it's 'national autism week'...

It’s preferable to have a society in which people could communicate and not assume the worst of parents AND children. This wasn’t a situation where obvious abuse was occurring. The cops were called because a 5-year-old was having a bad hair day. Are you cool with a society in which cops are called whenever people see something or someone different?

Also, the parents had nothing bad to say about the cops.

 

I’m not sure you’d be OK with it if people called only in situations of “obvious abuse.”

 

Interesting that the photo in the Podhoretz tweet isn't in the piece. Is that a photo of the son?

I agree that calling the cops isn't my first impulse.

Not sure how I'd approach the parents, though, if I thought the child was being mistreated.

That said, I'm sure parents of children with challenges are already trying to be mindful of how those challenges play out in public, and might be misread by well-meaning bystanders.

 

My point being that this was a situation that likely could have been avoided with a little polite chit chat. It wasn't a physical situation that demanded immediate intervention or alerting authorities.

 

Well-said, Az.

 

Thanks, shot.

 

As I said, I could have written that. The mention of bookstore tantrums really hit home. I've spent a lot of time thinking in the moment about what other people might think of a given situation, but that is always when things really fall apart and there is literal kicking, screaming and the like. I also don't look like an accountant so that probably doesn't help the optics (Hi, Slacker!). It's an almost-daily issue. It just seems the priorities are a little out of whack in this instance. As if the bystanders' judgementalism (is that a word?) was the driving force, not any sense of altruism. My kids -- as most kids are -- often look like mini-bums. A young child's fashion sense is terrible. My daughter's hair is a fucking mess EVERY DAY.*

*I'm never more out of my depth as a single dad than when my daughter asks me to do something with her hair. She might as well ask me to build a nuclear bomb instead of tying a ponytail. Same difference.

 

It's the image generated by linking to the story, and it doesn't show up in a google image search, so I doubt it's a stock photo. Would guess it's there son.

 

I wonder if it was taken that day.

It's an interesting editorial choice. The story mentions the photos they took of the son throwing stones in the water.

Is it too on the nose to publish the photos they took that day? Do they make writer's point? Or refute it?

 

It can be very difficult sometimes to navigate the line between "I don't want to call the police on those parents who are just having such a hard time with their kid" and "I wish I had called the police on those parents who were giving their kid such a hard time." There are instances that can provide a real dilemma.

Seeing a kid with short pants and bedhead is not one of those instances.

 

Right, but who knows what they saw and how they interpreted it? We have only the mom’s second-, maybe third-hand hearing. It’s hard for me to find a villain here. Just people trying to make sense of a confusing situation and do the right thing.

 

I have a son on the autism spectrum. He's a college freshman now, and we've definitely had our struggles, sometimes in public places (although, fortunately, the major meltdowns he usually saved for home).

After reading that article I couldn't help but think she was leaving out some vital information.

Bad hair? Pants that don't fit? And someone calls the cops? Maybe I'm wrong, but it just doesn't add up.

Related to that, I was also struck by this passage:

“Can we talk to you a second,” he asked, “about your son?”

My husband called out over his shoulder, “He’s autistic,” and kept walking my son to the car.

OK, timeout ... That's the first thing you say to an officer about your son? "He's autistic"? That, to me, sounds like one of two things:

• Either this family is constantly announcing to the world, for one reason or another, that their son is autistic (something we rarely do, unless we're talking to teachers or family or friends, and when necessary)

• Or they were explaining away something else that the kid was doing/happening to the kid at the park that day that's being left out of this article.