discrimination???

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Azure, I'm hoping someone can articulate this better than I, but I'm thinking we need to have confidence in the face of judgement. We need to turn that judgement around and instead feel good about modeling appropriate parenting for an AS child. I trust that a fair number of bystanders are going to see that I handle my son differently and conclude that he is different.

Yes, there will be idiots who think you are spoiling your child, but your demeanor will show them to be idiots. You shouldn't feel like the idiot. It's the other way around. When I care more about the idiots, I don't handle my child properly. This is probably more difficult if you have younger children. My son is 10 so it's very obvious that it's not a simple tantrum. 10 year olds are generally beyond the tantruming stage.

League Girl - Really? Has your baby ever cried in public?

The thing I keep getting reminded of every time I turn around lately is how it is the community's responsibility to care for all the children in the community. What happened to "It Takes a Village"?! I am appalled at some of the responses here. I don't know whether or not what the manager did rises to the level of discrimination but I think we all need to be more understanding. I've been in that situation where I am madly trying to extricate myself and my 2 sons from a place because youngest is having a meltdown and I've received both types of responses from patrons of various establishments, those offering to help (yes please, thank you GOD) and those that are rude. I'm with postcards, I will try to be the one who offers help, if at all possible, or at the very least of a look of understanding or a kind word.

We found a solution but it took a couple years to become truly effective because it requires extensive practice and a more mature brain. But if you start now, this may be truly under control by age 9 or so.

My daughter goes to a special school and they were the ones who implemented this at school and taught us to use it at home. The solution is to teach your child how to recognize his own triggers so that he can ask to leave before he hits the meltdown point (where it is impossible to go back, once that point is hit). As my daughter grows and matures, she's found that just knowing we will leave if it gets to be too much gives her the courage to go out and do things- she knows there is an escape plan. It takes awhile for a kid to learn how to recognize these triggers and awhile more to be able to turn that knowledge into being proactive and asking to leave- or even asking to step outside for a break. We have become experts at finding little "nooks" to hide away until the feeling passes.

At age 7 he is likely to young to do this. But you can start doing it for him and labeling for him what you observe the triggers to be so he will have the terms for it as his brain matures. If it's too much noise or too many people, say that out loud as you remove him from the situation. "It's very noisy and there are too many people here and it's upsetting you. We'll go outside and find a quiet place." Do this enough times and he learns for himself to say "there are too many people here, I need to find a quiet place". And knowing he can do that may give him the courage to go more places.

This is true for us, also - except DS is not aware enough of his triggers to be able to do it this way - so we are teaching him to recognize the warning signals his body gives. This took a lot of cognitive breaking down, and careful watching. I noticed, for instance, that just before we reach "explosion," DS clenches his fists. After talking it through, DS noticed that before he gets to fist-clenching, his top lip "gets tight." He goes straight from fist-clenching to violence, so if we don't catch it right at the outset of clenched fists, we have a problem. However, we've been so successful with this system that we haven't had a violent episode for almost a year now.

My son has NO awareness whatsoever that something is bothering him until he's in the middle of a meltdown, and even at that time he has no real awareness of what it actually is that set him off - but his body does have some awareness, even if he is disconnected from it. We remind him that it's his responsibility to remove himself whenever he feels his lip get tight or his hands start to clench, and this has been somewhat successful. Slowly, he is starting to be able to connect the things happening inside him to the triggers outside, but it's slow.

Every child is different, though - so, while I'm guessing every kid on the spectrum needs some version of this trigger response system, it's going to look significantly different for every kid. Finding it takes a lot of careful study of the environment, the situation, and the kid him/herself to find the thing that works.

This article made me think of this thread: http://moms.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2 ... drenfreude

Looove it! Thanks, I got a much needed chuckle out of that!

Good advice. I would also add that the resaurant manager should have given you a refund for your meal if he wanted you to leave and you had not done anything wrong.

I am appalled at your response? When did it become other peoples responsibility to take care of your kids for you or to watch them when out in public? Maybe I should expect people to keep an eye on my son when I am looking around in a store and not pay any attention to him and if he grabs something off the shelf, I will expect the other person to stop him for me. If I am at my aunt or uncle's house, I will expect the other people here to stop him from getting into things he isn't supposed to get into so I can enjoy my time on this forum in peace. (sarcasm)


Really? The kid was having a meltdown. You think it's right for the OP to keep her kid in that restaurant without taking him outside? No way would my mother allow that behavior from me and she would have threatened for me to shut up or go out to the car. As a small child we always left when I get overwhelmed. They did not expect other people to bend over backwards towards me and they didn't go "Oh she had hearing loss and had tubes put in so she isn't used to all this noise," no we always left. If it was indeed a sensory overload, it would have been a big favor to the child if the OP removed him from the situation. Why torture him? Should my parents have stayed too in the store or at the mall with me crying and screaming in pain?


And yes my son has cried out in public, how is that even relevant here? Mom has told me when I was 17 when your baby cries, you remove them from the dining room if they don't stop crying. I had always seen parents pick their crying babies up and leave the table, I then knew why. I guess they should have stayed Heck I have even left a restaurant once because my baby wouldn't stop crying and I left my husband and parents behind and walked home. He be fine outside but once I bring him back inside, he start crying again so my husband told me to go ahead and head home and he will pay. Maybe I should have stayed and not keep going outside twice.

My point is, why can't we be nice to each other and tolerant instead of saying things like "It's not right to disturb other people with your son."? No, I don't expect other people to watch my children but if I saw something bad about to happen to a kid in a public place, would I say or do something? Hell yes! We are all in this big ole world together. Other wise we become like those people in China who all walked by as a baby girl got run over on the street. No one stopped to help, it was just a baby GIRL afterall.



Really? The OP stated she WAS trying to take him outside when the manager approached her. There was no need for him (or you for that matter) to come down on her. She was probably doing the best that she could with what she had in that moment. When I have been in that position, it has helped so much to be met with just a little bit of kindness rather than intolerance. That's what I am advocating for, not keeping a child in a situation that is dreadful for him or her.


Its relevant here because according to your own words, you have no right to let your child disturb other people. I bet when you were at that restaurant, before you decided to leave for good, your child disturbed a lot of people. Should you be made to feel bad about that? I don't think so. I think you do the best you can trying to balance your needs with the needs of others and you do hope that other people, whether they have been in your shoes or not, can show a little empathy and compassion.

I think we're just having a classic communication break down here. League_Girl is applying black and white guidelines to what the rest of us want to see as needing a little bend, and I think what she posted was a reasonable way to sort the question into black and white, if you are going to sort it into black and white: a parent will rarely go wrong handling it the way she describes. I don't think she meant to make anyone feel bad, she just doesn't really understand what happens if you try to move it all into a gray area, and what that would mean in the way of responses.

League_Girl, just remember when choosing your words to be a little softer. Every parent here is doing the best they can, and gray areas do exist between the extremes you see.

And, gosh, I hope I've phrased this right, because I do run the risk of offending everyone, don't I?

DW, what most prompted my response is that I would really expect League_Girl to have more tolerance than that considering she is both autistic and the mother of a young child. I understand you coming to her defense, so to speak, and am not offended. It's just that I think we've all probably been in that situation where you are in public with your kids and sh__ is just going WRONG. It is not at all helpful for the manager of some establishment to come up to you and heap more humiliation on top of what you are already feeling. And I find it troubling to also come here and be met with more intolerant words where, IMHO, a mom should find sympathy and compassion, not judgement, from other mothers who have surely been there.

The OP said:

I took him to the side of the restaurant and was calmly trying to calm him down and talk to him, he continued to have his tantrum during our outing


She didn't say anything about trying to take him outside and I figured it happened long enough or else the manager wouldn't have butted in. The best solution would have been taking him outside and then try and calm him down but she waited too long to do it. What's wrong with saying you have no right to disturb people with your child? The OP sounded entitled because she was calling it discrimination and it struck a cord with me. There are parents out there who will not leave a place with their crying child because they think their kid is special needs so they have a right to stay and everyone else has to suffer or because their kid is just a kid and think everyone should suffer and people in the childfree community call them breeders (is that term allowed here for bad parenting?). I also gave her advice about sensory issues and how it be doing her son a favor by getting him out of there and also telling her she shouldn't disturb other people when her son has that episode by not ever taking him out of there and then crying discrimination when someone else beats her to it by telling her to leave. That attitude annoys me when parents act that way. I think discrimination gets misused often.

@DW a mom
I didn't realize I was being black and white. I was told you leave when it happens. I have refused to go grocery shopping on my own with my child and eat alone with my child because what if he cries, then I am screwed and how will I leave? I would hate to leave my table and have the waiters think I left without paying and they take my food. So where is the gray and why did this make me black and white? For a while I couldn't understand why my parents always had to leave when I was little and just have me buck up and deal with it but now I realize if they had me suffer, I'd be making other people suffer too and they be bad parents. So they always had to leave. Were they being black and white too? One time mom told me a story about how she was at my brothers band concert and this family had a baby with them and the baby was making noise and people were rolling their eyes and one of them said "That's what hallways are for." So I learned when your baby makes noise at a school concert, you are to go out in the hallway with them and even my mom said that is what they should have done. Even in movie theaters when your baby starts to make noise, you go out in the lobby or a usher will come in and tell you to go out in the lobby or they will ask you to leave. So I will never bring my baby to a movie because I would hate to miss it if mine starts to cry or make noise. I was actually shocked to read online not all parents do this but they are supposed to. If they don't have a babysitter, they shouldn't go to the movies if they don't want to miss any of it.

My experience has been that most of the AS adults on this site have a much easier time jumping into the shoes of other customers, because for some of our adult members listening to crying is like getting nails driven into their scalps, and they assume it is some degree of that for everyone. That seems to be where the empathy naturally runs. To show the other side takes more explanation; until they have had that experience themselves, it doesn't really resonate the way the flip side does (League_Girl's child hasn't hit the terrible twos yet , remember). THE harshest criticisms on childhood behavior in PUBLIC come from our AS adult members, in my (admittedly imperfect) observation. You are likely to see variations on this with your own child in certain situations, if your experience ends up being anything like mine. My son has trouble seeing that others have just as much right to be annoying to him, as he does to them, is one way to phrase it.

Definitely good to talk about it, however, so that people can fully understand all the sides. I do think you explain it well.

This is true for me. My son had a high pitched scream that he used often and it caused me physical pain and even nausea, I have no idea how I survived the first two years. We usually get our food to go. As long as it wasn't raining or freezing I wouldn't have been offended by a suggestion to eat outside ... then again it all depends on how he said it. The grocery store can be a challenge though because regardless of my son's behavior getting the groceries is a necessity and we have no choice but to bring our son along. So far the iphone has been the most effective thing to distract him and prevent undesirable behavior, life has been easier since he started using that.

My husband, who has bipolar disorder and anxiety (and refuses to take his meds), has a very difficult time with crying and whining. This makes my job harder. I often give into my younger son's whining and crying when my husband is around because I don't want my husband upset. (He yells and insults my child-rearing abilities if my younger son's whining gets on his nerves.) I also am very reluctant to have my husband watch the kids without me around unless it is an emergency, for the same reason--fear that whining or misbehavior will set him off.

I am having the ABA therapis work with my younger son on whining in order to get his way, among other things. My husband needs help, too, but he refuses to go. According to him, I just need to be a better mother and more understanding of my husband's feelings.

I have shared with people before that I had many symptoms of either HFA or AS as a child and had seizure disorder as a young adult that was cured via surgery. I find whining pretty darned annoying, but I try to keep my cool and not show irritation in front of my kids. (I will tell my son not to do it, but you won't catch me yelling at him about it.)

League_Girl, I didn't see your last post until now and will try to respond when I have something better than my phone to type on.