When an adult is rude/mean to your AS child

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I am sorry that happened. He could have been nice like, "Excuse me, she was here first so do you think you can step back and leave her some room?"

Asperger's is a hidden disability so no way would the father had known your kid has it and besides I think it's pretty normal for kids that young to crowd. I think it's time you teach him about personal space.

What a yutz. The man is in severe need of a mallet to the head.

I wish I could say I naturally knew good parenting but we have been having lessons and it's scaring to see that the better we're getting at proper, calm responses, the worse the people around us are looking. So we've learned that even if a kid is challenging your authority, responding by getting angry just means you're acting like a child yourself and teaches the kid nothing. A kid who's a little overexcited isn't being naughty or mean, but just needs a little nudge to point out that if they control themselves (stress that point, themselves) they will get to do the thing they want when their turn comes, but if they don't control themselves, they won't. Puts the kid in control, teaches them accountability with the bonus of giving them an understanding of what they're capable of doing, and presents logical consequences and rewards instead of arbitrary ones which leads to a greater understanding of the give and take of the real world... it's just smarter to do it that way. We went on so long thinking that you take things away for bad behavior (arbitrary consequences) that it was hard to see that you don't actually have to punish a kid, you just don't shield them from the consequences. Mind you, sometimes you have to be creative... I mean, you can't have a kid run into the street to learn the natural consequence. You maybe tell them they must hold your hand or you won't be crossing the street and going where they want to go, depending on their age. So you can set the consequences, but they have to be logical and reasonable.

And it's not easy. My son, who has no clinical diagnosis but who is generally accepted as ADHD by the school and psychologist (and us) is a real challenge this way. He likes to keep things moving so he won't stick to any one thing for long as far as what motivates him. Yesterday he did act badly... pushed a 3-year-old and when an adult tried to talk to him about it, my son just put his hand up and made little talky motions with it. Now, the right response would be to show him that nothing he can do will make you angry. He can make talky motions all day but the long and short of it is that if he doesn't behave appropriately, he has to come inside. But I didn't get a chance to say that when the kid's dad came back with my son to tell me what he'd done and my son tried to explain (rather loudly, that the kid had stepped on his DSi) and the man started calling him rude. Well, yeah, I brought that kid in and told him he couldn't play outside if he couldn't keep from pushing 3-year-olds, no matter how annoying they are. But it would have gone better if he hadn't had to deal with an adult who cared more about avenging his bruised pride than encouraging the kid to do better. I said as much, asked how he'd be encouraged to do better if he called him names, and the guy said it wasn't his job to encourage him, it was mine. Well, between us, I'm pretty sure it's for all of us to at least try not to discourage him, hm? Why do better, they think I'm a jerk already, what use is it?

Yeah, I know the boy is obnoxious, make no mistake about that. He has just got to push, test, try, and see how far he can go. Yee-ouch, he is going to cause himself pain in this life. But it's the attitude that gets me. For one thing, that dude's going to raise his kids like that, which is discouraging. Also, the attitude. The parental attitude... it's all over. Your kid's rough around the edges and adults get their pride hurt, categorize him, and kick him in the teeth. We are seriously trying to teach him what's right while he learns the self-control he needs... but that attitude is going to ruin it.

Sorry, I've done the usual and ranted about myself and my family. It's just that hearing about the jerk you ran into reminded me of the jerk I ran into. For what it's worth, if it continued to happen, I meant what I said... If he really couldn't deal, we wouldn't let him go out. He went out on his own later, apologized and then gave the kid a wide berth. He agreed to it before he left.

A couple of points. How in the world would this stranger know your child was autistic?

Put the shoe on the other foot. Your son is standing there looking at a rabbit & some bigger boy just blows past him & pushes him out of the way to cut in front of him. I say a bigger boy because even though the children in your situation were about the same age one was a boy & one was a girl, so to make the example similar it would have to be a larger boy. At this point when your son is pushed rudely out of the way do you say anything to the other child? Or do you let it go? By the tone in your post I suspect you'd be very protective of your child & you would say something.

I've got kids so I know I am protective of them. IMO that's what the father was doing here. Being protective of his little girl. Could have been gentler about it? Hell yeah. Was your son out of line though? IMO, yes. He's going to have to learn to respect personal space. Perhaps this man growling at him will make him be a little more careful next time.

Granatelli: Point taken. But still, in retrospect, it's hard to accept when adults act like children. Then again, maybe the rude man was only dealing with a diagnosis of his own.

I find it easy to deal with children in general, but my profession before having children was an elementary school teacher. So I am really used to redirecting behavior in a kind way. Maybe I don't always have enough grace for those who haven't had as much practice with the same.

I find when things like this happen I get really, really upset, but only on the inside. At the time I just kind of freeze up and can't do anything about it...then afterward I sit around and want to cry and scream for about 24 hours and I can't think about anything else. Then suddenly, I'm over it, especially if a bunch of calm people tell me some good facts about the whole thing. Who knows, maybe I am dealing with a diagnosis of my own.

I agree that the guy should have handled it differently. He was out of line. But as a parent, I can see both sides of it. It's not easy being a parent, that's for sure. Cheers.

I'd also note that it probably looked to the man like the boy was not under parental supervision. When I can identify a kid's parents, I will try to solve problems through the parents, but if the parents are not nearby, I'm much more likely to take things into my own hands, reacting to the kid as I would to my own child doing the same thing. While it may not be an issue in this particular case, sometimes kids are much nastier when their parents aren't around.

To that, I'd suggest that if he acted the way he did because the kid appeared to be unsupervised, then it amounts to acting like a jerk because he thinks no one will call him on it. Just my view on that possible scenario. No one's suggesting he shouldn't protect his kid, of course. But he behaved inappropriately.

The incident I mentioned above about my son would be more along those lines. My son was being a little snot. He was playing on his own, lost his temper, and made a mistake, then got snotty when adults tried to correct him. Whether the adult was using an angry tone (which would make his defensive behavior slightly more understandable, if not excusable) I dunno. But he was trying to correct an unsupervised kid and I would not have had a problem with that if he hadn't sunk to calling him rude repeatedly. That wasn't about correction, or even justice... that was about a man's wounded pride.

Doing the right thing still requires appropriate responses instead of knee-jerk reactions, no matter how justified the feelings behind them. So it goes for the man at the zoo, the man in the apartment complex here, and my ornery little son. All had reasons we might be able to sympathize with if they hadn't been communicated so poorly. Thus I only told the man who insulted my son that he shouldn't call him names. He shouldn't. Doesn't help, might hurt.

I've had to correct a kid whose dad wasn't paying attention, and got chewed out by his dad for daring to place a hand on him (seriously, I placed it, that's it) to stop him from shoving my toddler. So I understand that side. And it's a fine line we walk, correcting quietly without justifying the behavior. I'd rather not have to defend my kid when someone else should be stepping in to stop the aggressor, but if I must, I won't be a jerk about it. Why make things worse?

That's assault and that parent could have been criminally charged.

I'm not a parent, but I think you should explain to your son what caused the situation (him appearing to be pushing the girl out of the way) and that the girl's dad overreacted and had no right to be so rude about it. Otherwise he might carry on thinking it was all his fault while not knowing what he did, or he might think that people are allowed to treat him that way.

I've been snapped at by another kid's parent before, when I was much younger. I was at the swimming pool and there were these foam float things shaped like surf boards, but there were only a few of them so it was kind of like every kid in the place (and this was summer so very busy) was just waiting for someone to finish with one so we'd all jump to get it. So I was very proud when I finally managed to get one, as about five people had all been trying to grab it. So after about two times going round the lazy river, this kid's mother comes up to me and is like, "Can I have the float back, please, that you snatched off my daughter" (not in a nice voice, either). It was one of those cases where I was too shocked to argue so I just handed her the float and explained that it had just been there in the pool and several people had gone for it. Then I just moved on and tried to forget the incident, and asked my dad if we could go home now (cos I didn't want to see the woman again). I'm still kinda mad about that, as far as I'm concerned it was basically a race to grab the thing, and the kid lost, so she should have waited for another to become available like the rest of us had. But I know in retrospect that I was right to just surrender the float instead of arguing, because the kid was a few years younger than me so it was probably a case of the mother thinking "My kid is perfect therefore all older kids are evil bullies, except when she's that age she'll still be perfect and all the kids older than her will still be evil bullies..." And you know, I'm not even convinced I HAD inadvertantly snatched it from the kid. In a massive several-person tug-of-war like that, basically the only chance I would have of getting the thing would be if nobody else was holding it, even for a split second, and I managed to get it. If anyone else had been holding it, there's no way I could have been the one to wrestle it off them, even a kid. Seriously, you should see me arm-wrestle, I'm pathetically weak physically, and I can only have improved since this happened, cos it was years ago.

So yeah, I know how your son probably felt when that happened.

I hope they had the grace to be ashamed of themselves.