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Judgement from other parents

zek1234

Hello New to group but been feeling so isolated needed to know if anyone else has same issues.

My child has had issues since 2 and now 5 and half his peadiatric doctor wishes to start multi agency assessment as suspected now that they have austic spectrum disorder.

This was hard to accept but it would explain the additional needs issues they have been having.

However what I am finding hard to deal with is the judgements from other parents in the playground. 

It started in nursery where I would get snide comments as I went through the gates to dirty looks and tuts as I went past to the point I had to see head teacher to ask for 2 children not to be on class with these children (with the support of their teacher who had observed it) that these children were being told to tell other children not go play with mine.

Things seemed to settle in reception and they did improve greatly but those comments keep coming and now parents who dont even have children in same year as mine getting involved.

An incident happened yesterday due to the school making a major change to routine and they couldn't cope. This meant that they had a meltdown and I had to hold them to stop them running off and hurting self. But all I got was comments of animal and monster to the click gathering for a look.

I came home and was in tears and still trying to calm down from that change to routine and noises (has sensory issues as well)

Does anyone know else have to deal with this and if so how do you get through with it? 

Parents

  • Three things are at work in these situations: lack of understanding of autism, notions about certain things being obvious, and fear of difference.

    The lack of understanding of autism could be resolved, but what makes it harder is the way autism is represented in the media, and the complexity of the condition.

    NTs (non-autistics or maybe even "muggles") take their social connectivity skills for granted. They have social referencing and can gauge their behaviours easily erelative to others. To them it is 'obvious' - if a child isn't conforming it must be a naughty child or bad parenting.

    What is not getting across about autism is that children on the spectrum have little or no social referencing. You won't find that in the Triad of Impairments, not implicitly. And yet that is a huge part of the problem at this age - kids on the spectrum don't register social learning.

    Then there is fear of difference. I think it is something inherited from when we were all packs of monkeys swinging in the trees, when an oddly behaving monkey was a risk to the others and had to be excluded or killed. You'd think we had moved on, but those tutting parents are really just monkeys up a tree, chattering. If you look at them that way it might help.

    You can see parallels though in disability hate crime - people who have a mental health problem, real or perceived, being hounded out of communities because people construe them as a threat.

    I didn't get a diagnosis until my fifties, but I grew up in a much less informed society. I was excluded a lot socially - anyone I made friends with even briefly suddenly unavailable because the parents had been warned about me by other parents. I endured many years of intense bullying and exclusion because I was just a bit different.

    It is not at all excusable. But it is sadly human nature.

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  • Three things are at work in these situations: lack of understanding of autism, notions about certain things being obvious, and fear of difference.

    The lack of understanding of autism could be resolved, but what makes it harder is the way autism is represented in the media, and the complexity of the condition.

    NTs (non-autistics or maybe even "muggles") take their social connectivity skills for granted. They have social referencing and can gauge their behaviours easily erelative to others. To them it is 'obvious' - if a child isn't conforming it must be a naughty child or bad parenting.

    What is not getting across about autism is that children on the spectrum have little or no social referencing. You won't find that in the Triad of Impairments, not implicitly. And yet that is a huge part of the problem at this age - kids on the spectrum don't register social learning.

    Then there is fear of difference. I think it is something inherited from when we were all packs of monkeys swinging in the trees, when an oddly behaving monkey was a risk to the others and had to be excluded or killed. You'd think we had moved on, but those tutting parents are really just monkeys up a tree, chattering. If you look at them that way it might help.

    You can see parallels though in disability hate crime - people who have a mental health problem, real or perceived, being hounded out of communities because people construe them as a threat.

    I didn't get a diagnosis until my fifties, but I grew up in a much less informed society. I was excluded a lot socially - anyone I made friends with even briefly suddenly unavailable because the parents had been warned about me by other parents. I endured many years of intense bullying and exclusion because I was just a bit different.

    It is not at all excusable. But it is sadly human nature.

Children
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