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Sick to death of ignorant people

Lau

Today my neighbour asked if my child is going to the local mainstream school for primary 1, I said no he’s in a specialist nursery just now as he needs a lot of support and he will be attending a specialist school where his needs will be better met and she said your sons only borderline autistic look at him he looks like a wee angel. She then said Hopefully primary 2 he will go to the local school as you want him in mainstream.

I responded with your either autistic or your not autistic you can’t be borderline. She then went on to say maybe if he took his dummy out he would talk better. I responded his dummy is a comfort to him. She then said to my son take that dummy out your mouth and he then immediately took his dummy out and just stood there staring. 

I felt rage and wanted to tell her to *** off. Obviously I didn’t as I’m not that type of person and I don’t want to cause friction with my neighbours but I don’t want to be questioned over some idiotic woman in her 50s who has clearly no experience of autistic individuals. 


I trip up over my words and almost get stumped at times when people ask uncomfortable questions my mind almost goes blank and I can’t get an appropriate response out to put someone in there place politely. 

Can I ask how you handle people like this.? 

Parents

  • I would have said that you know the needs of your own child much better than she does; after all, it isn't her decision, nor would she be qualified to make such a decision. She would probably be offended by the brusqueness of this though and reply with the defensive 'but that's just my opinion'. Communication between autistic people and neurotypicals can be fraught with difficulty often just because we bring two different sets of values and norms to the interaction.

    Until she realises how little she knows, if she ever does such a thing, then it's like reasoning with the unreasonable. I would bet that the 'Dunning-Krueger' effect exists here too (on her part).

  • in reply to SpaceOctopus

    Just to add to this and I hope not to belabout the point, older people are not inherently ignorant about autism. In fact, I don't think that you intended to make such a generalisation but were probably caught up in the warranted frustration of the situation. That being said, so much has happened in terms of how we understanding autism and autistic people in the very recent past and it seems as though this new knowledge hasn't filtered down into all groups of people in society.

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  • in reply to SpaceOctopus

    Just to add to this and I hope not to belabout the point, older people are not inherently ignorant about autism. In fact, I don't think that you intended to make such a generalisation but were probably caught up in the warranted frustration of the situation. That being said, so much has happened in terms of how we understanding autism and autistic people in the very recent past and it seems as though this new knowledge hasn't filtered down into all groups of people in society.

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