to tell off a child that is not my own?

[Sheeta]

It was raining this afternoon so went to the soft play centre.

DS is 20mo and was playing in one of those little tikes plastic cars. Older boy (about 5?) smashes into him and yells 'GET OUT OF THE WAY' in quite a horrible way (properly yelling). Scared DS quite a lot and he started crying.

I just said 'please don't talk to him like that, it's not very nice'

The Mum tells me off, asking me not to tell off her son. I point out that maybe she should have said something first.

Was I out of order? If you think I was, please tell me. I have never thought twice about asking another child to be careful/not walk backwards/don't hit etc. I understand that some people might not like it, but I just assumed that the Mum hadn't seen it happen (as it was she was right there, watching. she just ignored it )

Well?

YANBU. I have an ASD son and have done the kind of 'training' / puppywalking stuff that Smallwhitecat was talking about, it's part of life with an ASD toddler. Basically it's everytime you leave the home - you have to be on alert the whole time and yes you get horrible looks and unhelpful comments but you stick to your child like glue because you have to reinforce the appropriate reaction to their every single decision.
My point is I would still not have any problem with someone telling off my child in a calm, reasonable manner as I would have been there within seconds to continue the program. You just need to say 'thanks I'll take it from here.' Obviously if someone is insisting on a personal apology from my child then I'll explain or if they are shouting at my child I'll try to do the headmistress persona.

smallwhitecat I totally understand that you have a personal and professional stake in the topic and clearly have a lot ok knowledge in the area. However can you just concede that the OP was well within her rights in the moment to act as she did. Whether she was contributing negatively to the childs behaviour or not she has a duty and right to protect her child in a non threatening and polite manner. YOur posts are making me head ache because you seem to so inflexible in your understanding of the particular situation.

I'm actually wondering (and this is in NO WAY MEANT TO BE INSULTING) if smallwhitecat is either on the spectrum herself, or acting like she is.

Wow, I'm going to get flamed for this one, aren't I.

blimey, sheeta you are BRAVE!!

Hmm, I'm going to stand up and suggest that there are many NT parents who are seemingly incapable of viewing any situation from any other point than devoted parent to their particular beloved offspring.
Being stubborn and inflexible are not traits exclusive to the spectrum.
Otherwise a lot of dog owners would be dxd as well. And first-time mothers of the under 3s. And...

My LO was told off the other day for throwing things in the park. I had told him about 5 times and told him off/he was made to sit with me etc, then carried on doing it
So whilst i was talking to another mum he did it at a little girl and the other mum told him off - he was devastated and dissolved into tears, but it far more effect on him than my discipline

I think Smallwhitecat is just very very tired and fed up with all the commentary (some real, some just percieved because after a while you just assume everyone hates your child) she has to put up with at the moment. An older ASD child acting up in public can often be more identifiable but at a very young age it just looks like irrational bad behaviour (with ASD there is usually a valid reason). In fact it may not even be diagnosed and the parent still thinks they are just doing a rubbish job.

i THINK smallwhitecat has left the thread...i am left impotent.

As the mother of an adult dd with severe autism.......
The school holidays and the change to my dd's routine used to leave me feeling suicidal!

I should have been watching her more closely on many occasions but just couldn't function as well as I might have during term time.
I took her to public places, sometimes to protect her!
I felt like I could explode and lose my temper if forced to stay hidden at home. Selfish I know, people struggled with her behavior and occasionally she became aggressive to others.
I would apologise if it registered in my brain but usually I saw her misbehave and felt lost and incapable!

I make no excuses though because NO child should ever feel threatened and I'm sorry your little one was.

aww Pellmell bless you. No I dont want to have a go at you guys who have to live and look after a child with SN, you do a fantastic job, and i know how hard it can be, my niece has autism and i have worked with autistic adults, and just thankful when the end of the day has come that i can go home and relax. You parents have no such respite, and sometimes when you are totally nackerd it can be hard for you to function. That parent that Sheeta had a run in with was neither apologetic or polite and probably worse than her child. Parents like these, put you and smallwhitecat and others in a bad light. Keep doing a fantastic job pellmell

Sheeta - very sorry I called you Shona by mistake.

But in the light of how very serious this topic/thread is can I draw your attention to it as it is fairly comical.

love from the 'self righteous twat' frecklyspeckly

I feel sorry for smallwhitecat really, she is entitled to her opinion as you all are.

She obviously is very upset with the thread - she hasn't been back on - perhaps people have been a little harsh?

I know her opinions have put some people's backs up, but, she is dealing with a situation that many of us have little or no experience in, and although perhaps it's not how we would deal with things - does anyone think fellow MNetters have been a little bit kinder?

I don't know, just thinking out loud?

Anyway, back to my cornflakes (with gin as one of the earlier posters suggested)

I feel sorry for smallwhitecat really, she is entitled to her opinion as you all are.

She obviously is very upset with the thread - she hasn't been back on - perhaps people have been a little harsh?

I know her opinions have put some people's backs up, but, she is dealing with a situation that many of us have little or no experience in, and although perhaps it's not how we would deal with things - does anyone think fellow MNetters have been a little bit kinder?

I don't know, just thinking out loud?

Anyway, back to my cornflakes (with gin as one of the earlier posters suggested)

HTABF, that was me, I often have gin on my cornflakes!
It is just a difference of opinion, smallwhitecat has hers, but there were other parents of ASD children giving their opinions too, some of which took a different slant.
SWC's child is 2, and mine is 14. Hecate has 2 on the spectrum. Lovebuckets had an opinion, and pellmell was very honest about the continuous strain of parenting an sn child.
Parenting a child with particular needs has as many different alternatives as parenting one that doesn't.
I don't think the majority were unkind, but I choose my battles carefully because there are so many of them. So sometimes I just leave a thread because I can't see that there will ever be common ground, so why stay and get stressed?

What on earth has smallwhitecat said that is wrong?

She is right.

I have had to work bloody hard to get people (family) to stop telling ds1 off in certain situations because he loves it so when they bugger off home we and school are left with an utterly feral child - who takes about a week to calm down. Any response he gets from us is designed to reduce the likelihood of the behaviour happening again.

That is all smallwhitecat has tried to explain. She, like me almost certainly keeps a very close eye on her son, but sometimes you get it wrong.

And unfortunately most people can't spot a 10 year old severely autistic non verbal child with severe learning disabilities (looks normal doesn't he) let alone a child who speaks or is younger.

Incidentally his class (all with SLD's) goes en masse to soft play and I have always wanted to be a fly on the wall for those sessions.

SWC hasn't said anything that is wrong. It's just a matter of opinion, and matching your approach to your specific child's needs.
Sheeta didn't do anything wrong either, she spoke to a child that was endangering her own by his actions.

Ok have been back over the posts and cannot for the life of me work out what smallwhitecat has said that is wrong, or offensive. She just disagreed with the OP and in AIBU this is the point really, to have some people disagree.

I think she was explaining how things can be with an autistic child for those of us whose kids are NT. This is rather useful.

And of course autistic kids are not all going to be the same, and different things will work for them.

There WAS a lot of pompous moralising about giving kids a good talking to, as though this is the problem .

FWIW yes the OP handled it well, but the mother of the other child sounded exhausted. I am not going to judge any parent of a child with SEN for sitting back and letting another parent intervene, I find 3 NT utterly exhausting and I wonder if she was just tired.

It's not like Sheeta "told the child off" anyway; she made a simple polite request. Surely, even autistic children should be able to handle that much, or do we not expect to try to socialise them at all?

who said smallwhitecat did something wrong?

Just a point.. but the mother of the child was not too exhausted to tell off the OP.

Well tbh if an adult with Asperger's living independently told me they weren't doing something so my severely autistic non-verbal child shouldn't be either then I would be pretty pissed off.

However, of course a more vulnerable child who has difficulty understanding social rules needs watching. ds1 never goes to soft play with me without 2 adults paid to follow him around - that is for his safety more than anyone else's, he has no idea of danger, no concept of staying within soft play and doesn't answer to his name.

I don't think Sheena did anything wrong until she started being unpleasant about smallwhitecat, but I think the mother's response sounded more stressed than anything.

alardi- if someone made a polite request to ds1 I might tell them he was autistic (actually I probably wouldn't these days for reasons demonstrated on this thread, I would say he couldn't talk, or was learning disabled or nothing) to explain why they got no response from a hulking great 10 year old. Ds1 would just blank them.

The last time someone told him off directly (for pushing past them - there were 2 of us after him,he's fast and had got out of our hands) I didn't bother saying anything because I could see it was utterly pointless. So I left the gentleman huffing and puffing about the ignorance of today's youth enjoying his self righteousness. Pointless to explain that ds1 didn't understand a word the man had said to him. He wasn't interested and he certainly had no interest in learning about autism. Literally 2 minutes later someone asked me if he was autistic and said she could tell from his noises. So there is a huge difference in response from those with experience versus the ignorant.

No, as I said I employ TWO people to follow ds1 around when in soft play. However episodes such as that described in the OP can happen quickly. As I said nothing wrong with the OP's request but sometimes a harrassed explanation can sound more like an excuse.

Last week for example ds1 stole a 2 year old's crisp before he could be stopped. Luckily the parent's thought it hilarious (we were in a disability area so more likely to be surrounded by those sympathetic I guess).

The worst ever case I can remember was when I took ds1 to the park. I had no idea it was going to be so busy. It was raining (I only ever go to parks with ds1 when it's raining really so quieter) but it was heaving. He knew he was going to the park so we couldn't change our mind (would have been an hour of screaming, headbanging and handbiting) He got out ran off, my helper was looking after my other 2, I was in hot pursuit of ds1 and he ran straight into a small child who dropped her sweets into the gravel. Now he wouldn't even have noticed the child, and he didn't so got up and ran off. I was torn between wanting to help the young child (no mother in sight) but being completely unable to because are three gates into that park one of which leads onto a very busy road and ds1 has literally zero road sense. So the choice was do the decent thing and stop and help the child but risk a dead ds1. So I ran off after ds1- I had no choice.

We of course left as soon as we could, but the situation above must have looked awful and ds1 will not stand still long enough to allow me to explain. He doesn't have those skills.

I've asked for my post last night to be deleted, SWC - apologies. I should not be allowed near an internet connection when drinking...