Other people's "brats" and my innocent son.....

[mamadadawahwah]

My son is just over 2 and he has a speech delay. A little boy started talking to him in the supermarket. My son didnt respond in the way this little boy liked (he was about 5) so he started screaming into my son's ear.

A few weeks back, a little boy being pushed in his pushchair spit in my son's face as I stopped for a bit to look at something in a shop.

Now in both instances, i could have caused a "scene", instead i glared at the parents of each of these kids, as obviously children that age must get this behaviour from parents or kids they associate with.

What unnerved me most is my wee son didnt know that he had been badly treated, thankfully. But i sure did. I just felt oh boy, here we go, life in the big world has started. My son is not a baby anymore and will have to take the tumbles that life shoves in front of him.

What would you have done/said to the parents of these kids? By the way, the mothers of both children saw what their kids did to my son and they were both the "hard and rough" types you didnt want to smart mouth, if you know what i mean.

probably get sent away with a book on how to be a better parent [rolls eyes]. feel like i have gone wrong somewhere.

dont say that misdee - you're so wrong.

i know. fed upo with glares etc from other parents though. she was yelling at some kid to go away the other day. he was nowhere near her.

it will get better, and as you said, you've got appointments to see what can be done/diagnosed. This is NO WAY your fault.

mmddww - you child having a speech delay is neither here nor there as far as I can see. Another child spitting in the face of your ds is totally unacceptable and if my ds did it to someone then I would tell him off and apologise to the parent. tbh it's not really the fact that another child had done this, it's the lack of reaction from the parent which I suspect has got your back up, as it would mine.

mmddww. I don't know if this may help but some children just act rude to other children regardless of the victim having SN or not. DS is a bit shy, and he had been screamed to and pushed by older children or even children his own age (2yrs old). And it gets me mad because he is now so wary of strange children that if one that he don't knows gets too near to him (even in a friendly way) he just panics, bt little by little I think the thing wil improve.

I believe that there are children that have special needs who can't be held responsible for bad behaviour BUT I believe they are a minority. So... I'm with you, I think that lots of parents (me as well for certain things) have a blind spot in the eye when judging their children actions and yes... some of those childen deserve to be called brats... because they actually are!

Ooops.. crossposted (by seven messages or so sorry )

QE

All that sitting around, has not been wasted, beautifully put.

Its easy to call other kids brats when yours is young but just remember, there but for the grace of god. I am with Misdee on this one, sorry if no-one else thinks its relevant, I do. Labelling the kids is not the way to react imo, its the parents who should deal with it as others have said. If the kids are brats then its still the parents' fault. And for all you know they do have some SN. How many times have I had to jump in, steer DS away, make it obvious that he needs more attention and supervision than most kids YET I still get people glaring and doing a salmon leap in front of their little darlings in case he throws some sand or something. If anyone is going to be more tolerant about kids' behaviour then it should be those who know how hard it can be to spot SN and how hard behaviour is to manage.

throw sand? throwing stones is much better.

better not let you ds meet my dd davros, there could be some inuries occuring.

I understand your protectiveness towards your ds mdw, and the fact that the mother didn't say something to her child certainly didn't help but calling other children brats is abit harsh. My ds who has SN's often behaves in such a way that other parents could interpret his behaviour as spiteful and nasty. Even though I know its inevitable that parents might consider my child a brat without knowing the circumstances I find it deeply upsetting.

My dd1 has SN but you wouldn't know it to look at her, one day we were in a softplay centre, when I had to go to the shops to get drinks so left the kids with DH, and misdee's oldest dd needed the toliet, so DH took her to the loo, my dd1 started to play up and attacked another child, the mother shouted at her and threatened to smack her, when DH came out of the loo with niece, she didn't realise that DD1 had SN, and was terrified when dh explianed that DD1 had SN. She is not a brat either
The fact is that the parents should have reacted, I would have done, because I feel that people need to be aware that not all children who are nasty are brats, just as not all brats have SN. The parents are reponsible for that child, and I would have been upset like you if a child done that to one of my kids but the parents didn't react.
Actually thinking about it, there is a child in DS' class who is very nasty, bullies the other kids, put a skipping rope round DS' neck and pulled it, he had a rope burn, the mother takes NO responible for her daughter and I know she has NO SN, she is a brat IMO....

My ds2 can go from being an angelic little 2yr-old to a screaming, furniture-throwing (more therapeutic than sand or stones I suppose ) little demon in seconds. The change is so sudden that even the pro's watching him have been unable to figure out what might have caused it. Like many other children with SN ds2's difficulties aren't obvious. You would certainly be unable to guess after just a few seconds of seeing him in a shop.

The parents were wrong IMHO in not apologising to you for their children's behaviour. That doesn't make their children "brats".

i thought i was being a miserable oversenstive old trout last night

Oi Misdee, don't try to take my title away! Oh no, just rememebred, I am the old cow so you CAN be the miserable trout

I have called my own child a brat before now!!!!!!!!!!! Just once or twice when telling my Husband how bad they have been.

I think mamadadawahwah was very upset over the incidences and although calling the children brats may seem harsh to some, describing them as 'naughty little boys' just wouldnt have sounded the same.

She was just upset and wanted to tell somebody, I'm sure she didnt intend to start a debate on wether we should call the odd child a brat or not!!!

Getting back to the point of this post, yes, I think the parents of the children involved should have acknowledged their child's behaviour and either made their child apologise or, if the child did indeed have special needs and wasn't able to apologise, explained the situation (briefly - one line would do, not expecting a life story) and apologised on their child's behalf. Surely that's just good manners?

That said, if your child does have SN and is prone to outbursts, I appreciate that it must be a total pain in the butt to have to explain things everytime something happens, but - and here is the big but - your explanations will help people have a better understanding of what you and your child have to deal with. And that has to be a good thing, doesn't it?

willow, oh how i thought that was a good idea when i 1st joined mumsnet 2years ago. got into aq bit of a rant about it jimjams IIRC, about how she should explain her ds behaviour. 2years on, my dd's behaviour is rather eccentric (no dd2, you do not lick the walls at boots the chemist!!), that i just dont bother. if she hits out i do apologuise if i get a chance, often other parents walk off in disgust. makes me sound awful i know, but when i'm running round after a 5year old, 2.5year old and a 14week old baby is screaming, can you blame for not bothering?

I'm more than willing to try to make sure that DS doesn't bump into anyone or jump on them etc but I do have to run after him. And it does get tiring smoothing out other people's feelings you don't even know when your own may well be crap at the time. Why is it my job to educate everyone? I can manage a few I suppose!

you know what really get to me? is when dd2 makes arun for it and tries to get the escalator. i'm running after her like a loon and yelling at her to stop, dont run up the escalator (often leaving dd1+3 alone to catch dd3) and no-one bopthers to stop her heading that way. they all stop and watch. one day she will make it and she'll have an accident.

wraong thread to rant, sorry!!

Can SN children be naughty?

That's probably extremely badly phrased, but I hope you know what I mean.

If ds1 or ds2 did any of those things that mdwww describes then I would most definitely apologise to the parents/child. Having seen some of the looks people give when the word "autism" is mentioned though I have to admit that I don't explain that my boys are autistic.

my dd is naughty at times. when she is delibratly being nasty to her sister and hitting her over the head with something cos its 'funny'. but she reacts diffeently when out, its like she is being defensive and protecting herself. she will either hide, go as small as possible, not make eye contact etc etc, or will hit out.

assumedname - yes, ds1 can most certainly be naughty. At the moment he's testing out the same boundaries as other 4yr-old boys do. He's now starting to realise that if he asks his dad for something I won't know about it unless either dh tells me or I overhear. Atm he's trying on the old "Mummy said no so I'll ask Daddy to see if he'll say yes" trick. I suppose the big difference is that even when he is doing something unrelated to his ASD we still have to use ASD-friendly techniques/methods to show that what he is doing is wrong.

of course children with SN can be naughty. DS1 is all the time- he does lots of things for a reaction.If he knows I'll shout he'll do it and laugh (which is why its best not to shout- unless you want the behaviour to become entrenched). However he has a lot less understanding of why something is naughty thatn ds2 (who is only 3). He also has no sense of shame (whcih is actually what you rely upon a lot when disciplining) and so he needs handling in a different way.

There are other occasions when he may not play by the rules, and may do something that looks naughty but is actually because of his SN. For example when he was in mainstream I was told he was refusing to enter a particualr room. I only found out later that the room had a flicking fluorescent light. His sensitivity to lights means theres no way he could tolerate that, and that should be accepted(just as you wouldn't put someone with epilepsy next to a strobe light).

When dealing with children with SN its always important to work out the trigger to bad behaviour, then give an appropriate response.