I have a fear of toddlers! (Strange fear, I know!)

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Joe90
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16 Mar 2011, 4:50 pm

When I was a toddler I wasn't a typical ASD toddler - more like a typical NT toddler (which was why everyone was shocked when I behaved differently to others when I first started school). But my mum said that I went through a crying stage when I was one, but I was still a baby then. She said I didn't have tantrums out in public when I was 2 and 3. She said once when I was 4 in the supermarket I kept on crying (but not screaming loud), but that was because I had a really bad ear infection.

Are all toddlers on the spectrum quiet? Because I wasn't a placid toddler, but my brother was, and he's NT.


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SammichEater
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16 Mar 2011, 5:59 pm

I wouldn't say that I have a fear of toddlers, but they are annoying and I prefer not to be around them. I hope I never have kids.



wefunction
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16 Mar 2011, 6:27 pm

My parents had a yorkshire terrier with the same phobia. I think there's something about the unpredictability of a person who is so young.

I'm being serious, by the way. I know I mentioned a dog but I'm not making fun.



rabbit90
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16 Mar 2011, 9:00 pm

But toddlers are the best!! !



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17 Mar 2011, 12:38 am

League_Girl wrote:
MooCow wrote:
Babies are scary, I stay as far away from them as I can.



Is my avatar scary? :P



Only a little :D

However, if the kid was in the room with me, well, that would be a whole different story...



Joe90
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17 Mar 2011, 10:02 am

wefunction wrote:
My parents had a yorkshire terrier with the same phobia. I think there's something about the unpredictability of a person who is so young.

I'm being serious, by the way. I know I mentioned a dog but I'm not making fun.


It is commonly known that an animal can be afraid of small children, particularly when there might not be any young children in the family. My cat is afraid of small children too, because we don't have any babies or small children in our family (my youngest relative is 13).

And I don't mind babies. I love babies, under 18-20 months. I saw a tiny baby in the doctors waiting-room last week and the parents were wrapping it up in it's little blankets, making sure it was kept warm before going back outside. I couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl. It was under 6 weeks old. I prefer a baby in waiting-rooms than a toddler running about, dragging all the toys out and crashing them about on the hard floor, making that echoey loud crashing sound.


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b9
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17 Mar 2011, 10:32 am

no



Last edited by b9 on 19 Mar 2011, 8:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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17 Mar 2011, 4:20 pm

Joe90 wrote:
Are all toddlers on the spectrum quiet? Because I wasn't a placid toddler, but my brother was, and he's NT.


In a word, NO.



Joe90
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19 Mar 2011, 6:58 am

I also get rather jealous of small children, for being small children. I know I was once, but I spent most of my childhood whining and complaining on family outings, instead of actually enjoying the innocence and freedom of being a child and being ''allowed'' to climb on railings and leap about in the street, and having those magical christmasses, and splendid birthday parties where you just play party games.....

I would like to be a child of today, but an NT child. There's this fete what is on every bank holiday in August, just in the next little village from my town, and we all usually go every year. But I remember going to one as a child, and the whole time I spent whining and just wanting to go home - I didn't even look up and take in the lovely, summery atmosphere. I didn't even want an ice-cream. Usually kids to whine at those sorts of places where you're standing and walking about a lot, but usually when you say about ice-creams they usually cheer up and want one. But I never did, until I got to about 8. But those years have whizzed by s quickly, and now I'm nearly 21 and I feel bored and worn out with responsibility and dealing with having AS and Dyspraxia as a grown-up - especially when people look beyond your disability and just criticise you and say, ''oh you're 21 years old - why don't you get a life and stop being so anxious and miserable all the time!'' That advice doesn't really help, and needing help for my high anxiety disorder is nothing to do with whether you're grown-up or not. Anxiety can be very disabling sometimes, and it has quite a high affect on your life and doing normal day to day things, and it does not go away just like that.


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19 Mar 2011, 8:54 am

ironically, out of all my children, the one who acts most in ways you describe is my asd child, and it is the asd that causes those types of behaviors. he literally cannot sit still. even in our car he is quite often kicking the back of the front seats, making funny facial expressions, chattering to himself or anyone that will listen, touching everything. waiting rooms, restaurants, and the like are always difficult, anywhere that he is expected to NOT act like a screaming banshee is a huge effort for him and us.

my kids are actually very well behaved, we learned long ago that the key to happy outings is electronic devices. my kids are usually able to keep quiet enough with a video game in their hands (hence our supply of 3 ds, 1 psp, 2 ipods, and 3 netbooks). it doesnt stop the physical things like kicking, facial expressions, touching, but at least it keeps their brains occupied which is usually enough to keep their mouths from running away with them.

our family is very close knit. up until about 18 months ago, when our oldest reached the age he could watch the two younger ones, our kids went everywhere with us. i am generally unapologetic when it comes to other people not liking my children occupying the same places as them. i wont force my kids to be shut ins because there are adults who would rather children not be around. kids, especially asd ones, need those forays into the public world to learn how to function out there.

kids, while having a certain chaos inherent in them, can be pretty predictable in most situations if you study their patterns of behavior. except those who are driven by other forces like autism, those ones are much more unpredictable.


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19 Mar 2011, 11:40 am

azurecrayon wrote:
ironically, out of all my children, the one who acts most in ways you describe is my asd child, and it is the asd that causes those types of behaviors. he literally cannot sit still. even in our car he is quite often kicking the back of the front seats, making funny facial expressions, chattering to himself or anyone that will listen, touching everything. waiting rooms, restaurants, and the like are always difficult, anywhere that he is expected to NOT act like a screaming banshee is a huge effort for him and us.

my kids are actually very well behaved, we learned long ago that the key to happy outings is electronic devices. my kids are usually able to keep quiet enough with a video game in their hands (hence our supply of 3 ds, 1 psp, 2 ipods, and 3 netbooks). it doesnt stop the physical things like kicking, facial expressions, touching, but at least it keeps their brains occupied which is usually enough to keep their mouths from running away with them.

our family is very close knit. up until about 18 months ago, when our oldest reached the age he could watch the two younger ones, our kids went everywhere with us. i am generally unapologetic when it comes to other people not liking my children occupying the same places as them. i wont force my kids to be shut ins because there are adults who would rather children not be around. kids, especially asd ones, need those forays into the public world to learn how to function out there.

kids, while having a certain chaos inherent in them, can be pretty predictable in most situations if you study their patterns of behavior. except those who are driven by other forces like autism, those ones are much more unpredictable.


You made a very important point and I concur with your reasoning. If a child, or anyone for that matter, is behaving within normal parameters and experiences a "difference" (aka, AS), then that child ought to be accepted just as any other! In no way should anybody be judging a child who may behave differently or out-of-the norm. Still, they are children.

I am now more OK with toddlers, but, admittedly, they can make me nervous only because they are unpredictable. I should note too that any movement/stimuli that is too vigorous or that I detect in my periphy can make me unduly nervous. It's not the toddler, per se, but instead the stimuli they induce inside of me that can make me uncomfortable. I know this is due, in part, to my own Asperger's. Children can be fun; I just need to acclimate to their movement.

Similarly, in our office/lab, I need to not have my back to the door/entrance for the exact same reason - I need to see, to know in advance, if someone is approaching from outside of my field of vision. Else I can become nervous of the unexpected. As the OP stated, toddlers are more likely to be that source of the unexpected. But it's wrong to judge a child because s/he is different from another, as azurecrayon wrote.

I mentioned this once before (long time ago on the WP) but I watched a child (age ~ 7ish) have a horrific sensory meltdown at a grocery story once.....he did NOTHING wrong, at all. Quite the contrary! His mother was great; she wrapped him up in her coat and held him, carrying him outside to calm him down. But what was shameful was the way others (complete strangers!) behaved in response.......strangers can be so cruel. So I do have a lot of compassion for children with AS (or related) since they are thrust into a world that can be harsh for them (and that's not their fault). On my behalf - even very recently, I've cried, hard, in public and had others stare at me.....not understanding my difference. I was geographically lost and so scared I could almost not speak, crying so hard I was nearly faint/sick, and was treated badly. I don't blame them for not understanding but I only needed help with directions and could not find a resource. Then my behaviour would be considered "out of the ordinary" or maybe unpredictable.


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Joe90
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19 Mar 2011, 1:59 pm

I wouldn't mind an older child, teenager or adult screaming because it's not usual and I immediately know that they must have something different about their neurology. But with toddlers is a different thing. Like when I went to the zoo with my mum, her sister and my cousin, and almost every other person you saw had a toddler with them, and they were just everywhere. My whole attention got drawn on to the toddlers so I couldn't enjoy looking at the animals. Sometimes with fear you're attention still goes all on the fear than anything else. I'm also afraid of spiders (which most people are), and if there's is one on my wall I'll keep on looking at it until I'm able to get it removed without me having to touch it or go near it at all.
Also once I was waiting in a bus stop, and these 2 toddlers were running around chasing eachother and giggling in that really loud, irritating way, and were running in circles around me - and it really annoyed me. I wouldn't mind if I knew them, but I didn't, and they didn't know me. The parent stood there and didn't bat an eyelid. I wouldn't ever let my toddlers run about round other people's feet in the street, and when I was a toddler I stayed right by my mum and held her hand - I wouldn't dare to go near strangers.

Also, I work in a charity shop, and I always sort out all the toys we get donated in, then I price them and put them out on the shelves. But people keep bringing their kids up and the kids just come along and pull everything out of the boxes, and bits of toys go missing and get scattered everywhere, so now I find myself having to tape everything up what may get separated, and I shouldn't even have to do that. All the other volunteers are much older than me, and they all say that when they were small they had much more respect in shops, and the most they used to do with toys in shops was just push some toy cars around on the floor, which is fine. But kids these days - if you don't put cellotape on boxes of puzzles, they just open the box and the next minute you look at the toys you find boxes are open and bits of puzzle are all over the floor. Then there's no point in selling things after that because bit's are scattered all over the shop. So now I find myself putting all the bits what are taped up on the higher shelves, and I put all the more babyish toys on the bottom shelves - the solid sort of toys what can't be took apart. But it's the parents what let them throw everything about, and that's what annoys me the most.

I'm not saying all toddlers are like that - some parents are good with their kids. The other day I heard a mum saying to her little boy, ''oh, look what you've done, you've made a mess - let's pick all that up off the floor before we go,'' and I saw the child helping his mum pick up a little mess of books he had made, and put them back on the shelf. But some parents just let the kids rummage through everything, make a mess then leave it there and come back out. That way he kids will start to think, ''I could make a mess anywhere!'' And they will do it.


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19 Mar 2011, 2:45 pm

Image
THE HORROR!!

I'm totally fine with toddlers, I love it when they start to learn to talk and they pronounce everything funny, or they babble into their toy phone. True their screaming tantrums are annoying, but when you look past that toddlers are lovely.


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19 Jul 2015, 7:47 pm

I don't know why anyone shouldn't be afraid of toddlers. Yes, I know we're physically much bigger and stronger and have more control over things than they do, but toddlers have a tendency to have "accidents" or lose their ability to hold their food, often without warning and in the worst times and places. Their unpredictable, disruptive, and sensory-displeasing behavior makes me very uncomfortable.

And I cannot STAND it when I'm routine shopping and they're screeching, whining, throwing balls and things at me, other shoppers, and the store workers, or throwing a tantrum that would make a tribe of chimpanzees being slowly murdered sound soothing. I really hate the parents who seem to think that this is okay and just because they tolerate it everyone else should, too. It's not okay for me to have a meltdown when I'm overwhelmed but it's okay for them to tantrum when they don't get what they want. Go figure.

I've never had a little brother or sister, so I've didn't have to worry much about some little kid breaking and entering my bedroom and destroying everything, and my parents saying they don't know any better and blame me and not them for being upset. In fact when my aunt and my two cousins, who were both really young at the time, moved in with my parents for a while and then I had to get a lock for my bedroom door. Should have gotten it years ago to keep my older brother out, too.



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20 Jul 2015, 12:24 am

SammichEater wrote:
I wouldn't say that I have a fear of toddlers, but they are annoying and I prefer not to be around them. I hope I never have kids.


This. I'm not afraid of toddlers, but being left alone with them does make me uncomfortable. I just never know how to act around them. I work at WalMart, which is the Mecca for parents who let their children scream as much as they want while ignoring them. That can get problematic and can cause moderate to severe aversive reactions in me, which I then have to hide out in the back room to control. Most toddlers just inherently irritate me because they are loud, intrusive, demanding, dramatic and largely incomprehensible. I have no desire to have children. As long as I had a set of heavy-duty headphones to block out meltdowns, I think I'd get along much better with nonverbal LFA toddlers.


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20 Jul 2015, 12:27 am

Joe90 wrote:
I also get rather jealous of small children, for being small children. I know I was once, but I spent most of my childhood whining and complaining on family outings, instead of actually enjoying the innocence and freedom of being a child and being ''allowed'' to climb on railings and leap about in the street, and having those magical christmasses, and splendid birthday parties where you just play party games.....

I would like to be a child of today, but an NT child. There's this fete what is on every bank holiday in August, just in the next little village from my town, and we all usually go every year. But I remember going to one as a child, and the whole time I spent whining and just wanting to go home - I didn't even look up and take in the lovely, summery atmosphere. I didn't even want an ice-cream. Usually kids to whine at those sorts of places where you're standing and walking about a lot, but usually when you say about ice-creams they usually cheer up and want one. But I never did, until I got to about 8. But those years have whizzed by s quickly, and now I'm nearly 21 and I feel bored and worn out with responsibility and dealing with having AS and Dyspraxia as a grown-up - especially when people look beyond your disability and just criticise you and say, ''oh you're 21 years old - why don't you get a life and stop being so anxious and miserable all the time!'' That advice doesn't really help, and needing help for my high anxiety disorder is nothing to do with whether you're grown-up or not. Anxiety can be very disabling sometimes, and it has quite a high affect on your life and doing normal day to day things, and it does not go away just like that.


This x 1000. I wouldn't want to be an NT child, but I'd give anything to go back and relive my aspie childhood, with the benefit of an early diagnosis that my parents understood and accommodated.


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