"Ooh look Mavis there's another one"

[Jimjams]

Said by one old "dear" to her old biddy friend at a NT property this morning. DS1 was rushing past to inspect the doorbell for the 5th time in 2 minutes. My friend's autistic dd had just been trying to pick up a cat.

Ah well I'm always moaning that people only see bad behaviour and not that the behaviour is obviously not normal so should be grateful I guess.

At least we can get out when the younger ones are in nursery! Good morning apart from that.

sorry i was laughing!

My friend, who i made here who's daughter has special needs, said 'at least i'm not the only one here with a major buggy anymore' bless, we can both get stared at now

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Is there any chance that she meant, "Ooh look, there's another little child, how nice"??!!

Absolutely no chance Frogs!

For starters our kids aren't so little anymmore! (not the autis anyway- the cute young ones wewre at nursery).

glad to hear you had a good morning inspite of mavis and mabel!! :)

Jimjams - read some of your other posts about people being rude, tut-tutting etc when you've had a problem with your son. How would you prefer people to react, obviously apart from not being rude?

A very good friend of mine has had a t-shirt made for her son that says "please be patient I am autistic" as she is so fed up of all the hassle she gets when she goes out. I have mixed views on it but like everything it is individual choice.

TBH Avalon I'd prefer people to ignore us. Or if people do comment then to back down once given an explanation. More details of yesterdays trip give a whole range of responses.

Mavis and Mabel were quite amusing really. They'd tried to have a conversation with my friend's dd and had been left looking a bit confused. My friend had given them a brief explanation (something along the lines of "she doesn't understand") so I think seeing ds1 as well was too much for them

My poor friend had more hassle yesterday- ds1 was rather angelic for most of it. Her dd was a bit wild. She has set routines in that garden one of which is climbing onto the lower branches of a huge tree. A gardener woman came along and said "will you get your child off the tree". My friend started to get her dd down (not always easy) and apologised politely saying "I'm really sorry she's autistic and she's set this up as part of her routine". To which the woman replied " I don't care about that we have to look after the trees you know". My friend was really pissed off because as she said there are so few places we can actually go with our kids that it's heartbreaking to have a trip out runied.

10 minutes later her dd ran away from her straight to a bee hive (my friend's phobia). A man was working nearby with a chainsaw - which he turned off to shout "bees bees" My friend was shouting "i know I know" trying to keep up with her dd (7 years old and very fast). A beekeper was working with the bees and had them crawling all over him and her dd ran right up to the hive. Friend emerged looking shocked. On the way past she said to the man with the chainsaw that her dd was autistic. A few minutes later he came over to speak to us. Ds1 and friend's dd were in the summer house- ds1 yelping (echoes) and friend's dd trying to barricade us out (sulking). The man with the chainsaw was LOVELY. really lovely. Was telling us how he'd done some work at a local autistic school, and was laughing about the bees. We were both really touched tbh that he took his time to come and chat. My friend told him that she'd been told off for her dd climbing on the tree and he just laughed and raised his eyes (honest to god this tree was massive an elephant could have sat on it without damaging it) That lovely man made up for the old bat with the tree.

On the way out some gardeners were working and had set up some buckets. She grabbed one and ran away with it- luckily ran up to a gardener and gave it to him saying something insane - and he just looked confused (fair enough). At least he didn't moan about the bucket being moved.

Remember all this happened in a visit to a garden that lasted one and a half hours. Nothing unsual took place, the behaviour wasn't particularly bad- there were no meltdowns and we weren't in a confined space (where the tut tuts are louder and the comments are more frequent). That's why i think we like to be ignored (or have someone like the chainsaw man who just treats incidents as amusing and is friendly). Fielding the general public for much longer is just exhausting tbh.

Actually BH at the end of the visit (after mavis and mabel's comments) my friend did say "i'm going to get a bloody t-shirt made up I'm sick of this"

Thank you Jimjams.