WHY DOES SHE GET SYMPATHY!?!

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Sounds like the parents haven't dealt with their own shame (feeling like they produced a "defective" child), and with their own embarrassment. They may not have grieved their own lost expectations for how their child would turn out.

Of course there is no excuse for treating a child in that manner, but I get the sense that this is where an autism support network really needs to do the work to reach out to parents who have only come up with the solution of telling their kid to "shut up and act normal". The parents need support to deal with their feelings so they can learn to treat the child appropriately and lovingly.

Some people need to get help because treating a autistic kid like that is not good, that well only make it worse!

Once upon a time, I'd have been just as outraged as you are, but having been a parent, please remember: you have no idea what had been going on for the previous five or six hours. Yes, their behavior seems over the top, but it's just about five or ten minutes out of their day. Even the best behaved kid can really get on a parent's nerves after a few hours and even NT parents can get over-stimmed and overwhelmed from time to time. It gets to the point of, "Dear God, let's just get through this day and GO HOME!" My mother used to make me put my hands in my pockets before we entered any store and keep them there throughout because I drove her crazy touching things and occasionally breaking them and costing her money. This went on until I was about ten or so and had learned to keep my fingers to myself. I thought it was horrible at the time -- I just wanted to touch things, after all -- but having now had my own "Fingers" to drag through a shop, I have a better understanding.

Now, parents using their child's autism for sympathy: that's a real problem and needs to be addressed in family therapy. No matter what the reason for a child's behavior, no child should have attention drawn to their private problems like that and a good parent certainly shouldn't use their child's disability to garner sympathy for themselves.

Yes. It's so true.

A couple of points.

First off, how many of you who are coming down hard on the parents are actually parents yourselves? Please raise your hands.

Secondly, how many times have we read on this list "I was on a plane (bus/in a resurant whatever) and I was sitting next to some kid that kept kicking my chair (or laugh loud or whatever) and the parents didn't do anything! It was so rude & inconsiderate!! !!"? So we give this child a pass because he is autistic? Maybe we do. Maybe that's why the mom said something. Maybe this was at the end of 4 straight hours of non stop tapping or whatever. I don't know & neither do you.

All I'm saying is as a parent I'm willing to give them the benifit of doubt. It's not easy and not always PC or pretty. Again. How many of you are even parents?

There. Fixed that.

Most people are only interested in keeping up outward appearances. For them it is all about what other people think. It doesn't matter if their life is falling apart as long as no one finds out. The solution is not to fix their life, but to hide the faults even better.

Having an autistic child in this context is a black mark on their social status, because their friends (other people just like them) of course gossip about the broken child and how much of a burden the child must be on them, maybe even how autism must have been the parent's fault.

Society is one big lie all around. And they don't even realize it. To recognize the lies it takes someone who's outside the society looking in carefully examining all this objectively. Someone like us maybe?

You have no idea what this kids tapping progresses to, or what trouble he may have got himself into when he was younger. For all you know, he might like sticking his fingers in blenders, or after tapping his fingers for a while, he'll start head-butting things. Without the big-picture, their actions are meaningless and it would be wrong to attribute positive or negative qualities to them.

The parents acted like that because they were ashamed that they gave birth to an autistic kid. They think that by the power of their own will they will 'cure' him. OK, that sounds a it harsh but parents can do the strangest things when something mental* rather than physical is wrong with their offspring. Three days after I was detained at a psychiatric hospital my parents visited. My father walked into the ward, saw the conditions in which his son was being held and then walked out never to return. He didn't even bother to read the letters the hospital sent him.

Vanilla_Slice




*I am NOT saying that autistics and folk with AS are mentally ill, I just can't find the right words, OK.

I have seen this and it is only by sheer willpower that I haven't done it myself. There are several paths that a parent of an autistic child can go down and these parents are unfortunately on the "shame" path. I've seen it happen and it almost happened with me and my daughter until I took major personal steps to get off that path.

Here's how it happens:

You have a toddler. All toddlers melt down and do stimmy things. People look daggers at you when this happens in public and wonder, sometimes aloud, why you can't control that child. But fellow parents will tend to cut you slack, especially if they have young kids too, not adult kids.

Then you have a preschooler. Some preschoolers melt down and do stimmy things, although less than toddlers. People look daggers at you even more because the kid looks a little old to be doing that. But fellow parents of young kids still cut you slack.


The you have an elementary school kid. Very few of the other kids that age are still have meltdowns and doing stimmy things. The angry looks have really ramped up because EVERYBODY thinks by now that you should have taught the kid how to behave. Fellow parents no longer cut you slack because their own kids of that age have grown out of it. This is when the shame starts. After having enough people glare at you and mutter " why can't the parents CONTROL that child?" or say it outright to your face, you start to feel intense shame. Shame is what happens when you get repeatedly scolded for things you can't control.

I was headed that way with my daughter and made a deliberate and conscious effort to get off the shame path even when people glared and scolded. These parents have now been on the shame path for so long that they are horribly entrenched and their son is the worse for it, since it puts him on a shame path too.

The next time this happens, instead of internally scolding people who are clearly filled with shame after quite a lot of scolding from people who feel the opposite of you (that it ISN'T ok for him to stim), say that what he's doing is ok and it doesn't bother you. The more people express "being ok" with autistic behaviours, the less shame there will be for parents and kids alike. It's all very well to say "who cares what people think" but in reality, it's very hard to be scolded and glared at whenever you go out in public without feeling shame because of it. I stepped off that path on purpose because I could see it would ultimately be harmful for my daughter. But the horror of it is, these parents and many like them are surrounded by people who tell them that they MUST stay on this path or they are bad parents. That's what makes it so hard to get off it. You not only have to deafen yourself to the scolding and glares of strangers, you have to deafen yourself to the near-constant advice that if you let this go, you are a bad parent.

So the next time you witness something like this, try to push the parents off the shame path by letting them know that it's ok. Because you may be literally the only person who has said or even thinks that it's ok. The autistic kids will thank you.

For the record, the "he's autistic" was unlikely to be playing the sympathy card. What is far more likely was that it was an apology for his behaviour- which they assumed appalled you. I'm quite glad it didn't appall you, but you are in the minority with that, and hopefully can become a vocal minority so parents know this is ok. People who feel shame also feel like they owe the world an apology.

And yet, you are unlikely to see this sort of behaviour from parents whose children have Down's Syndrome or some other problem that causes a physical difference. Having a child with autism is NOT a black mark on peoples' social staus. What is a black mark on peoples' social status is having a child with no physical or neurological issues whatsoever who nonetheless behaves in a way that annoys the general public. The assumption is that the parents have raised the child very, very badly or else this child who is obviously neurologically exactly like everybody else (because that's what it looks like to General Public) would not do such things as stimming or melting down. (Just stimming in this case.) If autism caused physical difference, you wouldn't see parents acting this way. This is a parental reaction to having what appears to everybody except those with insider knowledge to be an NT kid. And if an NT kid does that, it must be because his parents screwed him up. Thus their overreaction. Thus their aplogy that "he's autistic". This is done to counter General Public's assumption that he's an NT kid who was somehow damaged into weird behaviour by his terrible parents.

People with autism (and parents of people with autism) are literally the only people who WOULDN'T be put off by the stimming. (And the odd hippie or artistic NT free spirit here and there.) General Public gets mad about it unless they get an explanation/apology. Proffesionals who work with autistic kids and just happened to witness it wouldn't get mad because they'd know what it was...but they'd still pressure the parents to do something about it (somebody else upthread noted that those who practice ABA come down hard on stimming and would pressure the parents). So how about the next time you see something like this, instead of joining in to scold the parents, let them know that stimming is ok! and not bad behaviour that annoys you.

I'm a parent, to answer granatelli's question.

It's also possible that the boy had actually broken something in a previous shop and that was why the parents were both holding his hands so tightly. I agree with the others who have pointed out that shopping or similar excursions with children can be extremely stressful and the incident which the OP witnessed could have come at the end of a long and stressful, for the whole family, day.

Yupyup. I know exactly how you mean. I used to hate being touched, I would really freak out. Apparently, it was my job to learn to like being touched, not that of adults to show some understanding...

Aw HELL no. I had a total b***h of a teacher in 7th grade, who would antagonize me on purpose with the intent of setting me off. Apparently she didn't think an AS child should be mainstreamed, and so tried her very best to get me expelled. Then when my parents found out about it and confronted her during a PT conference, she has the AUDACITY to tell them that it was their fault I turned out AS and they should be ashamed of themselves. My mom came home crying.

This teacher should consider herself lucky that I moved to Wyoming, because I've sworn to kill her if she ever shows her face to me again.

This kind of BS is why I'm seriouly disillusioned about today's society. AUTISM IS NOT SOMETHING A PARENT CAN CONTROL WHETHER OR NOT THEIR CHILDREN HAVE IT, AND THE SOONER THESE MOTHERF***ERS REALIZE IT THE BETTER OFF WE'LL ALL BE.

Thank you. That's one.

IMO this is being way out of proportion, especially considering that we only have one minutes worth of information, perhaps by someone who is especially or maybe even overly sensitive.

IMO the mother mentioned that the child had autisim in the same way a parent would try & explain a childs fussy behaviour by saying that the child was hungery or overly tired. Nothing more, nothing less. Some of you are reading way too much into this tiny episode.

Again, until you walked in the mother & fathers shoes for few days you have no idea what they are up against. There is no shame in having autism or as. The same can't quite be said if an NT child is just acting like a rotten brat. I think that's all the mom was trying to do, explain her sons behaviour a bit.

I agree with what granatelli says.