Feeling bad for DD

[BigRedLondonBus]

Yesterday I took my did to a market research session I had applied for.

it was a childrens group session about Lego that we’re looking for children aged 8-9 who like Lego. I applied as my daughter loves Lego, she has HF asd, the only criteria was children who like Lego age 8-9.

I attended the group with my sister who also got a place for her son. dd was very excited to attend the session. We arrived all fine and I mentioned to them that she has autism just so they were aware. She is verbal, and she is just like any other 8 year old girl. the children all went into the session and after around 15 minutes one of the researchers came over to me and said they want to take my dd out of the session. I was very surprised as She’s well behaved so I asked what the problem was and they told me she wasn’t “engaging” as much as the other children. I explained that that was just part of her autism and that she was excited to take part. they still wanted her to leave the session so I went to the room and asked dd to come out, Dd was very upset and said she wanted to stay and play, I tried to encourage her but she didn’t want to leave. We agreed that I would come back in 5 minutes.

At this point I was upset as dd wanted to stay and wasn’t misbehaving. If that was the reason I could see their point but the researchers wanted her to leave the room as she wasn’t engaging as much. that’s all they said it was.

After 5 minutes they came to get me to get dd to leave the group. I sat there for the remainder of the time with dd trying to persuade her that she had to leave because she “won” the competition as to not upset her, but she isn’t stupid, she knew she had done something ‘wrong’ but couldn’t understand what it was as she didn’t actually do anything wrong but she knew she was being excluded.

At one point the group of children came out into the waiting area and were all sat in a group chatting about what they thought about Lego whilst dd was sat with me across the other side of the room. I felt very sad for dd I wanted to leave but my sister was waiting for her son to finish and said it’s best not to highlight it to dd, so we just kept up that she had “won” the competition. I know it’s pathetic but I just feel sad about what happened. I just see dd as any other little girl but yesterday made me feel like she was being excluded from something because she’s different. A couple of the staff approached me to say they weren’t happy with dd being made to leave the session and they didn’t agree with it but they can’t over rule the researchers. I won’t apply for anything like that again as I don’t want dd to be made to feel like that again. She’s been to previous sessions and it’s never been an issue. Just wondering if others would be upset or if I’m being silly?

You're not being silly or pathetic at all! I would have felt the same as you. That was a very cruel way to treat your dd. I hope she is feeling ok today

You're not being at all silly! I would have been very upset too. It's a cruel way to treat a child. If they wanted particularly types of children they should have sent a questionnaire ahead of the session.

I do wonder if they would have done anything if you hadn't said anything (not blaming you at all, but I just think sometimes it's best not to announce as there are so many prejudices still in the world ... I'm obviously not talking about important places at school, but sometimes with things like clubs and holiday activities I just say DD is shy or gets overwhelmed easily, and to give me a call if there is a problem, as a lot of people have no clue what autism is and will jump to all sorts of false conclusions when they hear the word. I have lots of autistic traits myself and I remember my Mum saying she learnt early not to say anything about me being in my own world, or whatever, to teachers or holiday clubs, as if she did then it almost became a confirmation bias and teachers etc. would confirm that and not even try to engage me in lessons/sessions - it seemed to go better if she said nothing and just let everybody get on with it).

I would also be inclined to write to Lego's UK marketing department to tell them what happened, and explain how disappointed your DD was, and that if their policy is to exclude autistic people from their research (a) you think that's short-sighted given how much autistic people (including many adults) love Lego (if you look e.g. at Purple Ella's or Connor Ward's YouTube channels they often have Lego in the background) and (b) it's discriminatory. Autistic people are a significant part of their market, so they should be looking to absolutely understand what autistic people like about their products too, and not excluding them! If their marketing department is any good at all you might even get a voucher, which could take the sting out of it a bit for DD - plus I would hope it will make them review their research practices and give this some proper thought (honestly I'm not sure what they did is even legal, as autism is a disability so should be a protected characteristic I would have thought? Would they have kicked out somebody in a wheelchair with cerebral palsy because they couldn't "engage" in the same way physically as the others?)

That is awful, how dare they. I would be writing a strongly worded letter to whoever organised it. They are presumably trying to influence the outcome of the research.

I hope your dd is ok.

I mean, FFS, even if she wasn't engaging as much (with what ... the other children? Lego is mainly a solitary activity so very much SO WHAT?!) what harm does it do to let her stay and play? It's not like they had a more "sociable" child waiting in the wings to take her place? This is actually making me angry, I feel so sorry for you and your DD. Really hope she is feeling better today.

Would you consider explaining to her that you think they were discriminating against her, and she could help you write a letter to Lego (or even write it and sign it herself) - might give her some more agency in it and makes it even harder for Lego to ignore I think? She could send it with a picture of something brilliant she has made and send it to the CEO as well as the UK marketers and see if you can get their attention? Hopefully if you get a response she can learn something about self advocacy (never too early to start!)

I just think of all companies in the world, surely Lego should care about autistic people and what they like and think! Maybe this is actually an opportunity for your DD and for Lego to learn something important?

I am a market researcher and that is nuts. You always get people in groups who don’t engage as much as others, you work round it. But you don’t kick people out! I would definitely complain.

Thanks for the responses. It’s helped reassure me, I was so upset by it yesterday and today I still can’t take my mind off what happened. I thought Lego would be more inclusive. If they didn’t want SN children then they should have said, but they couldn’t because that’s discrimination but it’s ok to get her there then tell her she couldn’t take part. we travelled from south east London to the strand in central London just for the session. They were actually short on girls
For the group which hurt even more because they clearly didn’t want dd in there so bad despite being short on girls for the session, as if she wasn’t good enough. She kept asking why she had to leave and the other girls could stay. It’s like dds opinion didn’t matter. We went to watch the Lego movie recently and the song is about being part of a team and she kept asking why she wasn’t allowed to be part of the team. It was awful, all because she’s autistic. she sat there impeccably for the rest of the session (waiting for her cousin) so why couldn’t she have remained in the session. I think I will contact Lego as these people are representing them and I don’t feel they should be able to treat people that way especially a child, they must have been a very heartless person who asked for my dd to be removed from the session. I honestly didn’t think in this day and age that this kind of thing would happen, I thought people with disabilities were protected and couldn’t be treated differently but clearly I was wrong.

I would like to think that this is behaviour that Lego would not endorse, though I appreciate that view could be naive.

Was this a 3rd party research company or run by Lego itself?

Either way I would still complain but that would influence how I would approach it.

I think it was ran by a 3rd company but I imagine there must be some sort of connection to Lego itself to use their name. They were introduced to new Lego that isn’t available yet. I wouldn’t even know how to go about complaining I’ve spoken to the recruiter who is equally horried and wants to find out exactly what happened

So I am really not an expert (others please pitch in!) but I'd go for something like:

• DD writes a short letter with a photo attached of something fantastic she's made out of Lego, saying how much she loves Lego and the Lego movie, but how sad she was that she was asked to leave the session and couldn't join in and be part of the team.

• Cover letter from you explaining what happened (including details of date, time, the third party company, etc.) and saying you are disappointed and you don't think it reflects the brand values of Lego, or its customer base - which they must realise includes an awful lot of very passionate autistic people.

• Ask them to clarify their policy to you, and if this decision was not in fact consistent with their policy, ask them to make their policy and values clear to this agency and to any third parties they use in the future.

• Explain how damaging this was to your daughter's self esteem (to be marked out as "different" and isolated due to her autism, which is a recognised disability under the 2010 Equality Act - see CAB advice here which mentions Asperger's in a couple of places: www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/discrimination/protected-characteristics/what-counts-as-disability/), and also to Lego's brand perception in the autistic community.

I would send it to the UK Managing Director, Marina Edwards, at the following address. I would hope that worst case she'll pass it on to the complaints department and you'll get some kind of pro-forma but I'd hope they'll do better than that...

Marina Edwards
Vice President and General Manager, UK
LEGO Company Limited
33 Bath Road
Slough,
Berks SL1 3UF

www.linkedin.com/in/marina-edwards-43114626/?originalSubdomain=uk

Light I think that is excellent. I am sure that they would deal with this appropriately. As far as I am aware Lego is still a Danish family company? I haven’t Googled to check. I’d be surprised if they weren’t very unhappy with this incident.

And in my previous post I only meant that I wouldn’t go in all guns blazing, calling them disablist on social media. I’d try to understand who was at fault and give them a chance to make amends first.

I am so cross on your behalf OP. Yes absolutely complain in the strongest of terms about the disability discrimination your DD experienced. How dare they!

I think quite frankly I would have refused to take her out. She wasn't misbehaving and no two children whether or not they are autistic, behave the same in any given situation. What a bunch of twats!

Thank you for the comments, Thank you so much LightTripper amazing advice, I will do all of that. I hope for an apology for dd and that they will not treat any other children like that again. I mean I can’t imagine excluding any children from a group let alone one with a disability that hasn’t done anything wrong. They really need to learn from this mistake.

They really do. Let us know when you hear back. I really hope they have a good response that recognises what a misstep this was!