A couple of days ago I was walking through a shopping mall with my family. I saw a an elderly couple (very elderly, both at least 80 years old, probably closer to 90), with the man pushing his wife along in a wheelchair, and they were accompanied by several generations of their family. One of those things that makes you think the world isn't such a bad place after all.

I was pushing my daughter along in her stroller, while my wife and son followed behind. I was walking a bit faster than them so I didn't see what happened next (my wife told me when we got outside). My son walked up to the elderly man, pointed to some open sores on his arm, and said, in his normal speaking voice (which is basically a shout): "MUMMY, WHY DOES THE OLD MAN HAVE BLOOD ON HIS ARM? WHY IS HE PUSHING THE OLD LADY IN A CHAIR?".

This is in Indonesia, Jakarta in particular which is in Java, where the culture is all about respect and politeness and never saying things directly and never raising your voice.

How do you explain to a 5-and-a-half-year-old aspie kid about basic politeness when even we grown-ups struggle with it often enough? We tried but I didn't get the impression that he even remotely understood what the problem was.

When I was a little younger than my son is now I remember being in a shopping mall with my mother, sitting at a table while she had gone to buy some food. An elderly woman walked past and I shouted to my mother (who was further away from me than the elderly woman) "MUMMY, WHY DOES THAT LADY HAVE A MOUSTACHE?". I feel awful about it now, but at the time it just seemed like an okay thing to do. My mother was FURIOUS at me. The thing is that my wife won't raise her voice or show anger to my son in public no matter what he does, and she gets upset with me if I do it. A cultural thing. And the problem is that by the time you get home the moment has passed and it just becomes "something that happened at the mall".

You don't condone anger at kids (or anyone), do you?


I hope this doesn't make you mad.

I marvel at this incident now, but when I was 7 we were at a Kentucky Fried Chicken joint.  There was this woman (20's; nothing unattractive about her).  Her nose was kind of big and distinctly shaped (at least in my mind).  I nonchalalantly say, "Mom, that woman has a parrot nose!"  A split second later, I'm slapped hard across the face and it stung like hell.  I didn't realize what I said was wrong nor did I understand at the time that it might be perceived as an insult.  In my mind, there was simply just something about the woman's nose that resembled a parrot.

I think most parents can tell similar tales, whether their children are autistic or not, and most of us as adults can look back and remember making similar loud and tactless comments when we were young.  

As for how you deal with such incidents while in a public place - I am like your wife in that I don't raise my voice in a public place, and I try not to show anger to my son.  I'm not easily angered anyway, and tend to be calm by nature, so that's not a problem really.  If he has been really naughty or wilfully disobedient, I will tell him that I am angry with him and explain why.

In the kind of situation described in the OP, I quietly and briefly apologise to the people concerned, and then quickly remove my son from the immediate situation.  I then speak quietly to my son about what happened and try to get him to understand it from the other person's perspective.  For example, I might compare the old man's open sores to the unsightly abscesses my son had a while back.  He was upset when people commented on them, so I'll explain that the old man would be upset by him commenting on his physical ailments.   Then I ask him to think about what happened, what he could have done differently and that when we get home he can tell me his thoughts and conclusions.

This post was last modified: 11-09-2010 06:54 PM by Marcia.

^ wish you (Marcia) had been my mom.

I was often dealt with as Kevout was. But that was the 50`s.
  
We were to be seen and not heard, while in public.

Grrrrrr!

No, it doesn't make me mad.

I think that there is constructive/controlled anger. The kind where your kid knows that you are upset with him for a good reason and you focus on why his behaviour is unacceptable. I think this is okay. I think my mother was the best mother ever and she did get angry at me sometimes. But always in a constructive way, never abusive.

Sometimes being nice and explaining things gets you absolutely nowhere with a kid.  

Then there is the sort of anger that bad parents indulge in, which is just taking out your frustrations on your kid, yelling and screaming abuse with the intent of hurting a child, destroying their fragile self esteem in the process.