I am not a teachable moment

[Worrysaboutalot]

TLTR
AIBU I am not a teachable moment, just because I am in a wheelchair.

LONG VERSION
I was in a shoe shop with my child today. A mother with a 3yo was sat across from us. I see them talking and the mother is repeatedly telling her young child to walk over to me.Saying to her "Go ask her."

This makes me very uncomfortable and I know what is going to happen next.

Eventually the young child walks over and asks why I am in a wheelchair. I smile nicely and tell the little girl in a quiet voice, "I just got sick". The girl returns to the mother.

The mother shouts back over to me across the room, what did you tell my daughter? I repeated my answer. The entitled mother replies Is that all the answer I am going to get?

Yes, I said.

She started muttering about how I should want to talk to her daughter and tell her about my chair. She really thought I would be honoured to explain my personal medical details in the middle of a shop!

I replied. No, I am here shoe shopping with my daughter. Luckily the shoes arrived at that moment and my daughter and me left the shop.

I left feeling very upset and being asked to explain my existence, when all I wanted was to pick up school shoes with my child.

Taking into account the following...

1. Parents should answer their kids questions themselves.

Q.Mummy, why is that lady in a wheelchair? A. That lady's legs probably don't work as well as yours or she might be sick.

1. Think about how rude and potentially upsetting it is to ask for a strangers medical information or for details of a tragic accident. Which is what is actually being asked for.

1. Consider how asking me questions in public affect my children, who hear how people talk to me. One of my children is already frightened I will die soon. Because of all the hospital visits, all my falls, my pain and getting the wheelchair. She has nightmares and clings to me. Every nosey person asking me questions upsets her. Luckily I wasn't with that particular child today.

1. What is the point of the question? What would you do with the answer, if I explained all my personal medical information to you? Absolutely nothing, so you are interrupting my life for no reason. Upsetting me just to entertain your curiosity.

1. For this entitled mother it was a single short conversation, probably already forgotten.

For me it is every day, where ever I go, whatever I do. I get looks, questions and/or actions about my wheelchair. And I have decades of this nonsense ahead of me.

Sigh. I am just a person. My chair is just a fancier version of crutches. I am just me.

AIBU to live my life without being constantly asked to be a teachable moment?

Ps. I am always polite to the kids but I am starting to think a more sweary response might be appropriate for the constant intrusive questions from adults. Surely they should know better?

I think the idea was that your small child is asking you loudly what’s wrong with that lady or similar and you brightly say ‘I don’t know, why not ask her!’

I would never do this, and the woman was weird and rude. But you see this sort of advice a lot, and also disabled people saying that they want people to talk to them and ask questions. So it's one of those situations where maybe you can't win.

I can't help but think people now think they have a right to pry into all sorts of things that don't concern them. Maybe it's the internet. My mother and every other mother of that generation would have had a fit if their child had asked let alone sending them over. It is just ill mannered.

Did you not use it as a teaching moment yourself - getting your child to ask that woman how she got to be such an ignorant twat?

What an absolute idiot, I can't understand why she would think that was OK.

I have gently handed questions from bouncy small children who's parents are trying to catch them to drag them away. I understand and remember my kids at that age.

Today was upsetting, as the mother was clearly 'performance parenting' (as a PP said) and her child clearly didn't want to talk to me either. I felt bad for her child. She was shy and sweet.

I'm really sorry, OP, what an utter fanny of a woman.

I cannot imagine asking some one why were they in a wheelchair. Good God! How appalling! It’s intrusive and rude.

@Whelmed

I've seen some posts from disabled people on social media saying that best thing to do is to just let the children ask them questions.

Not excusing any rude behaviour of course.

Then locate one of these disabled people on social media and ask them intrusive questions. Leave me out of it!

Next time your response needs to be “I need it as a result of being nosey asking questions that were none of my business”

@Itonlytakesonetree

Yanbu. When DD was little she was invited to a birthday party so the birthday girl "would get over her fear of disableds". Unfortunately I didn't know this until DD had attended, otherwise I'd have gone apeshit. My poor little girl was so excited to go to her first (and only) party and the fucking parents just wanted her to be the bloody entertainment.

This is so awful, I don't know what to say. I do hope your DD has luck avoiding such horrible people in the future

@chocolateisavegetable

Did you not use it as a teaching moment yourself - getting your child to ask that woman how she got to be such an ignorant twat?

If only!

I'm so sorry, OP. I can't imagine how awful that must have been for you.

Some people are so bloody selfish and ignorant.

Next response "Ask your mum how she got to be so rude?"

I really don't mind if little kids ask of their own accord, though they will get a dumbed down 'because it hurts to walk' or 'because I fall down a lot' type answer.

But that is because little children don't know what is or is not appropriate and whilst asking strangers personal questions is not appropriate, I would rather they were not scared of people in wheelchairs, which is often the alternative outcome.

However that is worlds apart from a parent SENDING their child to ask, rather than explaining it would be rude to ask, and offering a simple answer themselves... and to double down and DEMAND a better/more detailed answer from you is fucking outrageous.

I would have told her child something ridiculous like a shark chewed them off in the swimming pool or a T-rex stole them in the night and replaced them with bits of string.

Parents - tell your kids that there are lots of reasons people might be in a wheelchair, their legs may not work well, they may be in pain, they might fall over if they try to stand up, or that they might be able to stand up or walk a little but not enough for shopping/going to the park.

If you could avoid teaching children that ALL wheelchair users are paraplegic/cannot walk at all ever - that'd be grand. There are more ambulatory wheelchair users than there are para/quadraplegics!

I once had a little (8 or 9 so not tiny) boy stare at me and then berate me loudly, because he saw me stand to reach something in a shop. Proper glared at me as I sat down and said 'YOU DON'T NEED THAT CHAIR... YOU CAN STAND UP!'... whilst his male parent stood there looking proudly on!

If I had been that child my mum would have told me that it's rude to ask.
I can't believe she actually encouraged her to be rude, terrible parenting. I'd have thrown it right back at her and told her she was being rude.

@Ovenaffray

I get asked why I use crutches.

My standard answer is it was a great white shark attack. (It wasn’t)

I’m going to steal that. 😂

Honestly aren’t people incredibly nosey and rude?

@Isthisprivate

Next time your response needs to be “I need it as a result of being nosey asking questions that were none of my business”

I wish I had the nerve to do something like this. I have a visual processing disorder. You can't tell by looking at me. My eyes 'look' normal. I can see fine (with glasses). The error is in my brain's perception of where my eyes say objects are located. I go in the disabled toilets because things are more spaced out visually obvious I can judge the distances better. But usually I don't because I don't want to freaking explain the whole thing every time and explain why yes-I-can-see-yes-I-can-read-but-no-I-can't-reliably-judge-the-distances-between-objects-or-the-distances-between-objects-and-myself-yes-I-drop-things-yes-I-walk-into-things-please-let-me-pee-now

Rude, it goes beyond that, ignorant and entitled.

I'd say 'I don't bother thinking about that, it's the least interesting thing about me! Let me tell you all about my collection of knitted tea cosies with a Kremlin theme...'

YADNBU the woman was unbelievably rude.

My own grandad told me he had chopped his leg off accidentally while chopping wood. I was 15 before I learned that he had had polio as a child. (I think that was taking MYOB to extremes, though.)

Unfortunately some people only see your chair, they don't see you.

They want to look progressive but actually come out looking regressive. They don't have any entitlement over your response OP. You give away only as much as you are comfortable with. Some people (and I see this doing my transport job) think they are entitled to your medical history. They are not.

The child clearly didn't want to ask. I think the mother did want to ask and forced her child to ask instead. Poor girl.

Yanbu. It's one thing to tolerate a nosy 2 or 3 year old who marches over and asks a blunt question before mum/dad has time to intervene, another thing entirely for the parent to fucking send them over to interrogate you.

I've been in this situation OP and always just answered my kids as you recommend, by saying something along the lines of "some peoples legs don't work so well".

So sorry for your experience OP. There are knobs everywhere.

@Whelmed

I've seen some posts from disabled people on social media saying that best thing to do is to just let the children ask them questions.

Not excusing any rude behaviour of course.

I have also read this quite a few times although often on US based sites.

I think it may be something that gets lost in translation between countries.
Also people assuming that because some disabled people want to be approached all disabled people do.

Nothing excuses her being rude to you though.

I can just imagine that mother, OP, having met others like them. They assume that the whole world revolves around them and their (to them) admirable determination to educate their child, preferably in public.

As other people have said, I've read that some disabled people or people with a disabled child would prefer someone to politely ask why that person/their child looked different/was in a wheelchair rather than stare or whisper. So I think there's maybe mixed messages going on, and maybe that is why the woman encouraged the child to ask. However her behaviour after your response to the child was jaw droppingly rude! What the hell! YANBU at all.

I personally would not ask, or encourage my child to ask, as it seems a strange, random and rude thing to ask someone that you don't know and have never met before.

I agree with you OP. It’s inappropriate for people to expect you to explain your medical condition to strangers.

It shows that people don’t understand that they aren’t entitled to that information. You were right to handle it the way that you did and the woman was an asshole.