To say being late all the time isn't a trait you are just rude

[username4s]

AIBU to thinks it's not funny. it's plain rude and shows a lack of respect for the other person?

I often see/hear about people who are always late and it's as if it's just a funny trait of theirs. I don't agree it's shows a lack of care for other peoples time. Are these same people always late for work/school runs/other important commitments or do they suddenly manage to organise themselves and be on time.

@Ionlydomassiveones

“EastWestWhosBest

Ionlydomassiveones
I hate the wasted time that is ‘being early’ - so I always aim for ‘on time’. Sometimes shit happens and on time becomes late. Unless it’s a really important thing or there are serious consequences to being late I frankly don’t give a shit.

So if you leave a friend sat in a pub or the like waiting for you then you don’t give a shit? Do you even have the grace to apologise?”

Who said anything about leaving a friend in a pub? I said I aim to be on time! I don’t give a shit about being late for many things but I didn’t say anything about treating my friends disrespectfully! This is you extrapolating and your prejudice and preciousness showing.

But most times aiming for "on time" means building in a contingency for things outside your control. If you'd rather not do that because you have a horror of accidentally being early; then you're happy to let the person you're meeting waste the time instead 🤷🏻‍♀️

I'm rarely late if it's just me, but trying to get DH and DS ready and out on time is a nightmare. Doing anything early is worst as DH struggles in the morning due to a health condition, so not completely his fault, we obviously try to work round that, but sometimes you have no choice.

@PearlyRising

This is just so ridiculous.

You don't have to be NT to add 12+25+6 and then figure out what time you need to leave.

Bringing neurodiversity in to a thread about lateness is just pointlessly argumentative nonsense.

I take it you''ve never been assessed for ADHD?

It's literally one of the screening questions the psychiatrist asked me.

Well done for being disablist though.

I have ADHD, OCD and anxiety. I am not able or willing to accept constant lateness.

We are meeting at 11am, somewhere with 1 hour parking. I'll be there at 10.55am. If you show up 40 minutes late then we will only have 15 minutes together.

The needs of the late people do not trump my needs.

And is anyone 'naturally' on time? For the majority of us it's a case considering routes, bus times, traffic, possible hold ups, thinking I need to be there by x so, factoring getting there, I must leave by y. It takes a degree of thinking and planning.

@Nightlystroll

I can't believe this discussion has gone down an NT/ not NT path.

It went down this path because the third poster in implied that if someone were not NT, it should be acceptable if they were late. But if you are NT, it would not be.

Ah right, well that is nonsense. I don't think there is any real evidence that neuro diverse people are always late. In my experience it's the opposite. A tendency towards being early would be more expected.

But the vast majority of people who are late are just late because they didn't leave the house on time.

But every second thread on mumsnet descends in to who can be the most outraged by innocent remarks now.

@bonbonours

Sometimes (not alwways) lateness is down to busy-ness. For example my kids attend an extra curricular they love and the day they do it is the only day/time they can do it. It takes half an hour to drive there. I finish work and get home only an hour before that and we have to eat in that time. Even on days when I'm super organized and make dinner in advance so it only needs reheating, we struggle to leave on time so end up in rushing to get there. If there's the slightest bit of traffic or any problem on the way we are late. I don't have any leeway in my day to "just allow ten minutes extra time."

But if your lateness affects the other people in that scenario / club, (it might not, of course) then that's not OK.

You have to accept sometimes you can't do things that you don't have time to do.

My late friend wants to do things she's invited to or included in but whereas I would say I can't because DH won't get home in time to stay with the kids, she'll say her DH won't be in time but she'll figure something out. And never actually does.

So we creep into the cinema / theatre late or have to apologise to restaurants because we're 30 mins late for our booking.

And being on the phone and waving at us through the window isn't a symptom of anything other than dismissive rudeness!

NT people need to realise that our minds don't play by the same rules as yours.

@wheresmymojo interesting assumption in that response to me. My friend does not have ADD, she is NT. I am not.
Sometimes, some people are just rude.

@PearlyRising

This is just so ridiculous.

You don't have to be NT to add 12+25+6 and then figure out what time you need to leave.

Bringing neurodiversity in to a thread about lateness is just pointlessly argumentative nonsense.

Yep. My neuro diversity means I need to be on time. Funnily enough, ADHD which apparently makes you late always!

@Ionlydomassiveones

I hate the wasted time that is ‘being early’ - so I always aim for ‘on time’. Sometimes shit happens and on time becomes late. Unless it’s a really important thing or there are serious consequences to being late I frankly don’t give a shit.

But you being late = wasted time for the person you are making sit/stand there waiting for you. Them having their time wasted isn't serious enough for you to bother to plan for the inevitable 'shit happens' scenario?

@BreadInCaptivity

• a parent of a non NT child who gets pissed off how often those conditions are used as an excuse for such behaviour.

Which then feeds into a narrative of low expectations for such children.

Anyone posting on here by definition is reasonably high functioning and as such is capable of looking into coping strategies to manage their diagnosis.*

What you said was:

• You're pissed off at those of us who aren't NT who you perceive to be using our conditions as an excuse (nice)

• That we are responsible for feeding into a narrative of low expectations for DC like yours (really nice...how dare we?)

• That we must be high functioning because we post on MN (...really?) and so any issues we have as a result of our condition are our own fault as we obviously have failed to put coping strategies in place (....words fail me)

And you think my post was nasty?

Read your post again and imagine it's your son talking about something he still finds challenging who has to read it as a response...

But every second thread on mumsnet descends in to who can be the most outraged by innocent remarks now.

I'm convinced there are people who scroll through threads actively searching for something to be fauxraged about.

You don't have to be NT to add 12+25+6 and then figure out what time you need to leave.

It's literally one of the screening questions the psychiatrist asked me.

Not literally, surely?

@Knittingupastorm

NT people need to realise that our minds don't play by the same rules as yours.

@wheresmymojo interesting assumption in that response to me. My friend does not have ADD, she is NT. I am not.
Sometimes, some people are just rude.

Again how do you know she's NT?

Again, all of my friends and colleagues have thought I'm NT until I'm 39.

Was my lateness a few months ago rude because people didn't know?

@GreyhoundG1rl

You don't have to be NT to add 12+25+6 and then figure out what time you need to leave.

It's literally one of the screening questions the psychiatrist asked me.

Not literally, surely?

Gosh, what a smart answer.

No, I wasn't asked that particular sum.

Yes, I was asked - very specifically - to give detailed examples of time management in relation to day to day life.

What motivated you to make that post? Are you also disablist?

I'm always late. I'm always bloody late, for everything, work, appointments meetings, because I have ADHD and I just don't have any ability to feel time. I can pop upstairs to use the toilet on my way out of the house and half an hour will go. It isn't that I believe I am more important than anyone else. I don't. It is just something I can't do. I have arranged my life so it doesn't matter so much, I rarely socialise partly because I get overwhelmingly anxious about being late and thought to be rude, and those close to me know to expect my timings to be on the approximate side. Appointments are incredibly stressful because without support I am invariably late and then have to deal with being angry with myself for keeping someone waiting, which makes me feel awful.

Really pisses me off when people say I could address it if I tried harder. It is a disability. Part of my brain is not developed properly which makes things neurotypcal people can easily do impossible for me. Believe me I try hard. Saying 'just set an alarm that either won't be noticed because of hyperfocus on something else or auditory processing difference, 'just check the clock' when you've forgotten the damn clock exists, 'just leave earlier ' when you have genuinely really tried to, is ableist shite, as is the assumption that it is possible to manage a condition when it suits you.

A common workplace reasonable adjustment for ADHD is flexible starting times . I have a window after my starting time to allow for me to be late. If it was avoidable that would not be a possibility.

I hate these threads. I, and many others who share my neurology, are hyper aware of all the bits of it that piss everyone else off. Ironically people with ADHD are also hyper sensitive to criticism so would be going out of their way to NOT do things to annoy others only to be late because of executive dysfunction and time blindness. I so appreciate that for people with more standard neurology the idea of not being able to manage time is alien but it is real. Maybe try to have some understanding that ,certainly in some circumstances it is possible to be unable to be on time without it being rudeness. Just because you don't experience something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

So yes. In at least 5% of adults, lateness isn't rudeness. It isn't a trait however, it is a symptom of a wider disability..

@PearlyRising

This is just so ridiculous.

You don't have to be NT to add 12+25+6 and then figure out what time you need to leave.

Bringing neurodiversity in to a thread about lateness is just pointlessly argumentative nonsense.

It's one of the main symptoms that would raise whether an adult woman had ADD actually.

Other things are; missing appointments, not being able to keep up with finances/bills, disorganisation, missing birthdays, not replying to messages, difficulty keeping up with chores, losing things all the time, and more.

Can you imagine how many times we get told through life that we're rude, lazy, scatty, selfish, etc?

And there's around 1.75m - 3.2m of us in the UK with ADHD or ADD, many undiagnosed, particularly adult women.

So yes, with that many of us there's every chance that the rude, scatty, lazy, selfish person you know has ADD and just doesn't know it.

Well your friends won't have know it then, will they mojo, but they must have sussed out by now that you repeatedly struggle to get places on time and probably do cut you some slack, say a time and actually arrive after that themselves, stuff like that. But lateness is widely regarded as rude, if people don't have an information as to why someone keeps turning up late, they'll get pissed off, not think, perhaps x is not neurotypical.

@GreyhoundG1rl

No, I wasn't asked that particular sum. Oh, don't be so ridiculous . I didn't think it was that exact sum. A diagnosis of ADHD does not preclude the ability to do simple arithmetic, does it?

What are you talking about?

This is a thread about lateness.

I responded to a post about lateness explaining that questions about lateness were part of the screening process for my ADHD, which was diagnosed by a psychiatrist.

Now you are banging on about simple arithmetic which is absolutely beside the point but appears to be fueling your ableist-supremacist narrative.

[quote wheresmymojo]@BreadInCaptivity

• a parent of a non NT child who gets pissed off how often those conditions are used as an excuse for such behaviour.

Which then feeds into a narrative of low expectations for such children.

Anyone posting on here by definition is reasonably high functioning and as such is capable of looking into coping strategies to manage their diagnosis.*

What you said was:

• You're pissed off at those of us who aren't NT who you perceive to be using our conditions as an excuse (nice)

• That we are responsible for feeding into a narrative of low expectations for DC like yours (really nice...how dare we?)

• That we must be high functioning because we post on MN (...really?) and so any issues we have as a result of our condition are our own fault as we obviously have failed to put coping strategies in place (....words fail me)

And you think my post was nasty?

Read your post again and imagine it's your son talking about something he still finds challenging who has to read it as a response...[/quote]

All your post has done above is spin your own narrative on what I actually posted.

I would also be perfectly happy having this conversation with DS and will do so later tonight showing him your post when he comes back home (on time) from his friends house.

@AntiSocialDistancer

*My point wasnt to say that because she "has" ADHD and dyslexia that's why she's bad at that. She'd an appalling time keeper regardless.

She not only has terrible problems with executive function, she's also really bad at maths. They combine to make her consistently late.*

My point was that cod psychology and diagnosis of others is dangerous and absolutely not the way to win an argument and is totally ridiculous from a scientific and psychological point of view - but hey you do you (and your mum)

Lateness is annoying trait in anybody, but you don't have to get into whether someone is NT or not. Just give them back the treatment they gave you.

What is really noticeable is that people who are routinely late get used to this accommodation. So now I just leave them hanging, or turn up similarly late. Strangely, NT or not, they seem not to like it.

@GreyhoundG1rl

No, I wasn't asked that particular sum. Oh, don't be so ridiculous . I didn't think it was that exact sum. A diagnosis of ADHD does not preclude the ability to do simple arithmetic, does it?

Lots of us have explained several times that we don't have issues with simple sums but that not being able to deal with time like a NT person is literally one of the issues caused by ADD.

So your statement is actually pretty shitty.

I mean you're basically saying that we're making our disability up?

When people talk about stigma about MH issues and neuro-diversity we are talking about people like you.