Need advice on this possibly terrible/weak parenting decision of mine.

[KidsArt]

Really want brutal opinions pls.

DS1 is 3 years old. He can be pretty challenging, in his own world, never listens, doesn't want to play with others, and his nursery have talked about ASD.

DH doesn't work on Fridays. He takes DS1 and DS2 (18 months) swimming. They all love it.

I work from home on Fridays.

DH just couldn't get DS1 ready. He wasn't listening. Refusing to get dressed. Playing with his trains. Running away from DH. this went on for 20 mins

DH left without him. Took DS2 and just walked out. He did give DS1 warning that he would leave unless he got dressed.

DS1 lost his mind. I mean, sobbing, wailing, throwing himself at the door. "I want my daddy. Where is daddy? I want to go swimming. Why not me? Please please. Where is Daddy. I'm sorry I'm sorry"

I don't think I've ever seen him that upset. He was shaking. He got all his clothes and was trying to put his own pants on, falling over, crying, collecting his towel, trying to get out the front door, looking for the car out the window.

I made DH come back and get him.

DH thinks this the reason DS1 is the way he is. That he needed to suck it up.

Is he right?

I agree, I think he sounds like he learnt his lesson and even the sound of him so distraught breaks my heart so I dont blame you at all op for calling him back

I think you did the right thing. There's no need to be too harsh with a 3 yr old

It's hard to say given we don't know if he's just a tricky toddler or if it's ASD at this stage. An NT kid might learn a lesson from this, a kid with ASD probably can't. I think working on getting a medical opinion and potential diagnosis ASAP would help because until our unless you do, DH can maintain its just a boundaries thing or whatever.

I think your DH did the right thing.(except it was in a day you were working from home) but regards to your child yes he was right.

Your DS knew exactly what he needed to do as he started to do it once he thought he had missed his chance

Oh dear how difficult for you both.

It's a tough one but I'm with you. My children are older now and I don't really see any need to upset them to that extent, he's only very young.

God what am I reading? It’s horrifying what goes on in some homes. Your three year old is the way he is because he’s 3. No more no less. There is not something wrong with him. And if two grown ass adults can’t get a three year old dressed then the issue is with them. Not the child/

I don’t think you messed up. My dd is the same age with ASS and reading how upset your child was made me cry. You and your DH have a lot of plates spinning and I think you made the right call, if he doesn’t understand the punishment it’s ineffective. But moving forward, clearer boundaries and make sure DS can do what is asked of him. My 3 year old couldn’t be told to get ready and just do it, the task is too complicated.

Oh give over. A three year old boy refusing to get dressed and a parent carrying out a threatened consequence is not ‘horrifying’ by any measure. Don’t misuse language with faux-concern outrage just to make other parents feel bad. If you’ve got nothing nice to say, say nothing.

I agree that it would have been best to have followed through with DH's decision and let them go off swimming without DS1.

Even if it transpires that DS1 gets an ASD diagnosis, you will still need to have sanctions and boundaries in place for when he doesn't co-operate.

My background is in early years teaching and I've seen the difference it can make when parents of ASD children are firm and in control.

Good luck!

Oh Jesus she has ASD not ASS!!!! Stupid random broken phone screen!

I think this poster is right - see if you can support him in getting ready. He clearly got a bit of a fright, and he will probably remember it. Really focus on skills needed to get ready, and build in more time for transitioning from one activity to another. While 3 year olds might understand consequences, he did have to suffer certain consequences so I think you did ok. And honestly, in the scheme of things it isn't that big a deal.

Yep.

Yeah I think you should have let him learn that he didn’t get to go swimming because of his actions

What did your dh think?

He'd have learnt a good lesson then, wouldn't he.

I agree - he was told what the consequence was and it happened.

I think the initial scare of thinking he wasn't going is enough for a 3 year old. We do need to follow through on warnings sometimes...but he's very little.
Fully agree with this. Your son got an extra chance this time, which is completely fair, but next time I would follow through with the natural consequence.

That's true, but the art is in the application (in my experience, at least).

We might disagree on this, but I think the natural and logical consequence was demonstrated by the father leaving without the child. The child then understood the consequences of his behaviour and took steps to modify it by getting his stuff ready and apologising. If he had simply cried, then leaving him behind for the duration might have been more appropriate.

We sometimes need to allow kids a bit of extra time to make the right choices, especially when they are small and already disadvantaged by their particular needs.

He's absolutely right.
I don't understand the not allowing your DS to be upset.
These are his feelings and its a consequence that he feels upset.
He clearly understands and so going forward I would talk to him.
Why did he feel upset?
What to do next time -get dressed !
Prepare the bags the night before, reminding him he needs to get dressed when Daddy asks him to.
Trying to prevent tantrums always leads to them getting worse, you are just kicking the can down the road.
Proactive not Reactive

A lot of people are saying that it's good to follow through with it and I do agree somewhat but if you son is indeed on the spectrum sometimes the same approaches as other 'typical' children often don't work and can cause more stress and they wouldn't understand like other children. It's not say this is the case for all asd children but in my experience consequences don't always work.

I say this as a mother of an asd child. Following through with 'threats' don't work and cause DS more distress as he struggles to process it all so we avoid altogether.

maybe next week use a now and next board to help his transition from home to swimming or a social story about swimming. My sons always struggled with transitioning between different settings and the toddler years were hard!

Wait and see what happens next week.

It sounds like he was given plenty of warnings and the consequences he was warned about actually happened. Sounds like good boundaries to me.
I did this with a 16yo NT pudding about getting ready for college and making me late every day. She was absolutely outraged I drove off without her, but it never happened again.

I think he was lucky his dad came back for him, but hopefully he's learnt a lesson from this episode. I realise possible ASD adds another dimension to your incident, but clearly your DS understood what had happened and took action to rectify the situation (trying to get himself dressed etc)

Seems a bit harsh of your oh but you have to back each other up and follow through.

But hey, maybe he will get ready on time next week and you'll have got away with it

@CherylCrows 'if you don't put your coat on you'll get wet' is fine.

if you don't do a series of tasks that are beyond you ability right now I'm taking your brother swimming & leaving you behind, us not.

He's THREE & has suspected ASD. It's not the very small child at fault here.

@Notacompetitiveundereater - I know it soudns ridiculous but yes, it's really bloody hard getting him dressed.

I have tricks e.g. pretending his teddy is telling him to get dressed, laying the clothes before and talking about the clothes and why he needs to wear them, pretending to put the clothes on me/his teddy etc. But he will not get dressed by me just saying 'let's get dressed' and then starting to help him. And he is very difficult to get to listen. He is constantly moving from room to room. Constantly singing to himself, talking to himself. It's like I'm not in the room at all sometimes.

And the one thing that gets him crazy is if I force the issue e.g. just try to take off his PJs myself, he absolutely hates it and cries and cries.

But pls don't make it about our inability to get the kid dressed. I am trying each and every way.

And he does know what he had to do - because he did - which is DH's point, he can actually do these things.

DH doesn't have the patience for it. THat's the problem. He just doesn't understand why DS doesn't just get dressed.

I would agree with your dh, sorry.

My brother (who almost certainly has undiagnosed ASD) did that for years. The number of times we were all ready to go and he'd saunter down (this is in his teens) and announce he needed a shower first... then he was just going to eat some toast...
We'd then arrive really late.
It's left me with a paranoia of being late so I tend to leave far too early.

He was still doing it to my parents when I left home and he was late teens. Dm used to say "oh, but I can't leave my son when he wants to come. That would be terrible."
We missed out on all sorts of things due to being late, and he didn't care.

She did openly admit she wished that she'd left him when he was younger (and df was around to look after him) but she was afraid of him having a strop about it.

Then one day df was going somewhere and he went because dbro wasn't ready. Dbro was furious and also somewhat bemused that he'd left him. He said "but you always wait for me." Df replied with "no more. When I'm ready, I'll go, You can choose to be ready and come or stay behind."
He never did it again for df.

It was at least partially a control thing. He knew he could have the whole family waiting for him.

I'll put it another way. If they had missed out on swimming because your ds1 didn't get ready on time, is that fair on your ds2?
It always felt to me that I was less important because it seemed more important that dbro came even if we couldn't then do what we had been planning to do, than I (and dsis) got to do something that we wanted to.

No he isn't. He was showing that the world doesn't revolve around ds1. A lesson he needs to learn before he gets too much older. He'd had plenty of warnings to get ready, otherwise he'd be left behind. I dint see how dh is to blame.