Nosy busy bodies bothering me and my son in the toilet

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Went into a big and busy KFC to get my son his favorite food, he is five and non-verbal. In line I realize due to smell he has had an accident in his pull ups, so once I had the two chicken breasts for him I go to change him in the toilet before we eat.

Once I am done wiping he realizes I forgot to pack a clean pullup he starts screaming and fighting me to put his boxers back on without it, just screaming and searching my bag for a pullups. Some guy starts beating on the door, I ignore it until I have my son fully dressed and his soiled pullup in a plastic bag to throw away. Guy is acting like he is trying to kick in the stall door, yelling call security.

When I open the door there is like thirty customers crowded into the mens room and out in the hall, even holding the door open. The door kicking doofus asks my son what was he doing to you(I felt to hand the ringleader the soiled pullup and wet wipes in a bag and tell him to investigate!), my son of course says not a word and as I am yelling to mind your business my son is pulling me out of the restroom. The security guard comes and says that is his father which he keeps repeating because people keep yelling, then tells them my son doesn't talk and we eat there all the time.

As we are leaving a woman in the doorway gets down on her haunches, and hugs my son going everything is ok now sweety. Before I can say don't touch him he doesn't like it my son is shocked and screams at her and shoves her with his hand on her face back away from him(I laughed internally at this) she looks shocked and confused.

My son wanted to get the hell away from all these people, we sat down but he refused to eat after I threw away the bag with the pullup and wipes. Just handed me the box of chicken and put it in a plastic bag I had so we can eat at home. He has never done this before, he always wants to eat there.

As we leave a woman outside yells don't beat that child so severely ever again, I was like no one is beating anyone! I don't even spank my son.

I don't feel to tell people my son has autism(they never know what it means) or he can't talk, or embarrass him and tell them he still wears diapers or whatever, they need to mind their own business. He is already very tall and muscular so people assume he is 8-9, I'm not going to embarrass him by explain things no one needs to know. I'm on the spectrum too so instead of embarrassed or flustered I get angry at people for poking their noses in.(I know my wife would have been embarrassed but when I told her she said she would have cursed people out, she also said people spank their kids in toilets here.)

I recall a female cop one time saying how horrible I was dragging my son across the street years ago when he decided to go limp halfway through crossing the street. When I had crossed to a park I turned and told her should I have just let him lay down in the middle of this busy street? And by this time he had taken off running half way across the park, and then she just looked confused and asked if something was wrong with him as I took off to catch him.

I wish people would mind their own business.

Yes, seems like you did the best you could do. Good job! People do not understand, especially in a context like that when you can't take the time to explain.

I'm sorry it was such a tough experience.

I am going to disagree because of the simple fact that people DO worry about child molesting and other things happening in restrooms and, seriously, if your child had gone into a restroom alone and then an adult had slipped in to hurt him, wouldn't you want these people interfering?

So I suggest coming up with a line that will satisfy their protective instincts enough to allow them to feel they can mind their own business without being bad citizens.

The difficulty, of course, is in coming up with that line.

Brainstorming ...

"I am sorry for the disturbance but my son and I are trying to resolve the situation best we can, and it will go a lot better if you will all leave us in peace."

"My son and I need to be left in peace to get the problem resolved; your questions/banging/presence are only agitating him more."

When you don't offer ANYTHING, things can quickly escalate out of control. You have to find a line that can de-escalate the situation. People are NOT going to simply mind their own business when they are unable to have eyes on a situation and properly assess whether or not the screaming person is truly in danger. I know the eyes and questions are uncomfortable, but try to think of them as part of the safety net that will help your child if he ever IS in real danger.

DW_a_mom beat me to it.

I feel bad this happened to you. I know that situations like this are very difficult to deal with and trying to figure out how best to deal with them while you are dealing with them is nearly impossible.

That being said, I think it is actually odd that someone intervened. In today's society, I think people are too quick to look the other way. The people honestly don't know you, or your son. I would hope that if I thought there was a possibility that a child was being molested or beaten that I would have the courage to stand up and do something first and ask questions later. I think you can also feel reassured that if you son somehow got away from you, and someone was trying to harm him, there might actually be a decent person out there who would intervene and put a stop to it. While I understand your POV and your reaction to this because the attention was unwarranted and made things harder, it actually wasn't a bad thing. When my son was younger, one of the hardest things for me to do as a mother was to let him go in a men's restroom by himself. It was truly a harrowing experience for me. But there became a time when not only did his size create an issue with him going into the ladies room, but he was becoming embarrassed. I was afraid something would happen to him and no one would do anything.

If I were in your shoes, I would go back and thank the security guard. Since you go there a lot, I would also ask the manager if it would be OK if you went to their next staff meeting to talk to the staff and answer their questions. You could also tell them what would be helpful to you if a similar situation should occur in the future.

Yep, while I totally understand OP's frustration, at the same time, this story actually warms my heart a little. Too often people shrug aside the maltreatment of children. It sounds like they couldn't tell what was going on, but they wanted to protect a child.

I will add that in the moment I would have had no idea what to say, so probably would have acted as you did, and of course hind sight is 20/20. I am just hoping you can be better prepared the next time. You're on a long, slow road and can use all the tools you can get, I am sure.

I want to just add that I think when you tried to stay calm, it was surely a help to your son in a difficult situation that despite your frustration, you can handle it. I think that goes a long way, when we get through these kind of things, toward helping our kids learn they can, too.

As for the future, I think more people than you realize know what autism is. If they like you at this KFC and if you want to return, maybe they might put up a short article on the wall to educate about autism? Maybe it's embarrassing to your child and you might not want to, but hopefully he is ok with people knowing as for now, they will otherwise make up other explanations for his differences.....and a lot of people know to be careful touching a child on the spectrum.

I've been in somewhat similar, though much milder, situations.
IMHO you handled this pretty well.