Crying over French attitude to my autistic son

[Luckyloubytwo]

We are in France at the moment and having a mostly wonderful time. DS 9 has asd but is usually fairly easy going, quiet, and you wouldn't notice he was different to other children.

However, yesterday and today he has had a huge meltdown in public. When this happens in the UK it is difficult but people generally are understanding and mimd their own business. However, here it seems to bring the whole town to a standstill. People will just stop in their tracks and stare. Today we were in a busy area and it seemed to bring everyone to a halt. We all got very upset back at the car and I just can't stop crying.

I am just feeling so upset at the attitude of the French people towards our son.

Sorry Jourdain but it’s not xenophobic for people to point out facts. There is plenty of literature and studies on the French attitude to disability as well as people describing their own experiences. It may be helpful for people to be forewarned about these attitudes before they get upset like the OP and her family.

Go to a French park and all you can hear is “ Maxence ça suffit ”. “Charlotte non” “ Amandine on rentre a la maison” etc

The French do not tolerate bad behaviour from their or other kids - I see nothing wrong with that. It takes a village to raise a child.

As to our attitudes to those who are different incl autism/Asperger's - there is a great deal of knowledge about this and to imply otherwise is disingenuous. However I have seen similar behaviour and attitudes in UK and other European supermarkets when children have had meltdowns.

People do stare - to see if they can help, to see if the child is coming to harm and to understand the situation. The language barrier you are experiencing now may have increased your anxiety but it may be that people are looking for signs to see if they can help parents and/or child. This is normal behaviour really for all nationalities.

Equally depending where you are there may be lots of generally intolerant tourists - hot and bothered and just trying to get round unfamiliar surroundings themselves.

Please try not to take it personally but please don't judge a whole nation on one experience either.

I was In France last month with my daughter who is autistic and aged 4. The first day we were beside a crowded pool and she was in a meltdown, upset, scared, crying and wanted to leave. Of course there were no sunbeds so i was on my knees down to her level on the concrete poolside. I managed to calm her down and get her in the shallow pool. 30 mins later a young French guy, father of small kid himself searched the pool for us and told me he was leaving and keeping his sun lounger for us. He seemed in his 20s so it may be a generational thing.

it is super-rude to get into a lift, and not say hello, for example, whereas someone would probably hit the alarm bell if you did that in London.

🤣🤣 I once said hello to someone on the Tube in London as we were the only 2 in the carriage and it felt weird and very unYorkshire of me not to say hello. He moved to another carriage.

Some good may have come from their outrageous behaviour at the 2000 Paralympic Games then.

www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/othersports/article-2459172/Spanish-basketball-team-pretended-disabled-win-Paralympic-gold-guilty-fraud.html

I’m now wondering if the reason they stare at me and my family is because we’re a mixed race family? Holiday there often as we have family there. The (British) family we have there will not have one iota of criticism against the French though so we’d never learn about the intolerance from them.

The French expect their children to behave in public and comply eg faire la bise even as little kids. I never made dd do this. She doesn’t live in France and I would have had to break her spirit to follow dh’s culture and expectations, which I was absolutely not prepared to do.

When in a French supermarket, teen dd was being insolent and I told her off. Some people stared (as is normal over there) and she bolshily said ‘people are looking, aren’t you embarrassed’, to which I replied “it’s very normal to tell your child off in public over here and very much expected if you misbehave so no, I’m not at all embarrassed”. In the U.K., I’d have been more likely to let it go.

I find what I said to dd largely true and people with your ds aren’t seeing a child with autism, they’re seeing one misbehaving. They won’t necessarily be judging you for not telling your ds off though. They could also be curious as much as eye rolling.

The other thing to remember is that the French largely care very much less about being judged by others so do try to remember that so you can channel this energy.

Oh yes, probably - there aren't any mixed-race people in France!

Every single autistic or non typical child to any French parent I know is in care - every single one. It is perfectly acceptable there that any child who is autistic goes to a ‘specialist’ out of sight and out of mind. This is just in my experience. All other child stay at home and follow the behaviour rules for society

Most bizarre comment I’ve seen all week. OP posted on a forum asking for comments / advice and someone has answered and asked something. Shock horror, hold the front page!

We go to France pretty often and I’ve had many staring/unhelpful head shaking/tutting incidents with my neurotypical children over the years. I once whilst very stressed and hot when some woman was chunnering on about my one year old not wearing socks (he’d removed them, multiple times) that I became somewhat confrontational. My husband still recalls it when we visit that part of town 😂.

I’m sorry you had this OP, it’s not fun and I’m sure you could’ve done without it. France is quite different culturally for things like this and it can take you by surprise and be unpleasant, especially when it involves your children.

Water off a duck’s back op. Don’t let it get to you 💐 I don’t mean to sound patronising, I also have an autistic son. I don’t make eye contact with anyone these days if he’s having a meltdown, it’s not worth the hurt and we have nothing to feel bad about.

I do actually prefer life in societies where children are expected to behave. Or is that disablist?

I don’t have children with autism but I do have French family and, and with all the necessary caveats about the good things about French culture, they definitely have a more authoritarian approach to child-rearing.

I have had a lot of well meant interfering in my parenting by French people. I think there’s a bit of an attitude that Anglo Saxons are flaky and indulgent of their children.

Worth remembering that for all its liberal attitudes France is still a very Catholic country and deeply conservative in its attitudes towards the family and children.

Ah, poor you. That sounds bloody horrible.

Why do some people stare like this? It's so infuriating. After 3 kids (one with ASD) I never so much as flick my eyes in the direction of any child crying etc.

The other thing to remember is that the French largely care very much less about being judged by others so do try to remember that so you can channel this energy

Now that is certainly true. They would never be as good at queue-jumping otherwise 😉

It was a horrible experience for the OP, and I"m not trying to minimise that but, on the subject of staring/nosiness in general, people have got to understand that this is the flip side of the community spirit/small town culture that Brits tend to bang on about celebrate when they come to France. It's the same in traditional small town cultures the world over. We have lost much of that in the UK and that's a sad thing in some ways, but it also means we have lost some of the intrusiveness and feeling that we have a right to comment on other people's business.

Just remembered a difficult rdv with the child psychiatrist after dd, then 12, had spent 2 weeks in hospital being too anxious to go to school. WE talked about PDA, or rather I did. This was about 2010. She wiped the floor with me. She was at the top of her profession and had not heard of it.

The research was published in the 1970s........

I took my 4 children to Disneyland Paris around 2012. My late son had cerebral palsy and when tired could drool. handsome young man and other than the wheelchair He wore specially designed neckerchiefs to catch this, and I did regularly dab his chin - anyway, while watching the parade a French child was pulling disgusted faces and saying yuck and pointing at my son in his wheelchair. The child was around 10 - I spoke to her mother and said please speak to your daughter, this is so rude, and her answer was she is just a child. I pulled my family around my son to protect him from this so we could watch the parade, but really was upset at this reaction. I feel for you and understand why you became so upset. YADNBU

I find the French have a bad attitude about a lot of things tbh. I lived there for 5 years and by far prefer the German attitude and way of life.
Yes I know people will say xenophobe etc etc but I'm very tolerant and well travelled. I've lived in a few European countries and France is my least favourite. I remember the times I went to the beach. I'm three stone overweight and random people used to comment very rudely that I need to lose weight. Which was what I was trying to do by going swimming.
In Germany nobody gives a damn. Maybe you should spend your tourist money in more tolerant countries.

I think most of us with kids who have meltdowns know how you feel as we’ve all had this to some extent at some point. Remember the time some anole said ‘back in my day he’d have got a smack,’? Now remember the nice person who came up to you quietly and said ‘your doing a good job’ with a kind smile? Well we are all here doing the later with a genital squeeze of your hand.

in the end it hurts but it doesn’t alter the fact that you doing really well in a hard situation

If you don't stare, tut or intervene to tell off my distressed disabled child you can think whatever you like.

@Americano75 ignoring the people around you would be considered weird and rude in many cultures, just as staring is in others. What constitutes good manners varies from place to place.

The term is ableist and if by behave you mean be and act neurotypical then yes, it is.

I don't comment or intervene. I walk away quietly to let the parents cope in peace.

All they saw was a child behaving badly. They aren’t to know that your child had autism. It’s human to stop and look when something happens out of the ordinary. They didn’t say anything, just looked, so I think an over reaction by you. You need to have a thick skin when raising a disabled child because there are always going to be situations when you’re judged. Especially in a foreign country where the people are going to behave differently to what you might be used to.