Today I said, 'look sorry he's autistic'

[aloha]

And blimey it worked!

Ds was policmanning the slide -yelling at kids whom he though were using it dangerously 'No, that's dangerous. You could have been killed' pmsl.
I am trying to watch dd (2) and am with a MN friend who has three kids, two of whom have ASDs anyway, and as I am leading ds away, a woman comes up to me in outrage telling me how ds has been scaring other kids and I just say, 'look sorry he's autistic' and she visibly recoiled, said, 'sorry' and sort of melted away. Result! Will be using that one more often, instead of 'oh fuck off and stop bothering me' which comes to mind even faster! (yes, I know they don't know yadayada but ds is an unusually small, chubby five year old who isn't about to knife anyone)

Oh wow

Good on you!

LOL at "You could have been killed" I have a mini-policeman too.

Bet she thinks twice next time she is tempted to complain, too.

Sometimes it just has to be said! good for you.

I have to say, I didn't say 'sorry' in a particularly 'sorry' sort of way
More in a sort of 'fuck off and stop bothering me' sort of way. She annoyed me!
I was a bit stunned by the result tbh. It was like a film going backwards fast. And you could tell she was just gearing up too.
Poor ds, he's going through a particularly policemanny phase atm. He was only trying to save them from themselves!

That conjures up a great picture.
I can imagine it is so tempting to tell people to fuck off but your approach might make them think differently before making ill informed decisions about other idiosyncratic kids.

Edukashun edukashun edukashun

pmsl at 'you could have been killed', btw.

it generally works for me too

lol, my 2 stop people in the street who are smoking and shout at them "stop smoking or youll die!" everyone so far has been so embarassed at being caught out with such an obvious personal death wish that they mumble an apology and something about trying to give up, before getting away as fast as possible.

Just noticed that Asda has banners up advertising Niquitin reduced from £15 to £5. So i was able to partially mitigate a womans shocked embarassment by telling her.

it beats me how people can even afford to smoke!

Oooh, I wish I had been there, Aloha!

LOL.

And the very idea of your ds 'scaring' children!