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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
