AIBU to have not reacted when my daughter’s hair was grabbed, twisted and pulled by a non-verbal autistic man.

[SillyOldBucket]

At the weekend we visited a National Trust venue and stopped at the café for some lunch. My husband and one teenager daughter were sitting outside while I and our other 17-year-old daughter, who has long very blonde hair, joined the queue inside. I was standing just in front of her in the queue when I became aware of a boy/young man (I would guess aged about 20) beside us. He had his face up close to my daughter and was smiling at her. Initially, I thought it was someone she knew from college or her Saturday job but then all of a sudden he grabbed her hair, twisted it tightly around his hand, and was pulling very hard. I quickly realized that she didn’t know him and that he was non-verbal, probably autistic. However, I then remember that I kind of froze, thinking what do I do and didn’t know how to react. If it was a normal person, I would have at the very least shouted at them to let go or tried to prise their hand open, but I wasn’t sure if he would have responded badly or done something worse. I had time to think all this before his carer appeared and tried to get him to release his grip, but it took a good minute. To make matters worse, the young man then skipped into the kitchen behind the servery and his carer had to bring him back out, walked past us and exactly the same thing happened again!! The carer managed to get the boy to release his grip but no apology or anything. My daughter was quite shocked by it, but I think she was more shocked that I didn’t intervene, and I feel terrible and ashamed. My gut reaction should have been to protect her, but I think because we are always being taught to be understanding and tolerant of neurodiversity, I just froze not knowing what to do or how to react. What would anyone else have done in this situation? Can anyone with specialized knowledge advise on what would have been the correct thing to do? It’s made me realise that there is very little public knowledge/education on how to respond when confronted with a situation like this and also raises the question of whether it was assault. If it had been someone without autism, it would surely have been assault but because they were clearly on the spectrum, are we to be more tolerant despite being subjected to pain and shock?

The police and justice system sometimes do not care.
My boyfriend was hauled up in court and all that entails, to great distress, when he had a meltdown in public. Still got fined, under probation, ordered to attend CBT when it is not helpful for autism, and now will face trouble when he needs to get new job as his name comes up in the local rag when Googled.
His solicitor was amazing though. Had an autistic son himself. Magistrates though - not so much. His probation officer didn't actually know what to do with him. Said he should not have been there.

Maybe you did the best thing you could have done - you never know how he would have reacted, had you intervened. He could have throttled her, for example, instead of just twisting her hair. Obviously you would have intervened if he grabbed a knife or a fork.

I think what OP means is that it was obvious the man had complex learning difficulties most likely accompanied by autism.
I work with people with complex autism and probably have more of a ‘radar’ than other members of the public and probably would have had a quick check for a carer before intervening to try to avoid making things worse.
But if the carer wasn’t on the ball this was their fault. Behaviour can be unpredictable though and unless we’re expected to keep such people locked away unfortunately thee incidences will happen.

Do your autistic children understand what they are doing? because mine doesn't and he did once randomly pull someone's hair of course I intervened immediately and apologised profusely and took him away from the situation but sometimes things happen very quickly.

I think I may have frozen the first time it happened but if it happened a second time I think I would have raised my voice, autism or no autism.

Also I don’t think being autistic gives you the right to assault people does it?

Its fight or flight usually

It’s fight, flight or freeze.

I generally freeze op. I’d be mincemeat if someone attacked me. People who respond differently can’t seem to comprehend what it’s like, but I know it must have been really difficult. You kicking yourself now about what you could or should have done isn’t going to change anything at this point so no use dwelling on it. I also wouldn’t stick around on here reading the posts from all the superior MNers who would have hog tied him in 2 seconds flat with one hand whilst calling the police with their free hand.

Congratulations on winning an award for the most ridiculous thing I've ever read.

I've had training and a lot of practice in this exact scenario in a previous job (autistic person pulling my hair) and there have been times where I have been taken by surprise and needed help to get out of it because the service user is bigger / stronger than me or just got me in an awkward position. The OP's daughter is 17 and presumably had no training.

You genuinely have no idea what you are talking about.

Fair enough from that perspective. The carers certainly shouldn't have brought the lad into a public place without a thorough risk assessment.

unfortunately ‘no’ is a major trigger for one of my young people and I can guarantee that if this was them the situation would have escalated if an unknown person gave them a firm ‘no’. But this is why the situation wouldn’t have been allowed to occur in the first place and if it somehow did the carer would have intervened first.

It sounds as though the man probably needed 2 to 1 support but this would be difficult to fund I expect.
Even with that level of support it may have been difficult to prevent.
I’m sure you were both shocked.

Shouting screaming and slapping as suggested by some may have escalated the situation.
Remaining calm if you can is best. Training for hair pulling involves “fix and make no worse” where you grab the hair near the scalp whilst you or someone else attempts to untangle the fingers from the hair.
I have only used this with children not adults.

Saying no or stop with a flat palm may have been OK but “ no” in itself can be a trigger.

If he is living in some sort of supported living there should have been a risk assessment for a trip out. Carer may have been a support worker ( who are not always well trained) or a family member. Was the carer wearing an ID badge on a lanyard? May not have been reported to senior staff.
I hope your daughter is OK.

It's because this is so utterly nonsensical, and designed for the frothy "I'd have ninja kicked his ass to next Thursday" posts.

MNers. full on Chuck Norris when they're not afraid to answer their front doors.

Weirdly, almost exactly the same thing happened to my son. We were in a supermarket and someone grabbed him by the hair and he just sort of disappeared out of my eyeliner. He didn't say a word, but when I looked round, her carers were there trying to get her to let go.

My son is only 8 so I just focused on him and reassured him that he was OK and that the carers were doing their job, but I was certainly taken aback and I don't think I responded instantly because it took a moment to work out what the hell was going on as it was so thoroughly unexpected.

The problem with hair pulling is that you really need the person pulling to let go and the carers are much more likely to manage that if everyone else is calm and doesn't escalate things, so although you could have reassured your daughter more, all the posters who would have got involved with the person grabbing the hair would probably have made it a much longer and more unpleasant process for the person whose hair is involved.

My point is that the young man appears ti have very complex needs ,my son is nearly 15 but cognitively around 2 or 3 to be charged with assault he would have to understand what he has done ,a police officer wouldn't charge someone with the mental age of a toddler with assault because they wouldn't have the capacity to understand.

It’s such a rare, strange and unusual thing to happen that I can totally understand how you froze. Don’t blame yourself.

Maybe make a defence plan with your daughter and have a strategy in place for if something like this happened again.

If anyone is to blame it is whoever decided that one carer is enough for this young man.

I think it would have been normal to at least reach for/try & ungrip his hand while it was touching your daughter's hair but I 100% understand you froze & I would probably do the same thing in reverse if it was my mum he'd gone after.

I think you can only really have a discussion with your daughter about it & 'know' you would do differently next time

So, from these responses if someone is mentally disabled -

(not always possible to tell youre absolutely right, but sometimes you can with combined with other mannerisms and the way they approach the situation)

• and they lash out or respond physically in an inappropriate way. Ie pull hair, inappropriately touch, push you etc. the correct thing to do is to shout and physically respond, aggressively if needed?

I'm not trying to be snarky (hard to get tone over text) but I wouldn't have responded that way especially to a young adult man, likely much stronger than me. To me screaming, which is startling and scary, and punching him would likely have hugely escalated the situation and may have caused him to back down or may have caused him to go into fight mode and then where would we be?

The carer is obviously at fault. I appreciate the people who work with disabled adults giving actual suggestions.

If it was a normal person,

🤨

Yes, that's fine, but if the daughter 'froze', then why did she blame her Mum for doing the same?

No. She can kick them very hard in the shins.

Obviously not but being autistic with severe learning disabilities, may well mean the young man doesn't have the capacity to understand what he's doing it's a huge spectrum

To me it wouldn't matter how neuro-diverse/disabled someone was. The safety and protection of my DDs would always, always come first.

There’s a fourth reaction: fawn. So fight, flight, freeze or fawn. Fawn being when you say or do whatever is necessary to avoid upsetting the attacker and to keep you alive, including being nice to the attacker.

Why are most posters assuming that the young man had autism? Why not intellectual impairment or an acquired brain injury? Autism isn’t a catch-all diagnosis for every sort of socially unacceptable behaviour or for someone with impaired cognitive abilities.

As for the nonverbal diagnosis, OP could equally be assumed to be nonverbal because she didn’t speak either time that her DD was attacked. Was the young man presumed to be nonverbal because he didn’t speak either time?

I like to think I'd protect my child when anyone laid their hands on them and would step in. To be honest I'd like to think I'd help anyone in that situation.
However I've not been in that situation. I think it's fair for your daughter to be upset with you.

We react to shock and fear in many different ways, depending on personality, life experience, the situation, potential dangers ...

Fight, flight, freeze, fawn, faint, flock and any combination.

In nasty situations I have also frozen. I don't know what I'd do if I was ever really in danger. And I've never been in a situation where a child was in danger.

Female socialisation to be nice, be kind is very powerful. Bless him, he's a young disabled man so we must be kind, mustn't we.

Unfortunately I've seen videos of young autistic men hurting their own mothers.

Usual standards of behaviour don't apply here.

In future, tell yourself no, that does not trump your daughter's or your own physical and emotional safety. Go into a big empty field and practice screaming No! Fuck off! Let Go! Get used to using and hearing your own voice speaking up.

And in future a knee to the bollocks will release his grip nicely.