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Autism, and anti social behaviour.

Johnathan

A few weeks ago we have had a letter from our landlord about complaints of anti social behaviour from our neighbours. The complaints were regarding noise nuisance. We have 3 children, 9yrs, 5yrs, 3yrs, and they are all boys. Our 5 year old son was diagnosed with ASD, and global development delay 2 years ago. Our neighbours were claiming that we were banging on walls, slamming doors. Theses claims are a total lie, we have never done what they were claiming. The landlord (housing association) did there investigation, and we started mediation with next door. All the sudden the plot changed to our children being noisy. Now I understand that there is what would be considered general household noise, and the noise that children make is included in this. I think the real issue here is our autistic 5 year old who can be very rowdy sometimes, and he will sometimes wake up in the early hours. (4am+) My question is would his behaviour be classed as anti social behaviour if he was having a bad day as some autistic children do?

Any advice would be welcomed.

Parents

  • I suspect there may be an underlying reason, distrust of people with what are perceived as mental health problems. It may not be noise at all, but malice - disability hate crime. Possibly you need to consult social services or another mediator.  Keep a tape recording of your own house ambient noise at key times near the party wall, which you can produce as evidence. Also keep a diary on incidents when you think your son may have been noisy, with dates and times. This can be shown to the landlord when complaints are made.

    I'm afraid this sort of thing is quite common, people can be very hateful about anyone in their neighbourhood not being normal. As you say the story has changed from banging on walls and slamming doors to noisy children. They are trying to make an issue, hoping your family wuill be obliged to move.

    While bad incidents hit the headlines, low key disability hate crime in respect of autism is quite common.

    If the claims persist despite best efforts this needs to be raised with the police hate crimes unit. Usually police intervention will make them think, just you usually hope not to have to go that far with neighbours.

Reply

  • I suspect there may be an underlying reason, distrust of people with what are perceived as mental health problems. It may not be noise at all, but malice - disability hate crime. Possibly you need to consult social services or another mediator.  Keep a tape recording of your own house ambient noise at key times near the party wall, which you can produce as evidence. Also keep a diary on incidents when you think your son may have been noisy, with dates and times. This can be shown to the landlord when complaints are made.

    I'm afraid this sort of thing is quite common, people can be very hateful about anyone in their neighbourhood not being normal. As you say the story has changed from banging on walls and slamming doors to noisy children. They are trying to make an issue, hoping your family wuill be obliged to move.

    While bad incidents hit the headlines, low key disability hate crime in respect of autism is quite common.

    If the claims persist despite best efforts this needs to be raised with the police hate crimes unit. Usually police intervention will make them think, just you usually hope not to have to go that far with neighbours.

Children