Is autism being used as an excuse for behaviour?

[abracadabra1111]

Child age 5 (not mine) - In school spun around with metal water bottle (like one of those Stanley cup things) which resulted in him wacking two other kids in the head with it. Child then cried about it because he was scared he’d get in trouble.

Childs mother said ‘it’s ok because he’s autistic and can’t help it and thank god we paid privately for the diagnosis so that the school understand his autism’

No punishment or correction to behaviour given.

YABU - Getting carried away at school and ‘accidentally’ wacking two kids is completely acceptable in a 5 year old autistic boy

YNBU - to be mortified that there’s zero compassion towards the two poor sods wacked by the bottle and think that autism is being used as an excuse.

Neither. It sounds like it was an accident so as long as the child apologised, then no further action is necessary.

I don’t understand your YNBU though. Why would you be mortified at the lack of compassion unless you were directly involved and if you were directly involved, why didn’t you show them some sympathy?

'Excuse' is possibly a slightly unfair word as autism may well be the cause of that behaviour. But, we can't just accept that behaviour or sweep it under the carpet. There still need to be repercussions for the child, plans put in place to ensure it doesn't happen again and apologies from the child to victims. It's a very slippery slope for the child if his parents just accept that kind of behaviour as the norm for an autism diagnosis.

Difficult one for schools too. I read some research that you are more likely to get an autism diagnosis from a private consultation than an NHS one. It's almost like it benefits private health to have people continually going back... 🤔 Personally, I think schools need an official NHS diagnosis if the parents expect adjustments to be made.

Do you have a reference for that?

Schools work on need, not diagnosis. That's pretty important, given waiting lists of years.

The child’s mother said that? Really? That’s almost…..unbelievable 🤔.

Sounds like an accident in line with any 5 year old child’s behaviour and you’ve been influenced by the hideous stereotype being pushed lately that autistic children are ‘violent’. Gross topic and title 🤮

Oh yay another goady autism thread! We haven’t had one of these for ages! Goody

Some parents of autistic children use it as an excuse. Most don't.

Spinning around with a water bottle and accidentally whacking a kid on the head is something my non-ND child would do. It was an accident, no big drama needed, just the instruction to be more careful and to apologise.

I agree. My DS is autistic and it’s so bloody hard but to my mind, it means you have to parent more, not less.
It makes me sad when parents don’t even try to help their kids be the best version of themselves.

Not questioning your intentions but I don’t think you understand. Seeking a private diagnosis is often the only option for a child with profound autism to be able to safely attend school. Without the evidence of a diagnosis the local authority won’t give the child an EHCP or appropriate support at school. Personally if I had waited for the NHS my child would have started school at 6 years old. Getting a private diagnosis from exactly the same place the nhs refer to meant they could start school with their own age group and have 1:1 support. Once the assessment is done you don’t need to go back to the private healthcare provider, you generally just have the report passed on to your normal gp. It’s very unsurprising that private assessments have a higher rate of diagnosis as this route is often used by parents with no other choice. If the nhs was assessing children in a timely manner no one would be choosing to pay thousands of pounds for the sake of it.

This. Lazy parents who don't want to parent use autism/ADHD (even when not diagnosed) to excuse the child's behaviour rather than deal with the behaviour. Good parents parent regardless os a child having a diagnosis or not

I absolutely understand, I have personal experience of it.

The research wasn't suggesting more people were diagnosed with autism through private consultations. It was highlighting that a higher percentage of those that attend a consultation via private come away with an autism diagnosis than via the NHS.

The research wasn't focused solely on children, it was people in general.

To the poster asking where I found the study, I can't remember. I did loads of research into it a few years ago when we looked into autism for my family member.

Why did you put speech marks round ‘accidentally?’ Walking up to them and deliberately hitting them would be a different story. Anyone’s kid is capable of messing around and hurting someone unintentionally.

Thank you for sharing your experience. Unfortunately it is the case with this child where there is very little parenting involved by the mum, however the dad does seem to parent more and the boy is a lot more independent and well behaved under his dads watch.

I wish I was making this up but when the child was diagnosed with autism - I received a enthusiastic celebratory voice note saying ‘yay Timmy’s got the tis’… now it appears any time Timmy is badly behaved his ‘autism’ is mentioned. Makes me sad because my niece is autistic and their parents approach with support and corrective behaviour is miles apart from Timmy’s.

In this case I agree with the other posters - a child spinning around with a water bottle is really normal at that age, and accidentally bashing or banging into others happens so much with all children that age.

Is diagnosis being used to cover up poor behavior in general? I do think to a degree it is, but personally I think it is more likely the case with ADHD than Autism. Just simply because ADHD traits overlap "normal" behavior, especially for young boys, to a much greater degree, which makes correct diagnosis harder. Whereas autistic trains are quite a bit more distinct.

That isn't to say ADHD isn't real - it is, but that diagnosis are trait based, and grounded in self-reporting and observation, rather than objective medical measures, which does leave it open for mistakes or abuse.

@lxn889121 don’t forget there are two types of ADHD (plus the combined type); we don’t all run around unable to sit still.

Also, I don’t know where you got your ADHD diagnosis but mine involved two half days of testing. It wasn’t subjective. They don’t just ask you if you think you have poor working memory and nod sagely or whatever.

Sounds like a typical accident at that age tbh, I’ve seen kids do similar and of course they’re not punished for an obvious accident, just reminded to be careful about doing that kind of thing.

The kid is only young, and his mum is still adapting to the diagnosis and exactly what it means and how her parenting strategies need to change, so it makes sense to me that she’d be seeing autism at the root of everything right now.

5yr olds are still a bit unhinged tbh BUT DD would have got a stern talking to for it. I have autistic cousins, their mum would have absolutely not used autism as an excuse.

I think it is easy to use a diagnosis as a catch all reason for every behaviour and I imagine some parents do that. It helps to contextualise behaviour but it’s of no help to a child to not correct them.

Have you considered that with all of the awareness lately especially with adult celebrities being diagnosed almost daily there’s a large percentage of people on the NHS waiting list who have recognised autistic traits in themselves and are wanting to be assessed only for their peace of mind? It’s not going to change anything in their lives. Unfortunately they are on the same list as people who cannot progress with their lives without an assessment. Also Paediatric care is separate to adult and as I said before if someone are in a situation where their child can’t access the appropriate support to have a life as much in line with their peers and age group as possible they are highly likely to seek private healthcare.

Both of mine are autistic, if they did this I would be giving them consquences. People like to excuse shit parenting with autism/adhd. Sometimes I do wonder if they were diagnosed correctly and not just brought up on poor parenting and the parent has manipulated the assessment. (It does happen)

As a parent of an autistic child it’s my responsibility to manage his environment. If that goes wrong it’s my fault overall but he may also be somewhat at fault (situation dependent) and need a consequence.
The problem is at school they often don’t have the capacity to manage Sen children sufficiently. So it’s a combination of the child’s fault (although they may not have known other children would get hurt) and the school / governments fault for not being able to support Sen kids properly.

His mother probably feels he shouldn’t be disciplined because he doesn’t understand the consequences of what he did. (She may or may not be correct)

Yep poor behaviour/ poor parenting. Hugely over diagnosed. I enrolled students for 2 weeks last year and it seemed most had a label of adhd, autism etc, either diagnosed, self diagnosed, parent diagnosed, or on a list for a diagnosis. Parents were so pushy about getting it added to the kids records I wondered if there is financial support when labelled as such?

I think its always important to show compassion for people injured, whether by accident or in purpose.

I think autism can be a reason something happens.

I think some people might use it as an excuse, but others might be responding appropriately, just not in a way you recognise as good parenting. If you attend all the parenting courses after an autism course you often get taught a different way to parent. What good looks like will vary person to person because autism varies, so your niece might respond to behaviour techniques you agree with and recognise as parenting. Wheras another child might not respond but have lots of behaviour support thats very different.

I have zero idea if your example is just a crap parent or glossing over it in public and doing different stuff at home. children with autism have a range of parents just like NT ones.

I think the assessment was 100% manipulated. This all started when the child didn’t get into the preferred school and was allocated a school with 30 kids per class. Mum pushed the nursery to write a letter to say child wasn’t good in large groups and was speech delayed.

Mum then paid for a private assessment and honestly it’s the strangest thing I’ve read - it was written to the boy (4 years old at the time) like some sort of love letter and all the things described as autism (there wasn’t many things) seemed like normal things for that age. And it was in the mums words, there was very little observation of the child. The only thing the professionals observed was that Timmy likes to play with toys and doesn’t show much interest in things around him when he’s playing with toys..

Regarding his ‘speech delay’ this was attributed to his grommets which was resolved when he was 2 and he’s always spoken really clearly whenever I’ve been with him so I don’t understand why his speech delay from 3 years ago is also labelled as autism.

Apparently he is ‘fussy with food’ but mum loads him up on treats and whatever he wants before mealtime - so he’s not hungry and has zero table manner’s because he’s not hungry he’s never been told to sit and eat but I’m told this is autism…

On one occasion I was out with the mum and child, child was on his bike, mum stepped away for a couple of minutes. I was playing with boy getting him to ride his bike as fast as he could to and from me whilst describing to me the different things he cycles past, he was awesome. Mum returned then suddenly boy couldn’t ride bike, his feet was falling off the peddles and he stayed by mums side and completely went into a shell - like he was scared to be good at his bike. Mum told me he struggled with his bike because of his autism.

I could give a hundred examples of this. Also, the child has always been a bit a hitter, used to hit mum and scratch kids at nursery (got kicked out of nursery for 6 months) so I worry that he will hurt other kids but ‘it’s ok because he’s autistic’…

It really doesn’t sit well with me because it is detrimental those that are genuinely autistic also I feel the mum is holding the child back. The child is really independent when he’s with his dad… he only seems to display these autistic traits when he’s with his mum or if he’s done something wrong at school.

A diagnosis isn't required for DLA.

Yeah, you can't go anywhere these days without witnessing some sort of water-bottle-related violence caused by autistic people.