My son is 6 and has autism. We have just moved into our house around a year ago and only know the neighbours to say hi and bye when we see them and that’s about it.
DS travels to school on a bus that collects and drops him off and they park right outside next doors house. Usually there is only one school bag so I use one hand for that and my other hand to hold his because he has a tendency to bolt and run off.
Last week he came home with quite a few bits because he had some extra school activities (swimming etc) and I couldn’t grab his hand quick enough when he got off the bus so he ran off - when he has done this before he just goes straight inside the house but when I turned around he had actually ran into next doors house (we have those doors where unless you lock the handle from the inside you can just walk straight in from the outside).
I went and got him straight out and apologised over and over to the neighbours - I also made him apologise - and because he has never done something like that before I sat him down afterwards and explained why he couldn’t do that - firstly for his own safety because some strangers are not very nice in the world and secondly because the people in the house might not be very happy about it and feel very upset and angry about it. He has no awareness of what is right and wrong at the moment or awareness of any dangers or anything like that because of the severity of autism.
The neighbours were clearly not very happy about it at the time which I completely understand - they know he has autism as they sometimes stop and chat to my parents outside when they pop over - however still now nearly a week later they just ignore us when we see them and very cold and stand-offish.
AIBU to think that okay even though it wasn’t ideal, they should be a bit more understanding towards DS’s additional needs and get over it considering the amount of times we have both apologised for this isolated incident?!