Wtf is wrong with people when it comes to hidden disabilities?

[Whatthebarnacles]

Full on rant incoming! Ready to be flamed in the depths on MN hell for this but it really is a hill I'm happy to die on so whatever will be, will be!

I'm absolutely sick to the back teeth of certain people on here who eye roll and sneer that those with hidden disabilities should be treated the same as neuro typical people.

Non verbal, lashing out? Report to police for assault - how dare they lay a hand on someone else 🙄

Can't sit still / constantly stims? Expel them from school - why should my "normal child" be affected?🙄

Stares and makes noises? Tell them you're uncomfortable and to stop immediately, we have the right not to be ogled.🙄

Can we please just stop it?! It's like the world's gone mad! All the years of effort to try and make people aware of hidden disabilities just seems to have crumbled an i've seen it happenn in here over the last 6 months or so more than ever. There seems to be an almighty wave of this incredibly farcical "BUT ME AND MINE" or "MY RIGHTS" just smash through the work that had been done and its depressing as shit.

Would you call the police or kick off on someone who spilled a cuppa over you then laughed? Or caught your face , if...

1. They were 4 years old? Nope, so why would you for someone with intellectual disabilities? You would talk to the carer. Rightly so.

1. If they had Parkinsons? Would you bollocks. Because you can SEE that disability and because its a physical one, then it can't be helped, right?

1. They were clearly ND?

There are countless people in here who would because, according to them, they do not have the right / there needs to be consequences / they're an adult regardless / i am woman hear me roar etc.

I cant get my head around the lack of understanding

And don't get me started on those who turn these things into "us women" need to defend ourselves. And faux outrage "would they have done it to a man? I don't think so!" Urgh. Yes... they would. A disability is a disability, a stim is a stim, a jolt is a jolt. Hair is dangly, splashing someone or spilling something is funny, stimming is calming on the inside whilst frantic in the outside.

Frankly, it turns my stomach. Why is the world so angry at people who are different at the moment?!

I can only presume that the number of people now having been diagnosed is pissing these people off. I've honestly never ever heard so much "just because they're xyz doesn't mean that..." in my life. See also "they need to learn" or "they should know"...

I fret for my son growing up in this. He doesn't stand a cat in hells chance.

YABU - Of course ND people, should be treated the same as NT people when it comes to differing behaviour, regardless of mental age or physical disabilities associated with their condition.

YANBU - MN is rife with it at the moment, I've noticed that too.

Annnnnd..... crucify me. GO!!

Lashing out and laying a hand on someone else, is not ok, ever.

Being physically assaulted is never acceptable in any circumstances

If someone is assaulting random strangers then they are potentially a danger to the public and there should be a response to that.

Everyone deserves to be safe. The hair pulling incident was putting the young man at risk as well as assaulting the posters daughter. We should not as a society accept that this is something which is ok. It is not. The young man needs to have more support in place, or to avoid situations which trigger him, as I and many other people with hidden disabilities have to.

Agree with you, aside from the lashing out, hitting, that is NOT ok.

If someone does this the carer needs to ensure that doesn’t happen- one day they may hit a less tolerant person who takes them down with a punch or worse and they may take the carer out too.

I always associate people who make such assumptions with fools

“hitting for him is a defence mechanism, it's also a stim. I have to be tolerant of that.”

You may have to be tolerant of that: I don’t. I’m sorry your son has problems and completely understand that it must be very difficult at times, but nobody’s disabilities give them the right to attack other people.

This is a hard one.

On the one hand, a person with disabilities that limit their capacity to abide by the law and social norms, and inhibit their understanding of the wrongness of what they have done, cannot really be realistically held to the prevailing standards.

On the other hand, you have to take your victim as you find them. The victim may themselves suffer from similar limitations, they may have suffered previous trauma that exacerbates the impact and their reactions, they may simply be unable or unwilling to comprehend or accept the limitations of the person that has hurt or upset them. . . the list goes on.

Carers themselves, are human, and suffer from lapses in judgment, or concentration, or may have their attention diverted to one situation they need to deal with and in that instance another occurs. However, when a physical assault, which surely rates pretty bloody high on the priority list, occurs, not once, but TWICE, that, in no one's lexicon, is okay, and no one should be surprised if at that point there is a fairly robust push back.

Oh, and the menopausal dig? That kind of baseless venom kind of undermines the plea for understanding and tolerance of hidden disabilities.

You really aren’t smart enough to see the irony of your post on this thread, are you?

Carers can only work within legal frameworks.

If there is no Deprivation of Liberty agreed then they can't prevent a person from going wherever they want to go and can't physically intervene until something happens.

If they do they are then in breach of that person's human rights.

A DOLs needs evidence provided to show why it is proportional and necessary and why other interventions have been unsuccessful.

All of this takes time and in order to prove that other interventions haven't worked, other interventions have to be tried.

When anybody gets hurt that isn't a good situation for anyone involved. The lack of understanding and compassion only makes it harder.

People being hurt is never ok, there should be safeguarding for all involved in situations like that though.

Some of the EHCP threads on Mumsnet are awful. People saying disabled children shouldn’t attend if it has any impact on ‘normal’ children. Really sets people up for the world as an adult right…

I would say though, and I say this as a SEN parent, that the entitlement some parents have that their child can do anything because they are ND is not helpful and perpetuates the issue.

What is this menopause mafia?

Agree with others that hitting is not OK. At 4 years old OK - kids will be kids - but they eventually need to learn that this isn’t acceptable.

I also think - and I’m not suggesting this is the case with your child - people generally have got very adept at using mental health/autism etc as an excuse for behaviour.

I’m basing this not on children - I have a friend, was told multiple times they weren’t autistic, went to different doctors until one said they were maybe at the lower end of the spectrum but is now claiming to be autistic and using it as an excuse for their behaviour. And I think lots of people have become very good at weaponising mental health etc. Which is a shame for the people who are genuinely affected.

Will put a link below to someone who will be able to explain what I mean much better than me!

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DGF7q8Xu7mw/?igsh=MXdyamZ4Ym1ld3BtZA==

It is 100% unreasonable to not expect someone to potentially react violently to being grabbed or hit by an adult sized person they don’t know in public.

I’m not waiting around to clock that they might have a hidden disability or that they might not but instead pull out a knife next.

I’m either yelling and running away or else hitting them as hard as I can in the most painful place I can reach so that I can get free and then running.

I agree with the majority here.

Hurt others - expect repercussions that may or may not involve the police or court.
Break the law in other areas - expect repercussions that may or may not involve the police or court.
Prevent others from living normal/average lives (eg constant classroom interruptions) - expect repercussions.

We all have equal rights.

But the OP isn’t referring to a ‘stereotype’, she’s talking about a thread where a man with some form of intellectual disability and a carer in attendance assaulted the OP’s teenage daughter in a cafe, twice. It was clearly not malicious, but sounded quite frightening for the girl, and, if anything, the man having an intellectual disability appears to have prevented the OP of that thread from intervening as she would have if the assaulter wasn’t disabled.

@Whatthebarnacles what happens if your son punches someone when out and about end they punch him back and he is badly injured?

What I don’t understand is why are there so many children who are violent in school, why do we seem to be having almost an epidemic of uncontrollable children. Step back even twenty years and things were never at the level it is today. Something has gone wrong somewhere and I have absolutely no idea what it is.

What you seem to be proposing is that anyone with an additional need is never able to live independently without being a few meters away from a carer / parent who absolves them of any responsibility...

For many adults with additional needs that's not necessary or the best thing for them but it does require them to learn that certain behaviours that would be hurtful to others are unacceptable. And I think that's fair enough.

You are being completely unrealistic to expect people to tolerate being assaulted by an unknown adult.

I agree with the rest of your points.

You won't get anywhere with this thread. It'll be same old, same old with those sticking the knife in, twisting stuff, ablism, ignorance and a refusal to learn. You'll just be frustrated with the shite that'll get thrown at you.

It is not for nothing we have 'normal behaviour' and 'abnormal behaviour' even though the society is trying to turn black into white and white into black. If we normalise the abnormal totally (we are halfway there), we are screwed as a society, finished.

As a one off, every now and again, most people forgive anything that doesn't cause injury perpetrated by a person who can not know any better.
When a person repeatedly behaves in a dangerous way or makes regular interuptions to a classroom session without being corrected, that needs to stop.
It is more helpful if complaints are made because unless victims object, little effort is made to change the situation.

If Chucky is coming at me or my family I will defend myself. I don’t care if it is a demon child, a normal child/adult or a hidden disability child/adult.

All people react to a threat and fight to survive that threat. It has nothing to do with a hidden or visible disability.

If you're lashing out, staring intently, stimming etc then personally I wouldn't consider that a hidden disability, because it's not hidden is it, it's obvious.

When I think of a hidden disability I think of something like Type 1 diabetes, Coeliac, MS (in some cases), Addison's etc where you can't tell by looking at someone (not that I consider most of those a disability, in the old fashioned sense if you see what I mean).