Anyone else worry that they might 'appear' on Mumsnet?

[Gwynie]

Yesterday I was 'slightly' irrtated by my nephew when shopping in Tesco yesterday and told him that I would tell his mum how naughty he had been, at which point I noticed that people had turned their heads to watch me. I wasn't shouting, but I was using my stern voice.

It made me think that I could find my little incident appearing as a thread on Mumsnet, not that you're all parenting spies or anything .

I'm assuming that I am not the only one who thinks this way (or maybe I am the only paranoid member out there....)

Forgot to mention, that I wrestling with the straps in the trolley that were holding my nephew in(as he wanted to climb out) and I was trying to pull them out of his hand to do them back up again. But to someone else it may have looked as if I was some horrible rough person.

I wouldn't mind appearing on mumsnet as then I would have the chance to put the record straight. I'm always being stared at in public when I'm talking to ds1 (3 but looks older). As he has language delay I have to talk to him in a very direct way. So for example if I want him to get in the car I have to say "A sit on seat"- maybe several times. I have had someone stop and stare once. If he reacts quickly then I may say something like "good sitting". People quite oftrn turn thei head. In fact if there's one thing I can't stand it's people trying to talk him into doing something when I've told them he won't understand. E.g "Just hold your little foot still darling whilst I get this little machine and tickle a little bit" squeeky voice going straight over his head. I've now found a great shoeshop where the woman said "It's like having sheep you have to hold them down and just get on with it otherwise you stress them out even more." Exactly

I think that anyone who posts on mumsnet, is a parent and can relate to anything that we do, but saying that, in tesco yesterday there was this women...................................

I think the same myself !!!

Only last Saturday I had taken a really grungey whingey dd to the lovely local country park for a walk and all she was doing was whining - anyway then she started having a strop on the swing (wanted Daddy to push her - but he was at work !) and I just suddenly snapped and had enough !! Picked her up screaming and tucked her under my arm and marched her out of the park - I could feel so many disgusted eyes burning into me - and I wasn't proud of myself - but I really had had enough !!

I fully expected to see myself on here too !!! And now I am !!! ROTFL

Thanks for that Jimjams - after a particulary stressful visit to the shoe shop with dd (22mths) and my mum - (forewarned it would be stressful I hasten to add). Dd HATES the shoe measuring device, and have to steel myself for the whole sorry saga. So, the screaming starts, everyone stops to look, I try to just get on with it, the shoe asst is trying to distract her with a big red fluffy elephant, and mum is talking in quite a frantic high pitched voice "ooh, ooh, look over here! Whats that ! Look at that little boy being good! Have a biscuit!etc etc - you get the drift. Consequently the whole sorry affair takes twice as long - like you, I'm just a 'pin her down and get it over with' kind of girl

PS - it was Thurs afternoon, around 4pm in Clinkards, The Mall, Cribbs Causeway, Bristol - yep, that was ME!

Ha, Ha, happydays

I have seen the odd thread on here over the last year or so when someone has commented on the behaviour of mothers they have seen out and about, hence the worry that I could be the subject of one of those threads one day.

So, yes, I think that vast majority of us understand how trying it can be to be a mother(and aunty!), but not all would maybe admit it, I don't know.

leese I've been there and the rest. I have to ring the shoe shop and warn them we're coming- they are great though. The sheep woman doesn't mond being kicked in the face- she's fantastic. Last time my Mum was pinning him down, I was trying to hold his kicking foot and the sheep waoman was tyring to cram a shoe on him.

He had to have a blood test recently and I was dreading it but I have to say the hospital were brillinat. DH held him down, a nurse held his arm straight while another one took the blood. I was holding the baby whilst trying to cram choccy buttons in his screaming mouth.

Scatterbrain you wouldn't believe the number of times we've done the screaming routine. Godstone Farm he wouldn't leave a spot by a tractor and had to be carried screaming back to the car. Daymer Bay was the worst ever. He got stuck on the steps to the beach. (Not literally- just he had a bit of a stair obsession at the time). He was in everyone's way and wouldn't move so I took him down to the beach. Started screaming and trying to get back to the car- then wouldn't get out of the car- just screaming and smashing his head on the window (that usually gets a few stares). Tried to get him back onto the beach and he just threw himself screaming onto the sand, before charging back to the car. I just sat on the beach and sobbed. After that wouldn't go near a beach again until last week- hooray!!!! (Daymer Bay was in August). Would scream as soon as he saw the sea and peg it in the other direction. Last week he was watching trains but still he was on the beach for ages. NOw we just need to get him onto grass. Recent trips to the moors have just ended in screaming (although he wil now walk on a path) and headbutting the car bonnet (because we'd tried to get him onto the grass). Now that got some looks. And a comment form a bisitng friend "i thought you may have been exagerating but I see you weren't".

So you can see that my skin is now so thick I barely notice the stares. Often people look for something that has upset him, so the other week when he wouldn't walk from tarmac onto a path other walkers thought it was because of their dog. It wasn't- itwas just having to move from tarmac to a path. I do know what the comment "um how old is he?" means though. Oh the joys of autism.

Jimjams, please post the name of the shoe shop! I have just had the same experience with Ds this morning. It ended up with him thrashing round on the floor, while the poor woman tried to see if the shoes fitted him! I wanted the floor to open up and swallow us.

hmb I had the wonderful experience of ds throwing himself on the floor in a hairdressing salon yesterday because he didn't want to have his hair cut. I too wished the ground would swallow me up, about the time that everyone in the salon started glancing around at ds to see what was going on.

Not wanting to repeat the experience just yet, I cut it myself this morning and think it looks pretty good, considering.

All these make my tales of shopping woe quite tame in comparison.

Of course, it didn't help this morning that ds woke up a grumpy sod, which then made mummy a grumpy sod. Ds decides he wants to walk in the shopping centre, that's fine... he's normally quite well-behaved in their. Went to buy a birthday card and that's when it went all pear-shaped.

Ds decides to grab every card, every teddy, every fragile ornament on every low shelf. It was a nightmare! Then he decides to lie on the ground and not move (and let's face it, card shops don't have the widest aisles do they?!). By the end of it I not too gently dump him back in his pushchair. I have an audience (who to match us, also look grumpy).

Why those stupid places put cuddly toys and fragile looking ornaments at toddler level, I'll never know.

Oh and on the way home I bumped into an elderly interfering woman who lives near me who can't understand why ds doesn't love her yappy dogs (he's terrified of them) and gave me a lecture on me losing weight (I had flu recently ffs!) and on not putting a hat and gloves on my son (he pulls the damn things off - he's learning consequences).

Holly2, I have been there! Thankfully it was in my kitchen and so wasn't too embarasing. The last time Ds went to the hairdressers it took 2 adults to hold him down, while 2 girls tried to cut his hair! I have taken to giving him a number4 cut, which I hate, but at least it means it only has to be done 2-3 times a year

Jimjams I'm reminded of a woman I met in a health club a couple of years ago with an autistic son. Her life sounds very similar to yours. One time her dh had taken her ds out somewhere and he refused to get back into the car when it was time to go. Her dh had to physically put him, screaming, into the car which at the age of about 6 or 7 was not easy. A passerby was watching this, took down the numberplate of the car and reported "an abduction of a child" to the police. When the police turned up at their house they explained about the autism. Horrid experience for them.

We had a shoe shop incident on Wednesday too. My Dd was being fitted for only her second ever pair of shoes (she's a month short of 2years). And she screamed and screamed and screamed. The girl doing her started off, "yes she's only got 2 or 3 weeks of growth left in them" she measured her as a 5 1/2 and then when those were too big a 5 (which is only a half size bigger than what she was in) and then it was "well I suppose she can probably manage in those a bit longer...."

So I'm not going to buy her any shoes. She can manage in the ones she's got for a bit longer yet. Then we can buy some cheap unfitted sandals for the summer and she can manage in those and wellies. Maybe after that she will be a little more cooperative. Maybe not, but we'll deal with that when it comes. I don't believe in forcing her, if she's afraid then I'm just going to increase her fear by forcing her, if it's something else then who am I to impose my will on her? I'm not critisizing anyone elses choices - and of course I understand it's a completely different matter when you're talking about autism.

Trouble is ds has been like this for over a year, so I can't wait and see if he grows out of it. And I hope that no-one thought that I was comparing the stress that Jimjams has to my own. I just thought that she had found a very sensible shop assistant.

CAM, I'm sure that was an awful thing for your friends, but, I hope, easily explained. But what if you really believe a child is being abducted? Or abused? Should you really keep quiet? It's very hard, particularly if you think of Victoria Climbie or James Bulger. If only some interfering so-and-so had whisked him off the police station in time. Sadly, even 'interference' from childminders and neighbours couldn't save Victoria when all the professionals involved were so criminally useless. I couldn't believe a paediatrician wouldn't see what a middle-aged childminder could spot instantly - a little child covered in bruises and burns.

I dread that happening cam. A month ago I picked ds1 up from nursery. i forgot to tell him we were picking dh up from work for lunch (stupid stupid- I always tell him what we're doing) so when we turned left rather than right to go home he went ape. I was trying to shout above the noise "we're going to get daddy- where are we going"- to try and get him to listen- but he kept screaming and whacking himself. In the end I just turned the car radio up (bad mother moment I think). I realised with horror after about 5 minutes- when I caught sight of him in the mirror- that he'd smashed his face and had given himself the hugest nosebleed. he was covered with blood and screaming- I was convinced i was going to get the police and social services turning up!!!

hmb- the shoe shop is conker shoes in totnes- they make the lovliest (and expensive) shoes in the whole world (they have a website). he gets one pair for winter and then doodles for summer- I just cram some on and run!

Anais- we've tried everything to get him to cope with the grass, the sea, shoes haircuts (ok sincxe we moved back to Devon- my friend does it and I cram choccy buttons into him- he just about manages now). We've tried pecsing it out (using piccies to explain), we've tried leaving it, tried to let him take it in his own time, tried to jolly him into it, force him until he sees it's Ok. Unfortunately overriding anxiety is one of the main characteristics of autism. I respect his anxiety as much as I can (for example I don;t hoover when he's around, and I wouldn;t put the washing machine on and then expect him to cooperate- we don't go to restaurants, we don't go to soft play or anywhere structured (eg storytime, theatre, cinema). If we go to donkey parks or whatever we do let him stand by the giftshop door until he's ready to move- or try and cajole him with something he likes (swing or slide), if he starts screaming because someone has shut the front door "wrong" then I will open and close it again, if Mum has parked her car where he can't see it then she will take him up to it, and so the list goes on, but we have another child and there are certain things he has to do -new shoes, new coat, haircuts and traumatic as they are he has to get on with it. I know you weren't criticising but I would hate anyone to think that I ignore the autism and force him to behave in a way that causes great anxiety when we really don't).

Quite agree Aloha and my friends understood what it looked like to others. However, as Jimjams says it is horrid when people don't know what it's like and the parents are doing their best. They know how to deal with their child and have no choice in certain circumstances.

Jimjams, no I didn't mean that at all. I posted this morning having just had (yet another) run in with my mother. Not about the shoes, but her reaction to that had been "Well she's got to learn...."

I can hardly begin to imagine what it's like to live with an autistic child. I can't think for a minute that you would be doing things with your son that will make life more difficult in the long run. I would never make a judgement about the way you cope with the sort of things you have to cope with on a day to day basis.

it's ok anais- I didn't think you were- I was just concerned that my posts might make it sound like I didn't care when obviously I do. I spend a lot of my time these days worrying I'm turning into a bitter and twisted old crone (actually I am)- so I was worried that I sounded like one.

Mothers! Who'd have them. Actually mine's great- but my MIL...... Hmm different story. Last week dh was on the phone to her and he was playing with the computer mouse DH said "J don't do that you menace" then to his mother "oh hes so naughty" (bearing in mind that ds1 was never "into things" so we like ds2 being mischevous). Her reply: "well he won't learn if that's how you tell him off" aaggghhhh!!!

We've done the screaming in the shoe shop routine SO many times too!!! We also used to do the haircut screaming routine, but then got my nannie to take him and he was as good as gold - little bugger! But then she went on maternity leave and I really couldn't get him anywhere near the hairdresser's. So I bit the bullet and persuaded him to let me loose with the clippers - not that it was a REALLY awful job, but dh did shriek when he saw him (longish hair to crew cut!!!)!!! Poor child - I have been rightly banned from the clippers!!!