Other parents (a little OT)
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Other parents (a little OT)
| Wed, 01-16-2008 - 12:58am |
This has been nagging at me, and I need a place to vent.
| Wed, 01-16-2008 - 12:58am |
This has been nagging at me, and I need a place to vent.
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WHOYA, (in my al pacino voice) let me let it out girl lol.
Last year Nic who has TS had a lip licking tic for 6 months straight.
Oh no, not the Other Parents rant! How long do you have??? :-)
I try not to do this too often because I am very *very* aware that I am constantly judged as a parent (and usually found wanting) by other parents because I have an Aspie (if they don't understand his behaviour they blame me or our parenting), but my favourite piece of ranting is the Mothers of Only Girls stuff. I have a very lively 4 year old NT boy, and whilst I do discourage him from pointing sticks and 'shooting' people, Evelyn would hate me because I am a 'boys will be boys' mum. I have lost count of the number of times mothers of girls, usually older professional women who have one daughter, have made snide or pitying remarks along the lines of 'I'm so glad Arabella doesn't feel the need to shout/run/kick balls/make a mess' (insert whatever 'boyish' behaviour is offending their delicate sensibilities) but then completely ignore the kind of whiny, spoilt, attention-seeking, manipulative, spiteful behaviour that is 'bad' girl behaviour - and has had my Aspie in tears because he doesn't understand why people who are 'friends' would want to say mean things - probably because these women are whiny, spoilt, attention-seeking bitches themselves.
OOOOOH! MiaOW!
The other one that gets me ranty is parents who make a rod for their own back and then whinge about their kid. Prime example amongst the NT parents I know is sleeping...I know so many parents who complain that their kids don't sleep well, but then you look at their bedtime 'routine' and it involves, well, no bedtime, junk food snacks galore, adult TV, sleeping in parents beds etc etc etc and then they *wonder* why their kids don't go to bed, sleep well, or behave properly! (and this is middle class educated professional parents who should know better!)
And my current favourite Other Parents rant is parents who smoke around their kids. Luckily this is getting less acceptable now in Scotland, but I am fed up of picking up DS2 from playdates and having him reek of smoke, and 'pretending' to smoke sticks because he thinks it's cool.
But I do have some Other Parent Raves too, just to counterbalance it. When we finally got the diagnosis for DS1 it was after some very difficult periods where DS had been lashing out at other kids for no apparent reason (actually because he felt threatened or they weren't following the 'rules', as it turned out, but because we didn't know about the AS mindset then it just looked like random violence, and a I think a lot of people thought that we must have been teaching him to behave like that), giving us a lot of trouble at school...anyway, when we got the diagnosis, one of the nicest things one of our friends said (the parent of DS's best friend, who had unfortunately sometimes been on the receiving end of DS's lashing out) 'Well, I *knew* something was up. And that just proves that there can be no link between autism and parenting, because you guys must be the best parents I know, and we were all wondering why Euan was like this when he so clearly is one of the best-loved and best-looked after boys in the world'
I still remember that, and cry, in my 'low' moments.
Kirsty mum to Euan (9, Asperger's) Rohan (4 NT) and Maeve (2, NT)
Ooooooh, I don't know if it is a good idea for me to open that can of worms. I can rant forever about parents that don't take any responsibility for their kids' actions.
For a moment, I thought maybe your son went to the same school Haley used to go to because they also have a small group of boys that do the very same thing although this mostly takes place on the playground. It amazes me how little these parents actually pay attention. The last time Haley and I encountered these boys, they were trying to bully her off the playground and were pretending to shoot her and me. The parents were not 5 feet away. I went off on those kids right in front of the parents and they didn't even look up. I went off on them too and they just looked at me briefly and went back to their conversations.
I had it out with a mother a couple of years ago because her son was harrassing my daughter. He had pornographic pictures on his cell phone (no idea where he got them from) and he kept showing them to her and asking her to have sex with him. The mother refused to listen to me and said I was a liar. Nice.
Then there are the parents that let their kids run wild in the stores... or other busy public places. I have had kids run into me, hit me with the carts in various stores... I have almost been mowed down by kids wearing Heelys... I get so infuriated that these parents think that this is ok!
Oh and let's not forget at the movie theater when people sit right behind us and their kid spends the next 2 hours kicking the back of your seat. It may be a minor offense but OM-Gosh it ticks me off!
I better stop or this post may end up being 10 miles long. LOL!!
Mom to Erin (19) and Haley (10yo Aspie)
Mom to Erin (19) and Haley (10yo Asp
Whew, you mean its not just me who finds these "other" parents lacking?
Jill-- I'll second your thoughts on kids with Heelys and kids whose parents let them run wild with carts in stores.
There was a woman who lived down the road from us when we were in El Paso. ( Most of you might remember this story) Her daughter and Bryanna are the same age/same birthday. Well, they started playing together and her two sons wanted to hang out with Victor. As long as Bryanna is around, I usually give Vic free reign with strange kids because she will step up with him. I also sat down and discussed with this woman that Victor doesn't see things exactly how we do and how we could approach each situation. Now, background on her boys. Victor was 9 at the time. Her oldest boy C was 11 and her youngest son B was 6. Victor would want to go hang out at their house and would suggest they go play on the trampoline. These kids were always on their trampoline and since it helped Vic with his stimming ( altho we didn't know that's what did it then) I'd let him go play. I was just SO happy to have him out playing with friends. Well, C and B would steal things from their mom's room/purse/ kids at school, etc... and tell Victor about it. Victor didn't want to get his friends in trouble, but knew it was wrong so he'd come home and tell me. Against my better judgement, I let Victor spend the night over there one night. He came home about 5pm that evening exhausted because he had spent almost 24 hours with these two boys. I left him to veg in his room til bedtime. At 9pm, I went into his room to unpack his backpack, and discovered one of C's shirts in there. I told him no big deal, it was too late to return it tonight but first thing in the morning we'd drop it off. We dropped it off and Victor said "I'm sorry, I must have picked this up by mistake". The mom seems okay with it. The next day, the two boys said that Victor was no longer allowed to play in their house because he was a thief. Chances are that one of her own kids put the shirt in his backpack, but Victor doesn't steal. Now I know every parent says that... but if he really took it ( and he's snuck some things away from sister in the past) he would hide it like he has before. This was left in his pack and he was SO upset that he couldn't take it back that night. Victor had NEVER given that woman any type of reason to suspect he was a thief, just her own kids being bad. I still thought okay, I'll give the boys the benifit of the doubt. I hid my purse in my bedroom under lock and key, and invited those two boys to spend the night at our house. They spent 3 hours that night harrassing Victor calling him a thief before Vic had had enough and asked me to fix the problem. I called the woman and told her to open her front door because her boys were coming home. That these ungrateful children were invited into my home to have fun, not so they could torment my son over something that he did not do. After this situation was over, Victor said "Momma, some people are just mean. I don't think I like playing with mean people." and that was the end of it. He decided after that to ignore these two kids, but that has always stayed with me. Even when Bryanna and her friend were still friends. After another 3 months, Bryanna realized that even the little girl was mean and not worth playing with.
"I mean, I wouldn't let my dog jump out of the trees and scare people (and I could get in trouble if I did) but somehow it is okay to let kids do it."
I DO let my dog jump out and scare people -- at least the ones who keep jumping my fence and traipsing through my backyard who then get pissy when I ask them to please not do it. My dog is a big ol' scaredy cat and wouldn't hurt a fly, but she's big, and she'll go charging out the back door yapping her silly head off if someone's in the backyard. If they so much as turned around and said "boo," she'd be back in the house in a heartbeat, but the idiots don't have to know that.
Fortunately, although I've seen my share of idiot parents, we haven't had to interact with them too much. Even some of the run-wild kids around here have involved parents who are responsive if their kids are causing trouble. I HAVE had to talk to kids a couple of times who were bullying my ds, but I was amazed to see the kids respond favorably when I talked to them. I guess we're pretty lucky.
LOL.
Elizabeth -- I think I would have gone absolutely insane if that happened to me. I haven't been completely knocked off my feet yet but have been run into pretty hard a couple of times. I don't even think I could stand it if I saw it happen to someone else. That's good to hear that the dad was after the kid that did it the last time. Good grief!! I hope your DH is ok!
These kinds of things make me want to just run the parents over with my own cart sometimes. I mean I would be so embarrassed and upset if Haley even slightly bumped into someone. She doesn't have Heelys and certainly wouldn't be allowed to wear them in a store if she did but even if she did, there would be some serious consequences of something like that happened. But then... I watch her like a hawk when we're out. She's never out of my sight for a second so something like that wouldn't be possible. I wish more of these parents supervised their kids a little better.
Mom to Erin (19) and Haley (10yo Aspie)
Mom to Erin (19) and Haley (10yo Asp
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