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!!

Who do you suggest pays for that? Lets increase taxes then.

I am fully aware that if put in certain situations my son will lash out. We avoid those situations. If we are forced into one I risk assess the situation and ensure I have enough people with me to deal with the situation. Sometimes you need to make difficult decisions. He regualry would lash out at school and hurt teachers and students, he would also self harm. This was absolutely because they couldn't deal with his needs and actively ignored advice so I removed him from school. I am not going to allow others to be hurt especially as i know this behaviour can be prevented. We don't have these issues at home as we know how to deal with him. It's my responsibility to ensure his safety as well as those around him. It is not acceptable for others to be assaulted.

However there's is a significant problem within schools and social care of people having needs and staff actively ignoring care plans. If a person uses a alternative communication method and the staff member isn't trained on that, what exactly do we expect to happen?

It's not MN that's the problem.

It's deep seated in the NHS.

The worst behaviour towards people with autism and learning disabilities I have seen has been from GP surgery , a&e department and MH services.

Many incidents that in the rest of society would be abuse & assault.

Comments on MN or any other social media site are the least of our worries

Some assumptions are that everyone with a particular disability are the same.

There are so many with high function autism now that people can incorrectly assume all people with autism can talk, communicate, are good at 'their thing' , etc etc. Low function autism is not so.well understood and unfortunately those individuals need more help. I think autism should be broken into separate disabilities since the range of how it affects someone is vast.

Exactly.

It's not his fault, it's the situation around him. Yet in society people don't understand this.

"Trump has capitalised on this selfish underbelly of society and look where that has taken us, the most serious threat to world peace since WW2."

Honestly get a grip. What about the Korean war? Or worse the Cuban missile crisis where jets actually had engines running on the runways with nukes onboard ready to go as WW3 was moments away? Or when a Russian submarine commander over rode an order to launch his nukes (turned out to be a system error)?

A few misplaced trade tariffs aren't the biggest threat since WW2. So much nonsence spouted on MN.

No I don't agree at all. People have the right to protect themselves and their families from abuse. And I'm obviously not saying go mad and knock people out, but push away? Block? Prise hands off hair? Of course. Appropriate level of force and all that..

A women I used to work for has sever mental health issues, she attacked one of the support workers with a spade when out in the garden one day because she wanted a biscuit but had already eaten the whole pack. The girl who got assaulted was pregnant at the time and sadly lost her baby. Nothing was done because of the mental health problems of the women.. in any other case it would be murder.

I see it from both sides and I dont think anyone is being ableist because they dont want to be hurt by another person.

I’m in the fence with this to be honest.
completely appreciate that some compassion should be shown to those who do not have the ability to regulate/ understand what is and is not appropriate in social settings.
However I would not want my young child to be told ‘it’s ok, he/ she doesn’t understand’ if they are inappropriately touched for any reason. They should feel the need to speak up if that happens to them for any reason, and as a parent I should be able to model that behaviour and protect my child so that they know it’s ok to say something if they feel uncomfortable, regardless if the person making them uncomfortable has a disability.

So, basically OP, people should be more understandable when getting hit, bitten, hair pulled by someone with a hidden disability because they can’t help it. People should be more understandable when their loved one is killed because someone with a mental illness or hidden disability is having a psychotic episode.

Sick and tired of the excuses. Violence is never okay.

I find that people seem to decide you think something is ok, if you feel the solution to certain behaviours is different for some people with differences.

Lets say this slowly again:
PHYSICAL VIOLENCE IS NOT ACCEPTABLE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

this remains true even if the person is ND. you make damn sure as the carer/parent that they understand that. or, you face the consequences. Be that legal or otherwise.

We must stop excusing bad behaviour by blaming it on peoples Neuro status.

the staring and the fixation is also not acceptable, the rudeness is not acceptable, the people jumping to the defence "BeAcauSE tHeY arE NeUroDiVerGent" its acceptable crap needs to stop. It is YOU who are the problem, not the rest of the population who are rapidly loosing their tollerance due to bad behaviour being normalised.

PHYSICAL VIOLENCE IS NOT OK.

The problem is OP that an increasing number of people aren't taking the steps you are to protect the person they're caring for or other people from situations that may cause a reaction and expect that other people that are hurt or have things damaged to quietly accept it and walk away because a disability is involved and labelled ableist if you don't.

My neighbour is a prime example of someone who doesn't attempt to give her ND children any support or mitigate their impact on those around them when they're damaging cars and property, hurting animals and throwing/kicking things at people.
She kicks them out to 'play' and doesn't intervene when they're doing those things, and when approached about it yells at people they've got ADHD and you're unreasonable to care about being affected.

I totally understand that there's times when a situation cannot be avoided and I might be hurt or something damaged as 'collateral damage' in a bigger picture. If your son hit me because of his disability, sometimes that happens, if you attempted to stop it or were clearly overwhelmed by the situation that's completely different to standing there and watching it happen, or leaving him unsupervised and it happens, and then telling me I'm ableist because I have an issue with my property being damaged, my animals being hurt or me being physically hurt.

All of this.

My toddler was slapped full across the face when sitting in a swing at a play park by a large adult man with a learning disability. His carers were two very young and slightly built women who were much shorter than him and had no hope of restraining him.

I don't blame the man but I do blame the care providers for not ensuring he had carers who were capable of restraining him and managing his violent behaviour.

If he had continued his attack it would have been awful.

Oh come on, many people can’t even tolerate a cyclist on the road or someone with a private registration on their car..you’re expecting too much of people.

Uh, if someone with Parkinsons or a 4 yo spilled a cup of tea over me and then LAUGHED, I would absolutely have a problem with that. Spilling a cup of tea is an accident, laughing when you've just scalded someone and ruined their clothes is a shocking level of rudeness.

I do not feel that children who genuinely full time support are treated the way you imply. Non-verbal children who struggle to communicate or regulate their emotions at all are placed in special schools in very small classes where the teachers are trained and prepared for potential meltdowns which might be violent. It is your role as a parent/carer to prevent members of the public being hurt. You cannot expect other people to be fine with being hit by your son because he has any kind of SEN, and if they do not know he has SEN they are going to react the exact same way as they would react to anyone else hitting them.

Children with milder ND where they are capable of managing their behaviour but need more support do not always get that support, so I agree with you to an extent there. Reasonable adjustments do need to be made, but they do need to be reasonable for everyone and not put other people at a massive disadvantage. This is how the adult world works too- if you harm another person ND will be taken into account by the legal system but will not allow you to walk away without consequences. The workplace should make accommodations but can still expect a level of performance from you.

There is a culture of not making children do things they don't want to do in case it makes them "anxious" and often ND adds another layer to this. That is setting them up to fail. You have to do things which make you anxious in life. Living a life where you never leave your comfort zone isn't just almost impossible but also an extremely small life that no-one should be trapped in.

I am not (and shouldn't have to!) going to tolerate my child having her education disrupted or being made unsafe at school. It is her job to be kind and inclusive to other children and accepting of their differing abilities, but it is not her job to be accepting of being physically hurt or prevented from learning.

And before you ask, yes, I have ND myself.

Neither ASD, or ADHD, or Tourettes come with the "symptom" of physically harming others. People with these conditions generally have capacity and are not exempt from the laws that govern the rest of us and equally are protected by those laws from physical harm by others.

When something like a learning disability means that an individual hasn't got capacity then the law treats them differently, as it should

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

To be honest, if I, a non-expert, am assaulted, I don't have the ability or the knowledge to assess the level of that person's disability and therefore their level of responsibility for what they've done.
Obviously yes, sometimes it will be clear that the person has a severe disability. But sometimes it won't be obvious. If I were to report a significant assault to the police and they decided not to pursue charges (or whatever the right police term is) due to a disability, I'd be fine with that. But I don't think a blanket "don't report anything" is appropriate.

On the rare occasions my 18 leaves the house we get stared at where ever we go - he is over 6 ft so this makes him uncomfortable, some people smirk - he won't make eye contact but he can see what you are doing & the judgement that flicks across your face in that nano second
So he lets go but then he can't cope he will start to stim, so you stare some more - there are a few more smirks & some outright laughs & then limbs start flying & things are grabbed but according to lots of people he is at fault - you have missed then chain of events & the fact that the NT person started that chain
This is just an example, a snap shot of one instance in one of days of the last 18 years - give us a break 💔

@ClosetBasketCase so when the lady with dementia stares at you in a cafe who do you report her to? And what do you think should be done about it?

Ime it's those with disabilities that get a) most abuse and b) stared at the most, so I'm not really sure that nt people are the real victims here.

No it would not legally be murder ever. Until a baby is born, it is not legally a person. If it was, all abortion would legally be murder.

Of course someone with no legal capacity is not going to be prosecuted. They may be incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital, but they will not face trial and prison. Someone legally has to be criminally responsible to do so.

Perhaps those that feel that way think these individuals should be incarcerated in mental asylums the way they were 200 years ago?

Secure mental hospitals are the inevitable consequence of simply accepting a person with ‘hidden disabilities’ cannot avoid assaulting people. It is either that or prison. I find it very ableist to suggest that autistic people are violent and unable to stop themselves assaulting other - the vast majority are perfectly capable of learning not to (albeit often at an older age than other children).

Maybe you should be looking into why there are so many people with ‘hidden disabilities’ these days?? It’s like a pandemic. Did they put something in the water?! Maybe some people are tired of the fact that normal people have to walk on egg shells these days because every second person has a disability, is ND etc etc and the list goes on. Everything we say and do is wrong and you can have a rant but we can’t…

People saying the public have a right not to be assaulted are of course, completely correct and yes you should be allowed to defend yourself. What throws me about this discussion is the seeming lack of nuance or proportionality in our response. Now this may be because people are responding simply with headline point because its an online discussion forum and it doesnt represent their full view but it is a little alarming.

No one should ever be hit by anyone but if a small child/ toddler hits you, you physically stop them, remove them from the situation and put in age appropriate consequences. If a 90 year old lady with dementia hits you, she is likely lashing out from fear so you remove yourself or restrain her but de-escalate the situation. If a NT person on the street hits you, you have the right to defend yourself as necessary I think this includes hitting back if needed (personally I'd run because I'm a weakling). We all get the difference right?

In terms of the hair pulling, none of us where there so cannot know the level of intent, understanding etc. However, if we accept that it was clear there was some level of learning disability then no punching him in the face while shrieking is not a normal and proportional response. The carer should have stepped in but as they didn't the man should have been made to let go, physically if required but not by being beaten up, the girl removed and the situation de-escalated.

My toddler went through a hair yanking stage. He was entranced by it, there was no malicious intent, he wasn't trying to hurt but there was a lack of understanding and empathy. I, as the adult, have that understanding and empathy so yes I immediately stop it but don't physically hurt him back.

Mumsnet is inherently ableist, yes. However, no matter what the disability, physical assault is not OK.

I have long hair in a pony tail. I also have a severe spinal injury. I don't go out much because of the pain and risk to my spine. I shouldn't have to stay locked away in case someone bumps my car, walks into me in a supermarket or jostles me in a queue, but I do.

If someone grabbed and pulled on my ponytail, they'd literally kill me. That may not be the fault of the person who did it, but I can guarantee that my family would hold them responsible, as would the law.

If someone is liable to attack other people, they should be with someone who can prevent this from happening, or they should not be in a situation where they can carry this out. If that means not going to a small café, then so be it. I have to stay out of situations that might put me at risk, so the same should apply to other disabled people. No one should be assaulted by anyone.