To be pissed off at my friend downplaying my sons autistic traits?

[DisgustedOfTidmouth]

Bit of a rant tbh.

She's a ftm to a two year old, I have a five your old and a six month old.

Oldest was formally diagnosed with autism almost a year ago but it was pretty apparent for a long time before this.

But every time I mention something as being one of his typical autistic traits she has to jump in with "I think that's normal for kids to be honest", like she's some sort of parenting expert.

Some of it may be normal for much younger kids, but not five year olds.

(Todays conversation was about eating which she downplayed as him being a picky eater rather than him being highly selective with set parameters which determine whether or not he'll eat something - everything from the colour of the plate to what location he is in)

I've had years of comparing my son to both his autistic and non autistic peers (mainstream nursery, specialist support group). I know what is and isn't down to his autism.

But she seems determined to downplay every struggle he has as "just kids".

AIBU to be getting fed up with it?

Do you need to keep talking about it with her?
if you do, tell her you find it a bit grating, he has different needs, a dr has said so. You appreciate she doesn’t agree but could she not tell you so all the time, as you’re gonna take the drs advice not hers

I imagine she just hasn’t got a clue, most people don’t. is it possible too she’s trying to make you feel better, to find similarities rather than differences? I know that isn’t helpful but maybe she’s trying to be positive if she thinks you’re worrying loads about autism and him finding lots of things difficult

Yup. I spent two years filling out forms full of how my child struggled, getting school staff to spend hours writing down all my child’s differences, going to half a dozen appointments and assessments with different speech therapists, psychologists, education professionals and paediatricians, taking a parenting course and then having four very qualified professionals all meet to discuss and diagnose my child, just because it’s the trendy thing to do and I wanted them to join the club.

Oh do fuck off

@Blueskysunflower

Exactly. So in theory you should be a bit pissed off that’s it now trendy as it means people take your child and their struggles much less seriously. It was inevitable really that people have began to trivialise it. Everything and anything gets put down to some form of special need, even kids who aren’t officially diagnosed. The amount of times I’ve heard “he/she has a “bit” of autism” or “they’re for adhd but they’re not diagnosed”.

I have switched off.

I was thinking this too.

How often do you refer to your child's autism OP?

No. I’m pleased children who need support might be more likely to get it and that things that were written off as “naughty” or “weird” are now properly diagnosed. Yes, some people self diagnose their children in the same way some think they have a bit of OCD because they like things tidy, but on the whole I think the increased awareness and diagnosis of ASC, ADHD etc can only be a good thing.

This.

Alternatively we've got a whole generation or three whose diagnosis was missed because either they were at the lower needs end of the scale or they can mask like hell.

Well we didn't have autism in our day. You must have read about the history of autism if you have an autistic child.

All the autistic people I know are completely different.

(Todays conversation was about eating which she downplayed as him being a picky eater rather than him being highly selective with set parameters which determine whether or not he'll eat something - everything from the colour of the plate to what location he is in)

Being highly selective with set parameters is just a fancy way of saying he is a picky eater.

@ARRGHHHHHxxxxx I certainly don't use it as an excuse. Quite often I celebrate the way his mind works as it's truly amazing.

But neither do I hide it or am ashamed of it. Any more than I would hide a limb difference or hearing difficulties

My DD was diagnosed early, something that’s normal in the country we were living in at the time (with a much better resourced health system!). She’s got very obvious stimming behaviours but otherwise seems ‘normal’. I’m starting to see a real tendency now that we’re back in the U.K. of people downplaying or denying her diagnosis. Comments like ‘all kids are a bit strange really’ or ‘she’s still too young to tell, I bet she’ll grow out of it’. It’s really odd. Maybe people are threatened in some way by ASD? Or have brought into the idea that diagnosis has become more common because of present misdiagnosis rather than historical under-diagnosis?

I disagree. Of course she’s not an expert, she knows that but is trying to side with you and your son, that’s it. She actually is being supportive. I never get angry at well meaning friends who obviously care and maybe every single thing they say isn’t perfect. That’s ok. Children with health issues, whether mental or physical, want to feel they belong, are normal, and they don’t want to constantly be reminded they’re different or less than (which they’re not) all the time. That is most likely where your friend is coming from. She is obviously not malicious but you are determined to ‘put her in her place’.

My son has a friend who is autistic, my son is his only friend. I think it’s because my son, and I, treat him like the normal human being he is. They have been friends since preschool, so 3 years old, they’re 18 now. I took care of him a lot over the years, he comes over still all the time on his own. His mother would keep apologizing to me and talking about his condition nonstop. I told her he was no problem whatsoever. I literally have never had one problem with him. I said some of the things your friend has because what she’s really saying, is that she accepts him. That’s all. And that is a good thing.

He and my son have gotten into disagreements at times but they always resolved them between themselves. They are friends. My son has never treated him as an outsider or as ‘weird’ or tiptoe and go on an on about his ‘problems’. His friend appreciates that. Op, when a child’s parent constantly makes the child’s whole identity revolve around whatever the difficulty is, they pick up on that. Imagine what goes through their minds.

“I've had years of comparing my son to both his autistic and non autistic peers”

Stop comparing him to other kids 24/7. Yes, we have to learn about the situations and act accordingly but no need to dwell and obsess and demand other people recite after you your probably oft repeated mantra that he isn’t just a picky eater, oh no, he is “highly selective with set parameters which determine whether or not he'll eat something - everything from the colour of the plate to what location he is in”—by* *definition he IS a picky eater, Op, you want to keep pounding on the minutiae on why he is so different, how he’s more special than the run of the mill picky eater, and you want your friend to come out and ADMIT it, that’s why you’re mad. Well, your friend is actually gently saying, let him live, stop categorizing every single thing he does as ‘wrong’ or ‘different’ and correcting the supportive encouragement of friends with this huffy overreaction.

My son has type 1. We didn’t know at first and he almost died. We were on vacation and he collapsed. We went to the nearest pediatrician, we happened upon the clinic, and they did tests, told us, and the hospital he needed to go to was 30 minutes away. The dr said he could let us drive our child there but didn’t know what would happen in 30 minutes, what our son would look like, meaning, death. They rushed him to the nearest emergency room to stabilize him enough to transport him to a specialist hospital just for children with type one (amazing coincidence) in an ambulance. I had never seen people rushing us about and waving us through, they didn’t care about our insurance or charging us or getting paid, they were saving our son. Our world was changed as are many parents’ and their children’s as are yours and your son’s.

Your friend is at least well meaning. I had a ‘friend’ who came and told me that she wondered if her son (friends with my son and no not the autistic one) had ‘caught’ type one from my son (if she truly didn’t know what type one is she could have easily googled it beforehand) and she was worried about him but not my son at all, not one word of concern. Then proceeded to feed my son doughnuts every time he went to their house. I finally had to accept that she was either very foolish or very malicious, and had to cut back on my son’s interactions with her without harming his friendship with her son. This was extreme behavior on her part and couldn’t be ignored as ‘well meaning’ or accidental.

Aside from that, I do everything I can to not let his condition rule his life even though it is in the back of our minds of course because of the life and death nature of very low and very high numbers. I learned all about it and we do everything we can to keep him on an even keel and teach him how to live healthily and make good choices while not constantly making it central to his identity. He’s more than that. No constant discussions of how he can’t do this or that and the scientific explanation of how he’s so different and needs to be treated as an alien object his peers and constant telling everybody they better not compare him to ‘normal’ people. He wants to be ‘normal’, he wants to live his life and I want him to not have to listen to me put limits on him and stick him into categories.

My son doesn’t want his type one in his face 24/7. I bet your son doesn’t want his autism in his face 24/7.

I've had a major falling out with BIL as he cannot recognise that DC2 (young adult woman) is autistic and therefore didn't fawn over him when he visited with DSis last year. (She did come down, say hello and chat for a while which is a big thing for her to do.)
He brought it up just as DSis and him were about to leave for the airport. I was gobsmacked and could only think to ask him did he realise she was autistic. He might as well have slapped me in the face. I've sent him a couple of messages trying to resolve it (as I won't have him under my roof ever again unless he apologises). He has ignored me. I'm not going to forget about it, ever. If I dared to criticise his and my sister's kids (who I am very fond of, so there would never be the need), he would go ballistic.

My in-laws do this and it makes me furious. It's like they are dismissing his experience. My dh says they are trying to be nice and say he's normal. Which also makes me furious if they are saying he's not good enough as he is.

I would say "most traits are normal in some circumstances it's the impact on the child that makes the difference'.

And I'd tell her to fuck off if she tried to give my child food he didn't want.

I think you are being a bit harsh on your friend. She isn't living with a child with autism (as far as you are aware) so she's treating your son as she would other children. You don't appreciate that as you know your sons needs and that's fair enough but you see lots of threads on here about people whose ND children aren't included and people don't make an effort to engage with them and I sort of think that misguided as your friend is at least she's trying. Often people don't know what to say as they don't understand or they have no experience of it so its easier for them to say something benign.

I think it’s hard to make a reasonable evaluation of a child who you don’t live with, who also has ‘mild’ autism. My friends daughter who has autism is very obvious as she’s mute at 39 years old and has been in a home since she was 10 just banging her head against walls.
my daughter has a genetic condition, that has learning disabilities and epilepsy. She has a lot of the same traits as someone with autism but I’ve never treated her as such. If she’s fussy with food, I don’t pander to it and as she’s gotten older she’s learnt the same way as her sisters, to eat what mum gives her.
she has meltdowns yes but the not pandering has worked for her eventually and now a lot of her autistic traits are wearing off.
my uncle only ate marmite on toast till he was 6 and didn’t talk till he was 5, had he been born today he would have been diagnosed as autistic, but now he’s a normal guy, successful etc.
perhaps it’s difficult for your friend to understand as she sees your son as having potential for being like other kids and feels your playing into to much.

I’m autistic with two autistic DS’s. The thing is, most autistic mums are experts in autism and anything a neurotypical says about autism is generally annoying. I find they’re either too sympathetic or too dismissive. They can’t win. But hey hi, they should keep their traps shut shouldn’t they?🙂

I experience this constantly & I’ve decided to take the following approach:

• Stop mentioning autism or ND unless I know the person really gets it.
• Avoiding situations that trigger my DD so I don’t feel I have to explain her behaviour.
• If none of this works (which it probably won’t) consider moving to Orkney.

I'm sure op can also see 'potential' in her ds @Sarahtm35

Your dc doesn't have a diagnosis of Autism, op's does, so your approach of 'not pandering' may not work so well with her ds.

OP I just don't bother with people who make me feel I need to justify myself or my child. I would drop your friend and find someone who is willing to support rather than judge.

Sarahtm35 that's a sad read. Parents know the difference between 'picky eaters' and Autism. They've already tried everything to suspect there may be something else going on.

This also applies to understanding the different between a tantrum and a melt down, etc etc. No child is non verbal until 5 ( mute is a awful term) when there's nothing going on. I'm not saying every non verbal 5 year old is autistic, I'm saying that's bloody significant.

My ds was diagnosed with ASD at 2.

The usual 'he's very young to be diagnosed' 'he looks ok to me' 'I think he's very bright' 'my child did that until I stopped them' 'I can see his potential' etc used to destroy me.

I began to wonder if I was 'making' him disabled.

He's 13 now, has been in a special school since he was four and and has the functional skills of a 3-4 year old. I still get people commenting occasionally about his 'potential', as though I don't think he's wonderful!

I figure these people don't give a shit about my child or me and so anything they say is best ignored.

Yes I've had this for years. I have three autistic sons, two of them with learning difficulties. I have found that most other people are only understanding in a social media context. In real life, they are awful.

Oh yes, and now that my 18 year old still can't wipe his own bum, shave his own face, wash and shower without supervisions and help, apparently I ought to let go and let him be independent. Yes, because this is how I fantasised my life would be as a mother, that I'd have a toddler for ever...

Families with these struggles like @sparkiesparkle are who our taxes should be going toward much more. I admire their sacrifices and selfless love, they are exactly the ones who should get all the financial, physical, and emotional support they need.