WHY DOES SHE GET SYMPATHY!?!

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Why would they mention it? Because the default assumption for General Public is that this is an NT kid who has been very badly raised by you, the bad parent, and that's why the kid does these things that look either odd (at best) or flat out poorly behaved. The OP knows quite well what stimming is. General Public does not. Instead they see an NT kid who is either a brat or hopelessly neurotic from bad parenting. The "he's autistic" is unlikely to be a bid for sympathy. It's more likely to be a bid to be taken off General Public's list of Very Bad Parents, and for the kid to be taken off the list of Neurotic Bad Kids on account of behaviours that are utterly out of both the kid's and the parents' control. I would love for no parent to ever feel like they should mention it. But until General Public stops glaring and muttering and judging parents for the behaviour of their children, this will continue.

I wish the OP had used that as an opportunity to say the tapping was no big deal. I think that would have led to the best outcome. The more people say (out loud, not on a message board) that a child's stimming is no big deal, the sooner parents will stop thinking that it is something they need to put an end to or explain away by publicizing a private diagnosis.

It looks like an Aspie parenting advantage is immunity to the shame spiral that pressures NT parents to follow particular parenting norms. I have seen the "overly harsh" coming down on autistic kids that you describe. I think what got me off the (NT parenting) shame path I was headed down was the mellowness of family on both sides. My daughter is surrounded by grandparents, aunts and uncles who accept her exactly how she is. I think their acceptance is what helped me steel myself against the shaming tactics of General Public.

Parents like this make me angry. How is belittling a child for being autistic in public healthy? Some autistics already have self-esteem issues from knowing that they are different. I'm sure the addition of your parents acting like they are ashamed of you adds to the mental damage caused, adding to your own self-esteem issues and, therefore, creating other issues with other people later on in life. Parents that do this to their children should be ashamed not of the child, but themselves.

I'm a McSlave. If I do or say anything to correct a customer I will be killed.
Not to mention I too bewildered by the whole thing to say a word. I wish I had, but there's nothing I can do now

I would blame society, not the parents.


Imagine having an autistic child and you get all this ridicule and criticism about your parenting because of the way your child acts. Imagine having everyone stare at you and your child and getting all these rude comments from them and getting told how to do your job, imagine having everyone giving you dirty looks.

So what is the parent going to do about it? They are going to try and get their child to act normal in public as possible to spare the trouble from other people.

Also some parents don't even take their autistic kids out in public because they are prone to meltdowns and running away and out in the streets and they just can't face the challenge from society about their kid. And telling them "My kid has autism" makes them think you are using it as an excuse for your kid to act that way than understanding the situation and your difficulty.

I think society drives parents into getting their autistic kids to be normal. Also someone else has pointed out in this thread, they have been brainwashed by doctors and Autism Speaks about what not to accept and what they have to change in their kids about harmless behavior.


I don't see anything wrong with parents trying to teach their kids how to act in public so they won't get bullied as much over their odd behavior and the child learns to do it in private like hand flapping. I feel some of the bullying was my fault because of some of the behavior I did and I should have tried harder at not doing it and it would have spared me more of the bullying. That's why I started to change when I was ten to reduce the bullying and I wanted kids to quit thinking I was weird and I wanted to be liked and have more friends. So whenever I be around kids who didn't like me and thought I was weird, I tried acting normal as possible around them.

McSlave is a good word for that job. I would have just stated the obvious if I were in that situation. "He just tapped the registar" with monotone expression, but that would confuse people, I'm sure. Not giveing advice here, just saying that I get your point.

But what is so wrong with tapping? I see kids do things like that all the time, and noone makes a fuss, because it's just bored-child behaviour.

I think what unfortunately happens with NT parents of autistic children is that the parents get hyper-vigilant. (I specify "NT parents" because I think parents who are also on the spectrum are less likely to cave in to social pressure). After enough years of glares and mutters they lose all perspective and clamp down on literally everything that might attract notice from General Public. What makes matters worse (a lot worse!) is that most professionals who work with autistic kids advocate clamping down on stimming. They certainly won't glare and mutter like General Public, but they will tell the parents exactly how and why to clamp down on it and devote much of their professional work to clamping down on it. I was the recipient of such advice and a lecture myself from a professional working with my daughter. I didn't take the advice but it required force of will not to. When an NT kid stims from boredom, there isn't an army of proffesionals telling his parents that This Must Stop and using ABA therapy to clamp down on it. At most, his teacher says, "stop fidgeting and pay attention" and that's the end of it.

You get it. Many of the other posts in this thread border on the hysterical.

Really, it bugs me that a bunch of people who are not even parents are being so critical & judgemental. And like I previously posted, how many times have we heard from men & women w/AS sensory issues (on this forum) comlaining about people not being able to control their "bratty" kids in public? Kids who are kicking the back of the seat, talking loudly or doing some other goofy thing repeatedly over and over again.

Those w/AS should be the first to applaude these parents for trying to keep their kid from being a pain in the ass to the general public. Really, there seems to be a double standard here.

Here I would disagree with you. Why would it be helpful to the child in any way to stand out in public & make a nuisance of themselves? Isn't in the childs best interest to try & assimilate as best as possible? By allowing stimming in public to go on unchecked only seems to welcome stares, teasing & bullying from the jerks in the general population. JMO.

I do see that point of view. But it seemed, for my daughter at least, that my therapist-approved attempts to clamp down on her public stimming made her very stressed out and put me in constant clampdown mode, which is where these parents seem to be. It was a short lived experiment and I dropped it. Although stims do look weird to General Public and invite stares and sometimes rude comments, I discovered that the very act of clamping down made the stims worse. When I let it go, she did too. She still does it sometimes but I found that gently redirecting to something a little more socially acceptable was a lot better. Wiggling your fingers in front of your eyes makes it look like you just took LSD. Wiggling your fingers hanging down by your sides just makes you look impatient. If this kid really needs to tap something, perhaps carrying around an object to tap would be better. People who tap constantly on a cellphone don't look weird at all. They look like they are texting everyone they know.

Are disabled people a nuisance? I know some say that they are only to those people who think they are which makes those people a common nuisance.

I'm really uncomfortable with what you said.

Because it's those who think disabled people are a nuisance are the ones who automatically encourage bullying, stares and teasing because nobody can respect or even stand that which is pegged a nuisance. That doesn't just 'seem' so as you put it, it's quite real.

And I really think bullies are a problem (some people of course think bullying is a good thing).

If I hate someone, I will mark him as weird or his actions as annoying even if that's not true in order to encourage others by my mere statement to put him down and treat him without the same respect that they have for normal people who are not 'weirdos' and 'annoyances' but 'Will's or 'Jenna's or 'Sam's.

If I like someone, I will peg him as normal, call him by his name, use respectful language in connection to him in my normal everyday conversations to encourage others to also like him and respect him for being a person, not an annoyance or a weirdo.

The way you talk about things has a lot of power about how people react to those things. Selling junk, sucking up to someone and others all work like that too.

Just imagine it. Do you or do you think that people respect someone they think of as 'nuisance' as much as someone they think of as 'Sam' even if Sam's seriously weird in many aspects?

Of course, everybody decide for themselves who they think deserve respect and who doesn't and if only some people deserve respect or all. That is why it is so hard to establish respect for differences.

Go back to the beginning of the thread. The whole crux of the argument is whether the mother should have mentioned that the child was autistic or not.

Being disabled isn't a nuisance. Letting a bratty kid disrupt everyone is.

I think I totally lost you right there. (autism alarm hehe)

Didn't you just talk about autistic kids and not bratty kids?

Because I was talking only about that one aspect of your post/question:

Q. Was the parent in question right about clamping down on stimming?
A. Probably not, as it [stimming] is harmless and clamping down on it just distresses the kid.

Q. Was the old woman mentioned right in offering sympathy to the parent for having to raise an autistic child?
A. Again, no, because that implies that that there is something wrong with Autism. Which there isn't.

Q. Was the parent right in telling people that the kid had autism?
A. If the people were having a problem with the stimming, yes. If not... why volunteer the information? Unless she was using that weird NT ability to wrongly guess what other people were thinking, and thought they had a problem with it. In that case she needs to reduce that tendency.

Q. Were the other people around right in not saying anything?
A. NO! The people around, if they were fine with the behaviour, should have pointed this out to the parent. Perhaps, then, she wold have stopped trying to stop the stims.