Autism Isn’t To Blame For Bad Behavior.

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Link to: "Autism Isn't To Blame For Bad Behavior"

I was just annoyed about it lol: if I had a penny for every person who shows up here asking "Should I put up with (insert horrible and often abusive behaviour) because my partner has AS?". It gets on my nerves every time - I know these people don't' mean ill but how come so many of them think being autistic automatically makes you a nasty jerk and why on earth do they think being on the spectrum is a get out of jail card ?!

Communication issues and emotional awareness can be tough for us, sure, and so can other things, but if someone constantly behaves like a jerk and treats others like crap, especially after being made aware of it, it's not the autism that makes them do it If NTs are allowed to have sh***y personalities or characters then so are we

It can be both.

An autistic person does something sh***y but that isn't the autism but it's the autism that doesn't make them realize the severity of their actions and how it would affect others.

Another scenario, they have a meltdown in the middle of a restaurant. It may look sh***y but it's the autism. If it were an adult, they would be leaving the restaurant when feeling an overload or have noise cancelling headphones. If they were that low functioning, they would have a care taker with them and it would be their job to ensure they keep acting appropriate. If they couldn't keep their hands off other peoples plates, they wouldn't be taking them there.

I remember seeing this one video of What Would You Do and they had this family with an autistic child. All these people were actors including the child. Some of the guests were actors too while the rest were not so they have no idea this is a set up and they have a hidden camera. The "autistic" boy acts bad as he can and the "parents" do nothing, they don't even leave the place either. People that get bothered by it are branded as as*holes by other guests. This child actor decides to push it more by taking food off this guy's plate who is also an actor eating and he reacts and people tell him off. This one person that told him off was not an actor. This whole video made me angry because people were excusing this behavior and the whole video implied this was all okay for an autistic child to do and you need to be understanding. Just BS. If the kid can't do restaurant behavior, they shouldn't be eating at one. I can remember members here acting like this was all okay and I was the minority that thought this isn't okay. In these scenarios, I blame the parents because it's their job to ensure their child won't act inappropriate and won't cause a disturbance to others. If an NT kid was acting the same, the family would probably be kicked out no doubt but because this was a family with autism, the restaurant could be too afraid to kick them out because they don't want to be sued for "discrimination" and sadly these things do happen.

I wonder if all these people in What Would You Do videos are all professional actors? And it's all improv.

And some autistic people are just sh***y and there comes a time when you need to stop blaming it on autism and just go "This person is just a jerk." There are times when you need to just blame the kid's behavior on the parents.

I think it is very important to distinguish between bad behavior and neurological distress.

I was at a Special Olympics event and there was one little girl who is 12 and she was being looked after by the parent of another special needs child because her own parents weren't there. This first child was an absolute nightmare and the woman who was watching her, who is a good friend of mine, told me that this was the worst case of Autism that she had ever seen. I told her, "No, this is the worst case of bad parenting you have ever seen." She went on to tell me how the parents had invested all this money in therapy for this child. I told her that maybe that is the problem, maybe the parents expected the therapists to raise their child.

To prove my point, when the child was basically attacking me, I looked her straight in the face and firmly and sternly told her, "No, You stop that right now." She stopped immediately. She also took very good direction from her figure skating teacher and did her routine perfectly even though she was not taking instruction from anyone else about anything and just ran around and hit people and pulled their hair and refused to obey and acted like a little banshee. Once I showed my friend this, she realized that this child's horrible behavior had nothing to do with Autism and she told me how even her child who has Down's does not get to act up but gets disciplined properly when she acts like a little monster. But it took me explaining and showing her to help her understand that Autism is never an excuse for bad behavior just like for child, Down's isn't either.

I wish people in general would stop assuming body language = consent and go instead to a verbal 'yes means yes' model.

Would help in both reading and giving signals, esp for people who struggle with body language but just in general. We're not animals and animals don't have notions of consent. We should evolve past using body language alone for things where people might get hurt if it's something incorrectly perceived as consent.

And yes I include readers of body language who are NT too because 1 NTs aren't perfect at reading/giving body language either and 2 they don't actually know on first glance who's autistic and struggles with body language and thinks he/she is just giving off 'friendly' signals not 'flirty' ones.

Whether a kid is disabled or not, if the kid has bad behavior, my first and foremost question is what are the parents like? That is usually where the answer lies.

This all reminds me of that one boy five years younger than me... he had ADHD and probably something else, too. My family visited his and they visited ours pretty often at one point. When the boy caused trouble (and that happened a lot), his parents and siblings did their best to stop it. My mom kept insisting that all was fine and she didn't mind, but dad and I minded and if we scolded the kid, she got really mad at us. There was even this one time I was playing chess with the kid's brother and the kid shot me with a toygun and it hit close to one of my scars. That hurt. Naturally I screamed at first and kept crying for a long time after that. The kid's family got mad, just like any decent person should if their kid does something like that, but my mom got mad at me when I couldn't react when the kid came to apologize. She also got mad since we were at their place and I took too long to her liking to calm down. After that she told me to not to come along anymore when the rest of the family went to visit them.

So yeah, sometimes the main problem isn't the ill behaving kids or their parents, but some idiot who does all they can to keep up appearances. I'm sure that back then my mom's behaviour gave a mixed message to the kid.

I generally agree with most of the comments. For me, a persons intent or motivation is key. We all make mistakes, misread cues, get angry and can be dense and oblivious. But, if a persons behavior is to intentionally hurt, cause trouble and to get their way, they are wrong, regardless of their neurodiversity.

A brat is a brat and a bully is a bully