Autism and the Kindness and Unkindness of Strangers: Part 5 of 5
Today’s video is the final installment in a series of blogs that looks at the kind and sometimes unkind encounters that parents of children with autism sometimes face. Today we’d like to thank Suzanne D’Atri, a parent of a child with autism, for sharing her story about the kindness of a stranger who helped during her son’s meltdown on a plane.
After filming and hearing their stories, I noted themes emerging. How about you?
Did you notice how parents apologized for what they perceived as their fault for not planning more or better for every eventuality that might occur with their child? For having to quickly respond when the call was made to board the plane. For not taking the iPad away sooner when preparing for take-off.
Did you hear their internal quandary about whether and how to let others know their child has autism? What do I say? Will it make it better or worse? Will they even know what autism is?”
Did you feel their embarrassment and distress during the melt-down or when the police arrived? And then their relief when their child settled down, someone seemed to “get it”, or they made it out of the grocery store?
I know I found myself nodding my head and saying out loud, “My dear fellow parents: Yes! Been there and felt that!”
We hope by sharing these, we increase awareness about our kids and their challenges, and therefore our challenges in so many everyday routines. Do you have a story of your experience with your child in public that you’d like to share with us? Help us help others to “get it” and perhaps more parents will be on the receiving end of a random act of kindness.
Check out the other stories in this series:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I’ve lived the airline travel stories before we knew our son was autistic. Our first and most notable experience was on a 9 hour international flight and our son didn’t settle down until we landed. He actually collapsed in to a sweaty, exhausted little mess the moment we were in the terminal, my husband and I also exhausted and tear stained. Unfortunately there wasn’t a lot of friendly faces on that flight and since we were travelling with a child, car seat and all the kid gear we had decided to wait while everyone else deboarded. Each person giving us a look of disapproval on their way out. We thought we had planned really well, packing lots of new and favorite toys, snacks, games, laptop loaded with cartoons and movies, he had his own seat and we took his car seat so that he could be more comfortable… we even made a fort out of the little blankets onboard the plane. I would have handed out earplugs but at the time this airline already supplied them and I’m sure just about every package was used. We hadn’t planned for the mother of all meltdowns. We didn’t know yet that his behavior could have the potential to escalate like that and we didn’t have the skills to handle it.
I really appreciated hearing Suzanne’s story, and could certainly relate to it, having had similar experiences! Thank you Suzanne.
When my son was younger (this was pre-diagnosis), he had a terribly difficult time using public restrooms. Loud toilet flushing mechanisms and forced air hand dryers were too much for him. When confronted with the necessity to use a public restroom, I hoped that no one would flush or dry their hands while we were in the room. Another issue was that if a restroom was visually dirty he would sometimes refuse to use it. I remember being near Pike Place Market one day when he was about 5, and he needed to use the bathroom. He refused to use the market bathrooms (understandably) so we hiked all of the way to Nordstrom Rack downtown, blocks away. We waited in a very long line (and there was a long line behind us). When we finally made it into the bathroom, I had to flush the toilet for the next person. My son completely lost control. He was screaming and crying but refused to leave the bathroom. The line grew outside. I poked my head out at one point to apologize and people stared/glared. Minutes dragged by, and he finally calmed down enough to walk out of the door, past a line of about 10 women. One of them touched my arm as I walked by and whispered “I have a family member with autism – I understand.”
Another time, trying to use the restroom at Golden Gardens and seeing my son panic in the stall when a toilet flushed, I resorted to asking everyone in the crowded bathroom to hold off on flushing or using the hand dryers for just a couple of minutes. They all did, amazingly, in one of those “it takes a village” moments, and he was able to recover and move past it.