my brother's children

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I don't really understand the difference between asking the adult or the child. If they are together, it is the same as asking them both so it is irrelevant.

I work with children. I have a very good record. Many parents love my work. Unfortunately I am also a kid magnet outside work for some reasons. Children who do not know me would come up to chat to me or just to say 'hello'. I strictly do not pay attention to these children. Not because there is no money to be made but simply because of their parents' possible reactions. I put on a super frosty act to ignore them. I hate doing this but I hate to be seen like a baddie talking to a kid even more. The way people handle the 'stranger danger' issue these days is not to my liking but that is just the way it is in many parts of the world now.

Last year, my other half and I saw a little girl who missed the lift at a very crowded part of a shopping centre. The little girl cried and cried and everyone around her just walked on by or stopped to stare without approaching. 'Heartless' me absolutely refused to approach her. Instead I went looking for a security guard to do the job but before I found one, the lift's door opened again and the little girl, who was still sobbing, reunited with her angry Mum.

On another occasion, a little boy came to me crying because he couldn't find his mum at a department store. Heartless me also refused to help. Instead, I went looking for a security guard who was at that time busy stalking a potential shoplifter. He was absolutely furious with me for ruining his fun but I would rather that he handled the child than me!

Before I end this reply, I would like to say a few things. Not all parents are suspicious of people around them but you can never tell who is or who isn't (just like how they can't tell who is or is not a kidnapper) because it is not labelled on their foreheads. I honestly do enjoy working with children under 8. It truly is rewarding to be given the opportunity to witness and take part in their development. At work, I am happy to give advice to any parent who needs one but I just keep my mouth shut outside work. So, there is an acceptable way to behave at work and another set of norms to conform to outside work.

That is all that I wish to say and I hope that I didn't offend anyone.

I'd like to add....

A while back I was in a department store and the restroomss were located near the door. A lady pulled up to the restroom door with a cart with to small children in it, the oldest being about four. She had to run into the bathroom for a moment and for some reason or another decided it was too much hassle to take both children out of the basked and into the restrooms so she told them to "stay right there and don't talk to anyone".

She then proceeded to leave them. She was gone for 20 seconds. In that 20 seconds, regardless if the kids talked to anyone or not, someone could have made off with them in the cart and she could have very well never have seen them again.

irresponsible woman.

really, in general its not about whether kids should talk to strangers or adults talk to kids. its about safeguarding yourself. its about not putting yourself in a position where you can be accused of anything inappropriate. fight convention all you want, but remember that innocent people have been accused of a lot of things because they put themselves in positions which made the accusations possible.

its simply good sense to protect yourself.

keep in mind this is the parenting forum at WP. a lot of the kids we talk about here are autistic. they dont always do the things they are suppose to, and often "getting in trouble" doesnt make a lasting impact.

last week i had a conversation with my 4 yr old aspie about THE ROAD. most families have some version of THE ROAD near their house, in our case its a very busy 45 mph stretch with no stops and cars that commonly speed up to 60. intellectually he understands that he should stay away from THE ROAD, because the cars go fast and he could, in his own words, "get squished and then be dead". but when hes caught up in his autistic world, that knowledge isnt forefront in his mind and he may wander into THE ROAD because hes just too busy to see it.

A STRANGER is like THE ROAD. my son cant always see the dangers even tho he knows what they are. i cant rely on him to stay away from dangers, thats my job and its a hard one. the real dangerous strangers are going to do whatever they can to gain his trust and make it possible to snatch him. and those strangers look just like you, the nice one who is simply inquiring if my son has seen a missing cat. i cant tell you and A STRANGER apart, so i react the same to both of you, with fear.

i know i cant rely on adults to not talk to my son and not put him in positions where i feel danger for him, but it would sure be nice if the adults did what they should do, when a child, especially an autistic one, doesnt. even if its for no other reason than to protect themselves. it would certainly make our trips into the outside world a little less stressful.

People with AS are accused of doing the wrong thing no matter what we do. For example, I once had to do laundry and someone's clothes were in the washing machine and no one was home. I put the wet clothes in a basket and proceed to do my laundry. My sister then came home and yelled at me for not putting her wet clothes in the dryer and turning it on and told me how rude and thoughtless I was. The next week I again had to do laundry and someone's clothes were in the washing machine. I put the clothes in the dryer and turned it on. When my mother came home she yelled at me for putting her clothes in the dryer as one of her favorite shirts had shrunk, and told me how thoughtless I was and that I should have just put the wet clothes in a laundry basket

At camp once, we were doing a group activity with one of the junior councilors and during this time people were being called from the group to meet with the senior counselor. After I was called in to meet with the senior counselor he told me when I returned to the group to tell a specific person to come in. I returned to the group and told that person the senior counselor wanted to see him, and the junior counselor yelled at me for interrupting the group and told me I should have told her instead to tell him. However the senior counselor did not tell me to tell her and to tell here I still would have had to interrupt the group.

A few months ago I came across a homeless man incapacitated next to the sidewalk. I have been constantly told throughout my life that you should help those in need. I was also taught in a first aid class that should you find someone who appears to need medical help, you should check, call, and care (take first aid steps). So I stopped to check to see if he was ok. He was fine, just drunk. Never the less, I was then reprimanded for talking to someone of his character.

At a job I worked once, I was told everything I was supposed to do, and did everything I was supposed to do, and was yelled at and fired for doing things I was never told to do.

At another job, I did everything I was told to do, and then when the computer broke I attempted to fix it without being told to do it, and was fired for doing something I was not told to do.

The list goes on. I have 30 years of examples where despite my good intentions, despite my consideration for others, no matter how hard I tried and what I did, someone was always around to reprimand me, tell me I was being rude, thoughtless, selfish, inconsiderate, and doing the wrong thing.



Because frequently they are told conflicting things on what they are supposed to do and getting in trouble does not make an impact in these situations because no matter what they do it will always be the wrong thing.



You should also tell him of situations where it is warranted to run into the road, as he will likely not know that such a thing may be warranted to get away from something like a house fire, for example. My parents never told me not to run into the road...though I generally didn't run. They told me I was not allowed to cross the street without someone older holding my hand when I was younger. This resulted in me getting stranded on the other side of the street at night by myself one evening, until my parents realized I was not with the other older children. They had not told the older children I was not allowed to cross the street without someone holding my hand. The next day they told me I was allowed to cross the street in our neighborhood as long as I looked left, right, and then left, and saw no cars coming in the process. Of course there were other conditions on this.

You should put a fence in.

And does he know what strangers he should talk to? One of the big problems with search and rescue is when children go missing, they frequently will not reply to the calls of the rescuers because they are told not to talk to strangers...and this includes NT children. You should tell him it's ok to talk to policemen, firefighters, paramedics, and anyone calling his name if he is lost. My parents also told me if none of those were around, I should ask a woman or someone working at a store for help if I was lost.

There are situations where it is better for your child to talk to strangers and a child with AS/autism will not know about this unless you tell them.

Though my parents generally had a difficult time getting me to talk to anyone.

Just so you know, while these are your examples, I don't think they are NT vs. AS examples, they are humans getting along with other humans examples. I would be considered NT (although a little odd by NT standards) and that kind of stuff happens to me all the time. What is good for one person doesn't apply to the next person. There is no way a NT person would have known those things any differently than you did, and I would imagine that the NT person would have been corrected as well.

The best I can do is think if it were my laundry, what would I want to happen to it if someone needed the washer. Then I would do that thing. NTs get that wrong sometimes too.

No with respect to the silly string.... I am wondering if the silly string was applied to the child in a way that could be found odd? Like, an impropper placement (breast area) or odd shape? OR - while you were playing, how was your facial expression? If it was not smiling, it could have been perceived as inappropriate, or angry.

thank you for that reminder. i havent had that conversation with him yet and i should. sometimes as parents we get too caught up in trying to impress upon our kids how to watch our for the bad and we forget to teach them how to watch out for the good.

i would love a fence, had one in our previous house, but right now we live in an apt complex and its not possible.

the laundry situations you describe i find funny, because my aspie SO tries to do laundry on rare occassions, and i am always asking him not to touch mine or the kids'. mainly because he washes all colors, from white to black and everything in between, in the same load, and dries my dress shirts on hot and shrinks them. last time he washed anything of mine, my favorite jeans came out covered in huge bleach spots.

levity aside, the inappropriate situations i am talking about usually involve criminal charges. its not laundry or interruptions. you dont know how a child is going to react, even to a simple question about a missing cat. children are unpredictable beings. that child could go running off screaming that a stranger is trying to get her. its drilled into their little heads these days to avoid those kinds of situations.

we parents arent much better either. there have been several attempted abductions here where i live in the past year, including one at gun point, and i dont live in that large a town. nowadays everyone is suspect, even the single guy eating a burger and sitting in playland at mcd's is viewed as creepy and to be avoided.

I think you handled the situation perfectly and don't understand what the fuss is about. The child asked you to do it and you only sprayed a little in a very safe spot. It's not toxic and doesn't stain.

I believe that all play at a public playground should be acceptable by local standards so all children can be included if they want to be and are old enough for that activity. If silly string isn't something that can be shared it shouldn't have been used publicly. I think it would be very rude and inappropriate to exclude children from your game if they wanted to be included.

Since you weren't sure of the rules I think you couldn't have done better. You didn't exclude the child but went lightly just in case there was a problem.

I don't think you're missing a thing.

For younger children, it's better to just have them not talk to strangers, and not risk them getting confused by complicated exceptions.

Adults who talk to children they don't know break the training down and make the parents' jobs harder. That's why it's considerate not to talk to children to whom they are strangers.

I remember getting in huge trouble for cutting the hair of the daughter of my brother's girlfriend at the time. My defence was, "But she asked me too!" My mom scolded, "Just because someone asks you to do something dosen't mean you should."

I'm begining to wonder if parents even teach their kids not to talk to strangers anymore. I once came across a kid on a bicycle holding a lottery ticket. I asked him, "Aren't you a little young to buy lottery tickets?" I figured he'd know better and just ignore me but he replied, "I just found it on the ground."

I was letting some kids pet my bearded dragon as they got off the school bus (maybe that was a bad idea itself) and this little girl who was probably only in Kindergarden goes and tells me a bunch of stuff and I said, "Run along home before your parents get worried about you." She then told me they were not home. Once you stop and think about it, it's really no surprize why so many children are reported missing these days.

I was always instructed not to talk to strangers even if it was the stranger that inniciated the conversation. I was to ignore them, scream as loud as I could and run into the house and tell my mom or dad right away. My mom who was overprotective and paranoid about me being kidnapped told me I could be tourtured from day one. Some parenting "experts" say you should not go into detail and tell kids the nitty gritty of what could happen if a stranger got them but I think that's hogwash. I do wonder if that has lead to me being somewhat paranoid as an adult but hey, I've never been raped or kidnapped either.