If you have a SEN child, would you be comfortable with this?

[Beetrootisthesecretingredient]

Context: DS7 is autistic. Verbal but with lots of sensory issues and is very rigid.
Yesterday we went cycling along the canal tow path, one of our usual Saturday activities. Its usually quiet and we have a nice time cycling to a certain bridge and back. DS is very noise sensitive. Yesterday there was a series of unfortunate events (in our world): someone using a chain saw, a baby cried and then a loud car backfired, all within 2 mins of each other. DS leaps off bike screams and cries and lies on the tow path. Meltdown.
This happened on a very narrow bit of towpath. At this exact same time 4 older male cyclists in all the lycra wanted to overtake us. DP went to DS to sooth/move out of way. Cyclists have now stopped and said loudly 'FFS just move him out of the way'.
I replied 'it won't take a second he's upset'.
More grumbling and general unkindness from cyclists. DP then loudly called cyclist 'inconsiderate twat'.
DP now wants to get DS a high vis vest that says 'I am autistic please be patient ' but I feel uncomfortable about it.
Fwiw we have a sunflower lanyard but these cyclists either didn't know what it represents of didn't care and DP just doesn't want to get in that situation again.... which ended with all stressed and called people twats.

Share the space and drop the pace apparently the canal and tow path code.

Im amazed anyone thinks cyclists can go full pelt on a shared path.

They don't have the high ground, but they are unrelated to the family (also of cyclists, as it happens) and do not need to be involved in the situation and are right not to want to be inconvenienced by it.

Muttering FFS to me means the DH was appearing to behave ineptly and indulgently - for crying out loud / here we go / jesus Christ / FFS all quite harmless and generally eye rolling.

Calling someone a twat outright is different. Especially when your're the one mollycoddling a child and expecting other adults to wait and watch. If a child needs moving, the parent accompanying them should realise and get on with it. It's actually not outrageous to expect to apologise for the way unusual or poor behaviour affects others around you, whether down to autism or not.

pedestrians always have priority on shared use paths including towpaths
In this instance, the family were the cyclists and they could gave caused a danger to pedestrians.

Do we only give consideration to autistic people in crisis now? If you ever read threads about access passes/queue jumps at places like theme parks you’ll see people saying that even though their child can queue for a significant length of time, it affects them later on so that’s why they need the pass to queue jump. So if one (or more) of the cyclists was autistic, just because they weren’t in “crisis” or showing any issues right at that point it doesn’t mean it won’t affect them later on surely?

For example I was out running a few months ago. I can get quite obsessive about my times. I was doing the best I ever had when a car very rapidly pulled up next to me and someone yelled at me asking me for directions. It scared me as they were so fast and loud and I did stop and gave them directions. But because I’d been so freaked out AND lost my timings for the run I ended up bursting into tears and went home crying and ended up not doing anything else I had planned that day. Ridiculous? Absolutely. But I can’t always control how small things affect me. So while the driver of the car thought I was perfectly fine when they drove off, I really wasn’t.

So just because the cyclists LOOK ok (and clearly everyone is assuming they are NT) doesn’t mean it hasn’t affected them. No one should assume. The cyclists shouldn’t assume the child was just being naughty and the parents shouldn’t have assumed the cyclists were just being dicks. Neither knows the others medical history or ND/NT status.

No, I wouldn't feel comfortable with my child wearing a vest with his medical conditions on it. It also isn't going to stop impatient people.

My child has a wheelchair which is obviously a very visible sign of a disability and it still doesn't stop impatient people unfortunately.

Google it.
There are massive signs all along to tow path with this information on.
We got off our bikes. Therefore we are pedestrians. Upthread, someone referred to the tow path as a cycle path which I thjnk says a lot to the entitlement that some cyclists seem to have towards other tow path users.

Stop generalising groups. You went out cycling. They were cycling too. It's your responsibility to keep your child safe. You didn't do that very effectively and others will have an opinion if you force them to stand witness to your child's meltdowns.

They were absolutely right that you should move him and let them pass. If it were a road, a train track, or he'd ended up in the canal you'd have tried harder for him. As he was fine, you were selfish to others who literally don't care how long you have to soothe him any more than how often you get up with any child in the night, struggle to feed them veg, make them brush their teeth or whatever. Your child isn't that centre of anyone else's world.

My daughter is autistic and has a lot of noise issues so lots of empathy. I think though that if he’s lying in an actual path it’s your responsibility to pick him up and move him to the side - for everyone’s safety. He can then take the time he needs to regulate.

Agree that it’s a safety consideration to be able to hear but the really low level loops might help just dampen the unexpected noises (bathroom dryers and ambulance sirens were a nightmare for us) while still leaving him able to hear the important things. Might be worth a shot if this situation is common for you.

and yes pedestrians have priority but he wasn’t a pedestrian either if he was lying in the road. He was just an obstruction.

these men sound awful for sure but if they’d been going faster they could have hit your son as no one would expect a child to be lying in the road.

Unless they were obstructing the emergency services or something equally urgent,, it is totally reasonable to expect ANY other users of the shared path to have a little bit patience to give the OP a moment to deal with the child.

Your son wasn’t a pedestrian if he was lying in the middle of the path - he was an obstruction and it was a dangerous place for him to be. It’s your responsibility to move him

There’s no need to throw personal insults around. I can read perfectly well, thank you.

People don’t “usually” find it obvious: how could they when so many disabilities are hidden disabilities which aren’t immediately obvious?

What’s your basis for the assertion that “it’s usually obvious when someone has autism of learning disabilities”? It’s well documented that a very high percentage of autistic people are generally able to mask in public - the exception being when they have a meltdown because they are completely overwhelmed. Do you have any credible evidence or statistics at all to support this assertion that you’ve made that it’s “obvious”?

Given the number of autistic people who have to fight for years to get a diagnosis or aren’t even diagnosed until they are adults, it’s clearly not going to be “obvious” to a random bystander whether someone has autism. A very large proportion of autistic people who don’t have learning disabilities put immense effort into masking in public in order to avoid being the target of dreadful behaviour from other people, so you have no idea at all what proportion of autistic people are clearly identifiable as such to a random stranger they encounter in public from your own observations because by definition the only ones that you will know are autistic are those who have told you so or are either having a meltdown at the time or are also intellectually disabled as well as autistic so unable to mask, so you have no idea how many people are in each category.

It would only be possible generally for you to identify that a stranger is autistic in cases where there were also intellectual impairments that prevent the person from masking (when academic research shows clearly that being able to mask generally actually makes things even harder for someone than for someone who can’t mask because the person who can mask gets less support and because masking has been shown by academic research to have an additional and hugely detrimental impact on mental health on top of the impact of dealing with being autistic: being able to mask doesn’t make someone’s support needs or the impact of their autism any lower, it just makes it less visible to others and means they are treated even worse).

There are a great many other medical conditions, too, aside from autism and learning disabilities that cause people to need more consideration or time or may mean they might block a pathway for a couple of minutes, many of which you might not be able to identify just from looking at someone: arthritis, ME, heart conditions, MS, severe asthma, etc.

Your comment was completely unevidenced and betrayed quite a lot of ignorance about autism, which is very concerning from somebody claiming to be a support worker. Your assertion that an appropriate solution would be for autistic people to wear badges or lanyards to mark them out and that this would lead to them being treated better is equally concerning. Do you recommend that everyone should walk around wearing clothing listing their medical history? Would you like to do so?

Im amazed anyone thinks cyclists can go full pelt on a shared path
No they shouldn't and I did indeed thought it was a cycle lane at first. A tow path is definitely different in that you shouldn't go anywhere near as fast, but it doesn't take away the fact that if you are creating a situation that puts others in danger, it is your responsibility to do everything to avoid and in this case, move the child.

Unless they were obstructing the emergency services or something equally urgent,, it is totally reasonable to expect ANY other users of the shared path to have a little bit patience to give the OP a moment to deal with the child
Again, it's not about patience but danger. If this instance, the child had time to get off his bike, and lay across before the father could get to him and comfort him so he was ahead. So again, what if a 7 years old was coming gently behind, trying to brake, struggled and hit the lying child blocking the path?

I think a high vis jacket advertising his condition to all and sundry is a bad idea.

Canal paths are shared facilities for pedestrians, cyclists, children and dog walkers.

It’s you who should have been more cycle path savvy, gone more slowly and been more alert for the unpredictable behaviour of other users. If you want to bat along, go to the velodrome!

If you are trying to excuse these cyclists - grown adults - swearing at parents of a distressed child on the basis that the cyclists might be upset that their precious cycling times might be disrupted by this then you really need to take a long, hard, look at yourself.

I have autistic children. I’m an autistic adult. One of my jobs as my children’s parent is gradually teaching them the techniques to be able to cope in a world that is not designed for them so that they can tolerate this sufficiently to behave reasonably as adults. I had to teach this to myself given I didn’t have a diagnosis or decent parents. However, this child is seven and is still learning those skills and so had a meltdown in public. That is to be expected. What isn’t to be expected is that you as an adult would think that your cycling times should take precedence in such a situation over a distressed child being cared for kindly.

All of this.

some people are just so clueless.

If any of these adults are ND they likely didn’t have anyone to teach them as they likely weren’t/aren’t diagnosed. And not every autistic person is able to learn appropriate coping mechanisms for every situation. If they were, why do people need access passes etc in a lot of situations? Surely they should all just learn to deal with queues?

Obviously in an ideal world all people can learn to deal with things that don’t go to plan. But as others have pointed out in previous threads, if someone can stop being autistic then they aren’t autistic. Learning to mask or cope doesn’t mean they aren’t struggling. Maybe the cyclist has already had to cope with multiple issues that day but this was the final straw? Who knows.

Obviously not but it's about priority of need isn't it ,if someone is in crisis there and then things have to be considered immediately not what may or may not happen later
And I'm it the the one suggesting the other cyclists maybe ND that's other posters, all we know as a fact is that the Ops child is autistic and the other cyclists were rude ,the other cyclists being ND is just a figment of other posters imagination.

The only people who created any danger in this situation were any cyclists who were cycling much too fast on a shared pathway - that was not a cycle lane so they had no reason whatsoever to presume would be clear of obstructions - in order for them to be able to stop in good time if there were obstructions ahead.

Such obstructions could take the form of small children, elderly people walking/ almost at a standstill, or any number of other things.

The only people to blame here for creating any danger are the cyclists themselves for not riding safely. There needs to be a system where bicycles are issued with number plates so that when repeated dangerous or antisocial behaviour is reported they can be banned from cycling and issued with large fines if they continue to do so illegally after a ban. I think this may be the only way to crush the entitled and often dangerous behaviour on roads and pathways. All decent cyclists who observe the rules and basic decency would welcome such a system.

Good grief for the last time the OP says in the opening post that they were trying to move him out of the way. It’s not like they were stood about admiring the view.

And I think it should be fairly obvious that cyclists don’t have priority over a person lying on the floor in distress?

I don’t think OP says anywhere the cyclists were going too quickly, only that they were rude and impatient while they were trying to deal
with their DS’s meltdown.

He’s 7, not 17. They were 2 adults. For safety’s sake he should have been moved, not allowed to lay on the ground. Woukd you have said the same he was laid in the middle of a road?

MAMILS are a disgusting breed

it doesn’t matter if other people like the idea because it’s such a huge spectrum and different things work for different people. You only need to be concerned about your DS. Will it help him? You could try it out and see.
I’ve seen some people use high vis like this and people generally are more considerate.

If DS’s issue is noise sensitivity, what about ear defenders or flare type stuff for the ride?

Nobody needs to know if someone else is ND. People just need to treat each other with basic respect.

If you see a 7 year old in huge distress in the middle of a pathway and the parents trying to help him, clearly having a go at them and swearing at them is not a reasonable way to behave regardless of why the child is distressed or if they are ND, and regardless of whether this interrupts your cycling times. Just pause your time recorder for a couple of minutes until you restart, or time the time the pause takes and deduct it from your total time at the end: hardly a big deal compared to a child so distressed they can’t even stand up.

I don’t see what someone did wrong by asking you directions. You could have chosen to ignore them if your cycling times was so important to you that you couldn’t possibly answer them. You chose to stop and answer them. If you had just ignored them they’d have asked someone else. They behaved perfectly reasonably by asking you. As I said, part of life is that other people exist, unexpected things happen and even if we are ND we have to learn to deal with that and that the entire world doesn’t revolve around whatever your goal is at the time. NT people are just as bad for this, if not worse, with terrible and selfish behaviour towards anybody who they perceive to be “in the way”.

ND people wearing clothes to identify them - like a Star of David in Nazi Germany - is not the solution. The solution is for everyone to become a little less selfish and a little less impatient and intolerant of everyone else and accept that their own preferences don’t always override everything else, especially a small distressed child.

Whether these cyclists were autistic or not is irrelevant. Whether the child was autistic or not is irrelevant, too, really. They were simply nasty people who thought that they had more right to be in public space than a little child in clear distress for whatever reason and were so self-important that they thought it was unacceptable that they would have to wait for a minute or two because someone else needed help. I hope everyone starts to stand up to such entitled, selfish and rude behaviour, especially when a small child is involved.