Neighbor of Autistic Child - Advice Please

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You know, although the OP said that the child was outside from 9am to 9pm, it was only for the last two hours of that time that she struggled with, because that was when she is trying to get her babies to sleep. So, out of 12 hours of noise, she would like to have less noise for two of those hours.

The child doesn't have to be silenced, and no one has to move house. When the child is indoors the noise level is considerably reduced. I think it would be a reasonable solution for the child to go into the house at 7pm so the OP can get her babies to sleep.

When my son was little we lived in an area where the houses and gardens were close together, and there were quite a few children of varying ages. People were generally accommodating of babies' bedtimes, and tried to keep the noise down then.

A bit of come and go is all that's required to solve the babies' bedtime problem.

You are right. Being a good neighbour is important. I absolutely get that. But what I am wondering is if that is how long the kid really is outside ? Surely the kid is at school some hours of the day (since the OP mentioned the child going to a special school) ? Even if it was summer, surely the kid has ESY ?

I don't know what country the OP is posting from but s/he uses the Queen's English, so maybe the kid is home for summer holidays in a country where it doesn't get too hot ? I don't know, this is all speculation, including from ME. So I will butt out from this thread now. I wish everyone the best.

The authorities topic was actually first brought up in your first post reply to him, saying good luck going to them.

You already stated that talking to the neighbours would be good advice and not being direct about the daughter. So being friendly & introducing himself/herself first could go a long way understanding their family and a good starting point. It's also possible the neighbours simply aren't aware that their child is being disruptive to their neighbours at 9PM at night if no one has talked to them before about it. Again, the daughter shouldn't be the starting point of any conversations with them and it's not about changing the child or locking her in a soundproof basement.

I disagree that there is a potential breach of confidentiality worthy of getting someone fired. I think that is overly extreme. If the person had revealed the diagnosis, which it turns out they did not, the person would made a judgment call in an effort to be helpful, and whether or not we agree with that, no one should be fired for trying to do the right thing that has not, in fact, resulted in any actual harm to anyone.

Just a general observation: I feel awful for how this place comes across to the NTs who sometimes venture here looking for helpful advice out of concern. Why else would they be here than sincere concern? They know they are seeking advice from the autistic community.

I could not disagree with this point more. The teacher has no idea what harm could or could not be caused by divulging that information. Sometimes people intending to "help" can create a world of damage, even if inadvertently. There is a reason privacy laws exist. Divulging attendance at an autism school is functionally equivalent to divulging the diagnosis.

We had an issue with an aide in my son's SPED class opening her big mouth to family members for whatever reason (not that I can prove it--but I can tell the leak came from the school based on the info divulged.) and it created a tremendous amount of problems for me and my family as my son's diagnosis was not public knowledge to the general public and certainly not to the family member who was evidently told.

It is not up to the teacher to make that decision unilaterally b/c s/he thinks it might help or just assumes everyone knows b/c the child is in a special school or is just a thoughtless person. I know this child in the OP is severe enough to squeal all day, but that does not mean the child and her family have no right to privacy.

Edited for syntax

I beg leave to disagree with the bolded statement. I would not want my child being discussed by a random individual with ANY OTHER equally random individual, even "friendly neighbours who are just trying to help". Imagine if this was acceptable - every person working with your child would then decide that it is OK to divulge information about your child to anyone else who *seems* interested or concerned. Please refer back to my quote of the original OP in my response (before OP edited it out). It clearly states that the "friend" told the neighbours that the kid is on the severe end of the spectrum, which is how OP knows that it is autism.

In all honesty, what the kid "has" is NONE of the neighbour's business. Her or his business is solely addressing the noise issue, not the background medical / psychological background of the child and her challenges. If this was my son who we are talking about, I would absolutely escalate it until the "friend" was disciplined in some way / shape / form. Privacy laws exist for a reason and this situation is EXACTLY one of those.

Now, I am not going to hide the fact that my son has autism or other challenges, but that information should be divulged by ME to anyone who wants to know, not by someone working with my son to someone else who just wants to know what the matter is with my boy. Namely, I need to be in control of who has access to my son's confidential information. I will not relish the idea of two random folks discussing my son amongst themselves, simply because one of them has a problem with my kid (for whatever reason).

I also wonder if the responses would be different had the child in question been HFA or Asperger's ? Interesting thought, that.

The OP explained what happened several times. Her friend spoke to the child because she was one of her students. The OP knows that the teacher works at a school for autism, ergo, the child is autistic. It's an entire school just for autism, not a sped program that may be invisible to outsiders. Was the teacher just not supposed to say hello? Or look like a creep because she's speaking to a child that she shouldn't otherwise know? I think what happened was pretty normal, given this particular circumstance.

And I agree with you on all points, DW_Mom. Our children are going to need open-minded and knowledge seeking NTs to help create the community I think we all want them to be a part of. Instead of starting to build that here, I think we're taking out our frustrations on the NTs who are most likely to be advocates, all because they've conveniently shown up here. It's so harmful. I really hope we can build up this community in a positive, bridge-building way.

Something just struck me by this thread (has nothing to do with the original post, but with the responses that it has received). That is, usually on WP, parents of profoundly autistic children get chewed out for wanting to change their child. The stance is normally that autism isn't a defect, and they should just be loved and accepted, and wanting to change your child is awful, and stopping a child from stimming is terrible.

Then on this thread, we have a severely autistic child, who is most likely stimming. But the stimming is bothering someone, so now all of a sudden, the behaviour should be fixed immediately, and since the parents haven't fixed it, the child needs to be taken away by social services. Wow! What a change in opinion! Hypocrisy is right.

THIS IS WHAT PROFOUND AUTISM IS. YOU CAN'T JUST "FIX IT"!

[quote=Waterfalls]"vocal stimming" whatever the heck that is. [/quote]
I missed that before. Nice to know your child happens to not do this. LUCKY YOU. This is a very common thing with severe autism (I'm guessing from the responses on here, that HF kids don't do this much). Google it. I don't have much time, but I found some videos of it on Youtube too. It's not something that we just made up or something, LOL. Almost all the severely autistic children I know (and I know quite a few) do it...some louder than others.

I didn't see the post before the OP edited it, so I'm only going by her later explanations.

WelcomtoHolland - i interpreted most of the responses as concern that there MIGHT be a problem 1) because the child is alone so much, and 2) because screaming may be harmless stimming or sign that something really is wrong. I didn't see anyone say the parents should stop the stimming, if that's in fact all it is.

My response wouldn't be different.

I am not a litigious person. By the same extension, I don't look to get decent people fired from their jobs over a single mistake.

Actual harm - then, yes, we have something that needs to be dealt with. No actual harm - give a warning, discuss how there could have been actual harm, but fire? No. No one is perfect. I won't hold people to a higher standard than I hope they hold me and my very "put-his-foot-in-his-mouth" ASD son.

If a teacher in their official capacity makes a disclosure at school, that is a clear violation. But will they sometimes talk about students with personal friends (no connection to the school), leaving out names? Sure. In this case, it would have been hard not to imply the child must be autistic, given that it would have been obvious she knew her. If she had added a few words, "yes, she is on the spectrum," would it have changed anything? Truly caring teachers are hard enough to find; I would take a really good teacher who has slipped over a bad one who knows when to keep her mouth shut.

Personal opinion only. I quite clearly used words like "I think." No one has to agree.

Last edited by DW_a_mom on 11 Aug 2014, 5:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

If the child attends New England Autism Center or some such, then the discussion is exactly the same for high functioning and lfa. And to be fair, you have HFA and LFA moms on both sides of this one.

I don't recall anyone suggesting that the stimming be stopped, and I don't recall anyone suggesting that the child should be taken away by social services.

I was concerned that a child being left alone, apparently for hours at a time, might be being neglected. Not definitely neglected, but possibly neglected. It could be a sign that the parents are struggling to cope. Again, not definitely, but possibly.

There has been doubt expressed about how much time the child is outside, how much noise is actually made, how much the child is actually alone. We can only go by what the OP said, and given that she was concerned about the screaming and what that might signify in terms of the child's welfare and similarly about how much time the child spent on her own, then I don't see that we have any reason to doubt her or dismiss what she says.

The OP was understandably concerned about the effect this has on her own children, but she was also concerned about the child next door. That seems to have been overlooked by many here, who seem to read only self-interest in the OP when that was not the case.

Uumm...yeah....

Topic locked.

This thread has consisted of six pages of mostly people yelling at each other, so, it's time to move on to more productive discussion.

'Ta.