absolutely had no issues with anything as I could see it was a difficult situation for him and them. This afternoon the boy entered my daughters cubicle ( she was sat on the chair at the time ) the parents followed him but didn’t seem to attempt to remove him from the room. He sat on daughters bed and the parents then sat on the floor ( no one was wearing masks ) the boy then got up to run out of our room and the mum stopped him, and told him to sit down and then settled him laying down on daughters bed. Both parents then remained in the room ( I felt a bit off and a bit akward ) I went to the desk to explain and the nurses came to explain to them they couldn’t be in the room.
The parents said it wasn’t there fault but he was calmer in here. The nurses explained they could help get him out and settled in his room. They asked me if I was ok with him being in there and I said No I’m sorry but you can’t all be in here. She said he likes the bed and I said I’m really sorry but there was not much I could do but they had to leave. Anyway they managed to get them out the room in the end but the mum was visibly quite upset with me.

I totally understood that they were trying to calm him and his was struggling and now I feeling very guilty !!?

@Etinox

Have just posted to be unpleasant? Why on earth would you make such a pointless comment to someone who is clearly having a difficult time

Of course you did nothing wrong. They were totally out of order because they put your dc at risk unnecessarily. In their defence, maybe they were stressed and not thinking straight, but they were entirely in the wrong.

@gindreams and op
I’m sorry, not meaning to be unpleasant and really asking for clarification that she was in the room initially.
But more importantly to reassure op that a very brisk, ‘you’re not allowed in here, you have to leave now’ is absolutely fine.

@FawnFrenchieMum

You were absolutely not wrong, I’d have been very upset at another family sitting on my vulnerable child’s bed.

I'd have been very upset at another family sitting on MY bed and I'm neither vulnerable nor a child.

@Etinox
A gracious response and I apologise if I was too harsh

op what a stressful situation

You were much more pleasant, polite and understanding than I would have been!

They were very wrong. I know how to deal with my autistic child and lying down and sympathising with them in someone else's space is not it.
They should have removed him and then done what needed to be done to calm him.

Sorry this happened to you. My son is autistic and I had to be on top of him constantly when he was younger. It was exhausting but that’s just how it is! I can’t bear people who think they can just let their child do what they want and say ‘oh they have additional needs.’ It’s an explanation but not an excuse.

Also, you’re busy enough dealing with your own child’s struggles. These parents weren’t concerned about her at all, so why should you feel guilty about their child.

YANBU at all. They seem to have assumed that their son’s needs are more important than your daughter’s.

Cheeky bloody parents! My son has autism I'd not dream of doing that. Yanbu op I'd have been like WTF

I can’t get over thinking you can go settle your child…. In someone else’s bed in hospital!! Whether or not there’s a pandemic or the child is autistic or the child whose bed it actually is is clinically vulnerable, that’s just so out of line! Add in the rest and Jesus wept. The parents sound like they would be busy snatching everyone else’s toys and food at play dates and handing them to their child and suggestion another boy give him the jumper they are wearing because don’t you know he’s autistic and that would help him.

To be fair it must be very hard to have a child with additional needs and the parents must have been at the end of their tether (that's the only thing I ca' think of to explain their frankly weird behaviour !)

But either way they were clearly in the wrong and I think you handled this situation as well as it could be.

YANBU at all

(You have my sympathy, having once to spend 2 hours immediately post-op with an autistic child belonging to a visitor from the next bed leaning against my bed and continually banging his back against it, apparently he did the banging to sooth himself . I had asked the child not to because every bang hurt me (in a lot of pain) to his credit he did try not to, but why the heck do you bring a child like that onto an adult ward to see a visitor, he clearly did not want to be there.)