# Disabled kids and public politeness **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 14, 2014, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-kids-and-public-politeness/678817 "2014-01-14T21:26:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2014, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-kids-and-public-politeness/678817/41 "2014-01-20T17:08:46Z")
Obviously I don’t know that woman, I was trying to say that it COULD be possible that her daughter rarely makes a peep or shows any reaction, so the woman just got into it and enjoyed being able to interact with her daughter. Shrug. I’m not even saying you should have to endure the screeching, just trying to say there could be an explanation beyond that woman being a massive asshole and trying to annoy people on purpose. ---
**Author:** ![StGermain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stgermain/32/2868_2.png) [@StGermain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StGermain)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2014, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-kids-and-public-politeness/678817/42 "2014-01-20T21:43:31Z")
> [@grude](#): > > Obviously I don’t know that woman, I was trying to say that it COULD be possible that her daughter rarely makes a peep or shows any reaction, so the woman just got into it and enjoyed being able to interact with her daughter. > > Shrug. > > I’m not even saying you should have to endure the screeching, just trying to say there could be an explanation beyond that woman being a massive asshole and trying to annoy people on purpose. I don’t think **Green Bean** said the woman was “trying to annoy people on purpose”. She’s saying the woman was encouraging behavior that was inappropriate in an indoor public place. Not saying, “let’s see how wound up we can get all these people”, but also not recognizing that her daughter’s behavior, and more importantly, _her own_, was negatively impacting everyone else. The woman was thoughtless, rude and boorish. I don’t care if the kid was little Helen Keller learning to say “wa wa” for the first time - the woman screeching at the top of her lungs was wrong. StG ---
**Author:** ![Idol\_Springs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/919ad9/32.png) [@Idol\_Springs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Idol_Springs)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2014, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-kids-and-public-politeness/678817/43 "2014-01-20T22:18:15Z")
> [@Unauthorized\_Cinnamon](#): > > I have several friends who have non-neuro-typical kids. I feel for them, and I support their efforts to give their kids as normal a life as possible. And I realize that they must face a lot of insensitive jerkwads in public who curl their lips or even make nasty comments over harmless but odd behaviors. > > Understandably, these folks are interested in stories of discrimination and hardship for similar kids, and I will often see them post stories on Facebook about such incidents. Only, it seems to me that often the parents of such disabled kids are making a huge stink over people objecting to behaviors that aren’t just a bit odd, but which no one would ever dream of tolerating from a neurotypical person, and which actually impinge on normal enjoyment of activities. There seems to be a growing notion that every disabled child has a right to engage in all activities a child might enjoy, no matter what, and anyone who even accidentally, slightly impinges on this right is a monstrous bigot who is deliberately victimizing the children \*because \*of their disability. > > Case in point: [customers at Panera asked an employee to do something about a child’s obnoxiously loud shoes](http://www.today.com/news/restaurant-apologizes-after-child-disability-asked-remove-shoes-2D11923852). Probably customers and employee alike assumed they were [these stupid novelty shoes](http://www.littlegreentrike.com/productcart/pc/home.asp). And when the mother explained they were medically necessary, the employee was very nice, but the mother felt so victimized she fled crying, and demanded the chain issue a public apology. When my friend posted this story, she was outraged that people were being such assholes to disabled people. > > I’ve also read stories of parents offended that their children having meltdowns in movie theaters or restaurants were not welcomed to stay, of someone being mortally offended at the cruelty of a restaurant patron moving to a table farther from her autistic child who was constantly vocalizing, and a parent demanding that her local girl scout troop pay for a sign language interpreter for every outing so her daughter could participate. > > Am I just being insensitive, or have some of these folks gotten so used to battling for decent treatment and reasonable opportunity that they can’t see the line between reasonable and ridiculous anymore? My thought is that if your child is screaming in a theater or restaurant, regardless of the cause, you need to remove them. And yeah, that can suck, but it hardly seems correct to assume everyone else just needs to put up with the screaming. If my child needed help to enjoy extracurricular activities, I’d probably wind up chaperoning all the time, not telling the other volunteers they needed to pony up money to pay a professional to do it. > > Other friends of my friend are asserting that even if the kid in the story was fully able and the shoes were a lark, anyone in such a low-rent restaurant as Panera would have no right to complain anyway. Tell me I’m not the crazy one here! (Though I personally wouldn’t bother complaining, I sure have thought some annoyed thoughts at parents who brought similarly-shod children to public places!) OP, why don’t you take it up with the government, I’m sure they would gladly put your situation right! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Bean](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/green_bean/32/1760_2.png) [@Green\_Bean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Bean)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2014, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-kids-and-public-politeness/678817/44 "2014-01-21T19:33:30Z")
Thank you, **StGermain**. That is exactly what I was trying to say. **Grude** , it’s several times now that you’ve said that I said things that I simply did not say and made inferences based on no evidence. You do not seem to be able to discuss this rationally. With regard to your suggestion that this may have been a rare opportunity for them or the above suggestion that they were doing it for therapeutic reasons: Those are plausible scenarios, but the mother was still a jerk. If a nice person negatively impacts the enjoyment of others, whether it’s by accident or because they feel that their reasons for doing so are sufficiently compelling, they apologize and/or explain. If the mother had just said something like “I’m sorry about the noise, but this is a rare opportunity” I would have just said “no problem” and forgotten about it as soon as the screeching stopped. ---
**Author:** ![fluiddruid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@fluiddruid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fluiddruid)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2014, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-kids-and-public-politeness/678817/45 "2014-01-21T21:59:22Z")
> [@Green\_Bean](#): > > With regard to your suggestion that this may have been a rare opportunity for them or the above suggestion that they were doing it for therapeutic reasons: Those are plausible scenarios, but the mother was still a jerk. If a nice person negatively impacts the enjoyment of others, whether it’s by accident or because they feel that their reasons for doing so are sufficiently compelling, they apologize and/or explain. If the mother had just said something like “I’m sorry about the noise, but this is a rare opportunity” I would have just said “no problem” and forgotten about it as soon as the screeching stopped. I think this is the big thing. A lot of caretakers of the disabled, or disabled people themselves, forget or don’t know that most people simply aren’t in these situations very often. It’s not cool to make others uncomfortable or annoyed needlessly. And when I say needlessly, I don’t mean “you need to hide disabled people away so they can never bother anyone”, but I mean taking consideration of others. Explaining what is happening is a big deal. I’ve recently become disabled (hopefully, temporarily) and my honest finding is that most people are uncomfortable dealing with the disabled not because they are horrible people, not because they are really terrified of disability, but because they are afraid of the stereotypical Chronically Offended Disabled Person (or Chronically Offended Caretaker). I know life must be tough for a lot of these folks and I don’t entirely blame them, but life isn’t all peaches and cream for everyone else. No reason to make it harder than it has to be by getting all bent out of shape that people notice when your child does socially unacceptable things (even though it may be justified). No reason to get mad if people don’t know you, or your family member, are disabled, and expect you to act accordingly. It happens. If you just say something, most people will work with you. Seriously, I ask for people to be patient with me all the freakin’ time, and I get practically zero guff. But I ask. And I say thank you. I don’t know what happened in the Panera case, but if you get offended by even being approached, then there’s a problem. If you want an opportunity to bring awareness, why not politely approach the people with a problem and explain rather than complain about a whole company on the Internet? If you’re polite and give a brief explanation and people insist or are unreasonable, get offended at that point, not just for people not psychically knowing what’s going on. What ended up being learned in this situation isn’t that some kids need orthopedic shoes. The takeaway that most people will have is that disabled people are best avoided, because interacting with them risks a giant public (and/or online) debacle over the slightest provocation. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2014, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-kids-and-public-politeness/678817/46 "2014-01-22T02:50:14Z")
> [@Green\_Bean](#): > > Thank you, **StGermain**. That is exactly what I was trying to say. > > **Grude** , it’s several times now that you’ve said that I said things that I simply did not say and made inferences based on no evidence. You do not seem to be able to discuss this rationally. > > With regard to your suggestion that this may have been a rare opportunity for them or the above suggestion that they were doing it for therapeutic reasons: Those are plausible scenarios, but the mother was still a jerk. If a nice person negatively impacts the enjoyment of others, whether it’s by accident or because they feel that their reasons for doing so are sufficiently compelling, they apologize and/or explain. If the mother had just said something like “I’m sorry about the noise, but this is a rare opportunity” I would have just said “no problem” and forgotten about it as soon as the screeching stopped. What inferences and things you simply did not say? I made the inference that the incident occurred in a playground due to a ball pit, play area whatever. The way you described the woman certainly makes her sound like an asshole: > [@](#): > > But then the mother went up to the netting, got the girl’s attention and screeched back at her in an even louder voice. So the girl screeched back, more loudly. And the mother looked excited and thrilled and screeched even louder. And the girl screeched even louder back. And so on. By the time the mom had wound her up, she was emitting an unearthly shriek the likes of which I had never heard before. The other kids were covering their ears and leaving the ball pit and I couldn’t take it any more. > > I don’t remember exactly what I said to the mother, but I made sure to address what she was doing (winding the girl up) rather than what the girl was doing. The result was the mother screaming at me that her daughter had a DISABILITY! and couldn’t SPEAK! and this was how she COMMUNICATES!!! and did I think that people should just keep their children at home if they weren’t PERFECT! and people like me were the PROBLEM!!! and on and on. I tried to politely re-explain, but there was no stopping this lady. I ended up just walking away while she was yelling at me. That sounds like someone trying to create a scene. I have not once defended that woman, I was simply trying to give some possible context for similar situations which is what the thread is more broadly about. I don’t know why you are so sensitive about this incident that you have to accuse me of not being rational. I don’t think China Guy meant to be condescending with his post either. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2014, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-kids-and-public-politeness/678817/47 "2014-01-23T06:05:55Z")
> [@Green\_Bean](#): > > I like **China Guy** too, and I remember well when his twins were born and when Serena’s problems were coming to light. It kind of hurt my feelings to get lumped in the “people who don’t understand” category by him, but he probably has no idea that people remember stuff like that and genuinely care about it too. Then again, I just called him insufferably condescending, even though I haven’t seen that anywhere else. 🙂 Sorry about that, China Guy, and please give Serena and Audrey hugs from some lady in NJ they don’t know. No worries. I used “generic you” to mean folks in general. I wasn’t calling out you as in Green Bean. As I wrote, I was pretty clueless about the whole special needs thing9 years ago. BTW, Serena and Audrey just celebrated their 9th birthday on Christmas Eve with ice skating, and cold stone ice cream cake, and some families over for dinner. I meant to write an update but it’s kind of hard to do so. Serena has advanced exponentially since we moved to the US 3.5 years ago, is in the higher functioning special needs class with some great teachers that try to mainstream her as much as possible (she can sit in on the science class for 10-15 minutes without causing disruptions and longer with an aid), can usually express her wants verbally, go as much as 5-6 sentences in a “conversation”, physically is much stronger and coordinated, has an action tremor that really complicates fine motor skills but is doing a good job on the piano. Audrey is now in a gifted class, speaks far better English than Chinese, tolerates her Chinese class, is getting pretty good on the ukulele, is too smart for her own good, talks a lot, a master of attention getting tangent interjections, is a crankasaurus rex for an hour after getting up, is taking on the role of big sister to Serena, and most of the time is really a pleasure to be around. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-kids-and-public-politeness/678817.md?page=2)