Mum asks autistic boy's parents to not play with their son

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This will backfire on the parents who wrote the letter. Children learn so much from each other that goes far, far beyond "age appropriate" cartoons, toys and behavior. Those parents are severely underestimating their own child's ability to be his own person, and severely underestimating the importance to childhood development of selecting one's own friends. This is a foolish, foolish move on the part of those other parents. The ignorance it takes to consider such a move is mind boggling. When kids choose friends that are different from themselves they are choosing to expand their world in unique ways, and choosing to expand one's world is a usually good thing. It usually is easy enough to teach your young child which behaviors and preferences not to mimic.

My answer to the other parent would be that "I have no plans to tell my son who he can or cannot be friends with at school. I accept that you will not invite my son over to play, or accept invitations from us, but trying to break up a friendship children have chosen for themselves will harm both children and I will have no part in it."

When I read about the cartoons being for younger children, I was expecting preschool cartoons like Peppa Pig. When she said Tom and Jerry and Pokemon (can't remember what the other one was), that really pissed me off because those are not specifically aimed at 3-5-year-olds at all. When I was a kid Tom and Jerry and Pokemon were common among children of all ages. This mother sounds like she wants her son to grow up fast and she also sounds controlling.

There, suck on that, b***h.

I bet these same parents tell their child to be themselves. So much for that.

Well thats one way to mould judgmental small minded kids

I'm guessing the other boy is NT. I thought I read a number of times on WP that NT kids copy the behaviour of the crowd, not just 1 peer. I thought it was ASD kids who only copied behaviour of 1 peer, whether it's acceptable or not. So that bitchy mother has nothing to worry about.

So how is this new exactly? When I was a kid, I had dozens of kids' parents tell my parents not to let me play with their child anymore because I was too "weird". It's not a new phenomena.

The fact that they let the asd kid courier the note instead of having an adult conversation with the parents tells you all you need to know about their coping skills.

On the flip side the mother of the NT boy has concerns her son is not socialising enough with other NTs but is spending too much time socialising with Ashton.

I think all parents have aspirations for their child to be/do better and the mother translated/communicated her anxiety about her son in a not very sensitive way.

It's a very competitive world and I am sure plenty of NT parents might have had the same thoughts but would possibly handle the situation differently/more senstively.

The fact that it's not new doesn't make it any better.

it clearly is unethical and cruel. If I was the autistic kid mother/father I would say something clear to this family, even denounce them publicly.

Most kids don't copy a special needs child unless they are special needs themselves. I can see my own mother doing something like this because she would want me to be with normal kids for so they can model normal behavior for me. It's also the reason why she took me out of the self contained classroom because I was copying other kids in there and I wasn't the only student doing it in that class. She was worried I would grow up to be handicapped and not act normal. But I only did it at school.

Another problem with being in "special Ed" is that they might not guide you, correctly, towards the "regular" high school diploma; they might assume you are not capable of doing the work.

I had that problem in my self contained class. My mom had to teach me more work they were not teaching me and I never memorized math problems. So in the 2nd grade I couldn't understand how kids counted so fast in their head, now I know it's because they were not counting, they had them memorized because that is what they teach you in 1st grade. You do not count forward or backwards, you memorize all your subtraction and addition problems.

thanks for sharing!

The way the mother of the NT boy thinks that Tom and Jerry is for toddlers is beyond me. When I was a kid Tom and Jerry was popular among kids of all ages and even teenagers. I don't think it's specifically a preschool show. Teletubbies is specifically a preschool show, but not Tom and Jerry.

Let's not be too harsh on the mother, I'm sure most of WP member "moms" probably thought the same thing about kids functioning less well compared to their child.

I've seen this first hand in Aspie social meet/greet groups where kids seem to gravitate toward other kids functioning at their same level with (not too subtle) encouragement and reinforcement from their mothers.