I no longer tell my child to be inclusive and kind

[Birdsfoottrefoil]

Interesting blog. We should teach our children it is ok discriminatory in order to keep themselves safe.

www.scarymommy.com/dont-tell-child-to-be-inclusive-kind/

My child with ASD is in mainstream school and relies on the kindness and inclusion of other kids to be able to get through the day. His social skills are shit (unsurprisingly) and he's often found annoying, irritating or weird by other kids.

In your rush to take care of your own you're willing to throw my kid under the bus. There are always shades of grey. Try to be more human, not because you're women but because if we don't where does it stop?

That’s not discrimination though

I did wonder about another word but decided discriminate was the correct word. ‘Discriminate’ is used to mean unjustifiably prejudiced but it also means to differentiate, to treat differently. There are loads of times when this is justified. We discriminate between people we feel comfortable with and those we feel uncomfortable with, between men and women, between adults and young children, between friends and bullies.

I also think we need to be careful about ‘being kind’ and what that means. A child with SEN wanted to hug my child. My initial response was to ‘be kind’ and let him. But this is not kind to my child (also SEN).

I think what might have helped me as a child and young woman would have been that we are all kind and courteous and polite, but if the other person breaks that social contract you are totally free to tell them to fuck off, make a fuss and 'tell on them'.

I think this is basically what my parents did. If someone touches you against your will/invades your space in a way that feels creepy/leers at you/whatever then that person is doing something wrong and you are entirely within your rights to push back. It's the teaching girls to hesitate, to analyze how the situation might be their fault and how to could avoid any conflict by adjusting their boundaries to accommodate the other person's breach of them, that does damage.

By the time I hit the age where men were creeping on me that point had sunk in well enough that rather than in any way blaming myself I just got angry, because obviously creepy man shouldn't be doing what he's doing and he is the one in the wrong. While that response can come with its own set of issues (grown men don't expect to be turned on and told off by tween girls who're clearly in full righteous indignation mode) in the long run I think it's a lot less emotionally damaging than the alternative.

Oh god yes to being told you can tell people to fuck off. There were times I wish my parents had told people to fuck.off so id feel better and keep it was ok to do the same.

Instead the burden falls on us to put up with it, keep.ourselves safe or out of a situation by walking away. Often at the expense if being able to do what we wanted to do.

Akd a teachers idea of resolving issues is to make them work with you or sticking them.in a group with you.

Yeah thanks for that spend my break hiding from these kids then have to sit next to them in class.

Who's stupid idea was that then

BCnamechanger I totally get your concerns - I have a couple of close friends with children with ASD, and yes, I do teach my child that they need to be friendly and include those children in group activities, and also that because he's the lucky one who's neurotypical, he's able to find ways of working round their quirks, whereas they physically can't work round him... there is no "meeting half way" in this instance.

But I don't think that's what's being discussed here - we're talking about behaviour which is actively harmful to other pupils, not simply behaviour that lies outside the normal range for neurotypical children.

My mother never taught me to be kind or polite, out of being a bit neglectful rather than for safety's sake.

I was really alarmed when I went to university and my friends would spend half their night talking to guys they didn't like because they felt it was "rude" or "mean" to tell them to go away. I've never felt the need to be polite to someone who is bothering me.

It's not that hard really though. Be respectful but if someone disrespects you, don't be afraid to tell them to fuck off.

that woman is an idiot. Sounds like she did indeed spend lots of time talking - at rather than with her daughter. And zero time listening.

Quite.

I do get the impression that a lot of US children are raised in a very authotarian way

Only skimmed the piece.

Reminds me of last year dd started secondary. Borough gave leaflet to all starting with tips and dos and don'ts. Lots of good stuff eg cycling safety and stuff. Thing that I found a bit iffy was it said they must always be polite to adults. I really felt that as the leaflet was talking about independence, it could have said something about if anyone makes you feel uncomfy it's fine to get away or something. It felt like a really glaring omission to me and I wondered why. Is it because it's mainly girls that are targeted by creepy men? Is it too contraversial a topic? Is it still seen as a fact of life for girls and up to them to sort out, as it was when I was young? Was it just written by a clueless man?

It felt like a good opportunity to give children (especially girls who are more socialised to be polite and more often targeted) permission to walk away, to move on the bus etc but it was missed.

I've told dad this obv.

DD lol not dad

Respect for others and listening to your instincts are not mutually exclusive.

We really aren't very good at enabling girls to be assertive and say no. I'm so sorry that this girl and her mother had to learn this in such an alarming way.

Slightly off topic but related - parents need to be aware that this approach of not allowing children personal boundaries is about to be inflicted on all our children in schools by the EHRC who are issuing guidelines that insist that a boy who self identifies as a girl must have access to the girls changing rooms, showers, etc and girls who object must be excluded from the changing rooms. If you're concerned at this, please head over to this thread where at the end you can find details of how to write to your MP about this:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3692358-Girls-must-bow-to-trans-rights-in-new-rules-for-schools?reverse=1

That's what bothers me about all this gender bathroom stuff. Girls need to feel empowered to say no, this doesnt feel, right, it's making me uncomfortable. I don't like the idea of telling them to suck it up for the sake of "being kind"

I teach my DC to follow their instincts, as doing so has never let me down. If someone makes you feel uncomfortable, get away from them, certainly don't wait to find out why they make you feel uncomfortable. If someone says or does things that make you feel uncomfortable, talk to someone you trust about it. Don't assume that all adults are trustworthy. Don't assume that all people in authority will always have your best interests at heart. Think for yourself. Don't follow blindly. If advice seems counter-intuitive, use your brain to figure out why that might be and again, follow your instincts.

And yes, that woman sounds AWFUL and yes, a terrible parent! Bossy and authoritarian and incapable of listening.

We've always taught DS that you shouldn't be rude to people (kids or adults) but that doesn't mean you have to be nice to everyone or do as everyone tells you.

If your instinct says 'I really don't want to be friends with that person' then trust it. Try to be polite but you don't have to give a reason - you just don't like them.

He had one boy in his class that he was 'semi' friendly with and decided to invite him to his birthday party. The boy sulked the whole time because he didn't win a particular game (I made sure everyone won something but he wanted this particular prize and he didn't get it).

The next year DS said 'can I invite every like last year - except X, he really wound me up'. I said that was fine. He didn't get an invitation. DS didn't make it obvious that he wasn't invited, he didn't make any remark, he just didn't quietly give him an invitation like he did the others. I wouldn't allow him to rub the boy's nose in it but my DS is not a support mechanism. And our son, who has a medical condition himself, has friends with ADHD and autism so he's not exactly noninclusive. He just chooses friends who he relates to.

I'm not having a person to our house who annoys or upsets one of us just to be polite - why would I care what that person thought of us? They're not important.

It's your actions that teach your children, as well as your words. So support your child, if they say 'X annoys me at school because they keep interfering in our games. They want to play but won't play properly or fairly' tell them it's fine to tell X that you don't want to play with them right now. Your child doesn't have to be friends with everyone they come across in their lives. They can be polite but assertive about their own needs and that's a valuable thing to teach them.

Default setting - respect for another's shared humanity, politeness towards them as an individual person.

This default setting can be moved up or down.

Prove yourself to be a decent person - my respect moves from being simply towards your shared humanity, and encompasses a respect for you as an estimable individual.

Prove yourself to be a nice person - the politeness will move into friendliness.

Show yourself to be an arsehole - I will no longer feel the need to be polite. I will acknowledge your humanity on an abstract level (the same level that says "even convicted sex criminals deserve decent treatment in prison") but I'm not going to go out of my way to defend you, because there are more useful and fruitful ways of spending my time.

I taught my children that it is OK not to be around people who make you feel uncomfortable. That people who are vulnerable can also be dangerous and that feeling empathy for their vulnerability does not make you responsible for them and should not override your instincts. You do not ever have to include people you don't feel safe around.

I had no choice in this because my children's uncle suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. He is both vulnerable and dangerous. Growing up with someone who is volatile and who at times has to be excluded is difficult but perhaps it has stood them in good stead in the long term.

The word 'kindness' has been weaponised to mean 'meekly accept my poor behaviour towards you without expecting reciprocation'. It's part of splitting the world into the service providers and the service recipients, where the recipients' behaviour and needs and feelings are to be met at all time with complaints and all hell breaking loose if they fail (even if they're a stranger in the street, they still get treated like a paid professional), and the service providers have all the responsibility and no rights at all.

Co dependent relationship with an abuser sums it up really. Which is why women's organisations need to vigorously teach women and children what we've been teaching each other on the relationships board and all over MN for years. Co dependency isn't healthy, you're a person and not a doormat, no is a complete sentence, and LTB if they treat you without respect or equality. And here's the freedom programme.

I worked in inclusion for years and it makes me truly sick how the word 'inclusion' gets prostituted in the name of this agenda. Inclusion means balancing needs. It means treating people equally, without discrimination, and it means reasonable adjustments. It does not mean the person being included has no responsibilities or limits, and is more important than anyone else.

Often including one person (e.g. a bully) means a handful of other people become excluded such as children who will avoid hanging out with others around them, going to parties and even leaving the school which I have seen many times.

So true and this is the trans thing in a nutshell except it's not just a handful of people being excluded it's women and girls as a class (many of whom will just silently remove themselves from public spaces). Utterly mad.

I am absolutely teaching DD to trust her gut and she doesn't have to be polite to everyone. I'd rather she was rude and safe, frankly.

It's struck me how many posts here are seeing women and girls as needing to learn to be confidently rude, when really that 'rudeness' is being willing to state a boundary and be as blunt and persistent in that as necessary to get the other to respect it.

It's really alarming that having boundaries is becoming seen as rude.

I think this is basically what my parents did. If someone touches you against your will/invades your space in a way that feels creepy/leers at you/whatever then that person is doing something wrong and you are entirely within your rights to push back. It's the teaching girls to hesitate, to analyze how the situation might be their fault and how to could avoid any conflict by adjusting their boundaries to accommodate the other person's breach of them, that does damage.

Exactly this.

I've said this before but I think the inclusion mantra has a lot to answer for.

Michelle has it. When I was a kid I had a female classmate whose little brother was an absolute nightmare to be around. The one time I went over to her house to play her mother insisted that he, 2 or 3 years younger, be allowed to play with us, but as you would expect in that situation he was kind of left out because younger and still nonverbal at an age where most kids are talking (no diagnosis of any kind, because the 70s). The girl and I were having a conversation and he didn't like the fact that we weren't paying much attention to him, so he bit the inside of my upper arm, really hard. At which point I of course got pissed off and went over to show my mum, who was also pissed off, but the weird part was that the boy's mother acted like her child biting people was just something everyone else should ignore or work around. Apparently he bit his sister all the time, and his mother's explanation of this was oh well, he doesn't usually break skin so (shrugs). The sister was expected to just put up with this, and with the fact that every time she made a new friend they ended up not wanting to come over any more because the brother was allowed to bite and hit and kick and the parents would just stand there watching him do it and scold the other children about not being understanding enough if they complained. This wasn't a toddler btw, he was maybe about 5? So not only did his sister get bitten and smacked and kicked all the time, she ended up with no friends except at school, because her parents wouldn't let her go play at their houses instead since they viewed it as her job to entertain her little brother and keep him busy. And this completely dysfunctional dynamic continued for as long as we knew them.The parents were outraged by the very idea of the school trying to control the boy's behavior, they expected them to just put up with it too and allow the other children to be hurt, and any attempt to point out that this really wasn't fair to everyone else was met with demands to be kinder and more understanding and well he can't help it so obviously the other kids should just accept that and not try to avoid him because he kept hurting them. It only took one incident for my mum to decide I wouldn't be going over there anymore, but his father worked with mine so we were in touch with this family off and on until both kids were in their mid twenties and they seem to have maintained the same everyone else is the problem attitude the whole time.

I mean, it was great that my mum backed me up and said nope, not letting my child be bitten and no I'm not letting her be guilt tripped into putting up with it because that's what would be "nice" and "considerate", but what about his sister? And the poor kids in his class, and his teachers who had to deal with a totally out of control child whose parents thought that his behavior was just one of those trials one must live with and it was the fact that other kids didn't want to just put up with it that was the problem?

Whenever anyone starts banging on about teaching children that they must be kind to everyone regardless of whether the other person is kind back or that they have a moral obligation to include all their classmates in their games and other activities I think of that little boy and his poor bruised and bitten sister whose childhood was spent being lectured about how she should learn to be more understanding towards the brother who kept hurting her.

I worked in inclusion for years and it makes me truly sick how the word 'inclusion' gets prostituted in the name of this agenda. Inclusion means balancing needs. It means treating people equally, without discrimination, and it means reasonable adjustments. It does not mean the person being included has no responsibilities or limits, and is more important than anyone else.

It should also mean that everyone is included, not that we pick one special group and organize things to meet their needs even if that ends up excluding other people. On the mixed sex changing rooms thing, there are multiple religious and cultural groups whose girls will be forced to self exclude if that happens. Why doesn't inclusivity apply to them?