I am a behavioral therapist for autistic children. We behavioral therapists generally agree: the hardest part of our job is the parents. Case in point: I was discussing possible future program goals with the mother of my 16-year-old student. We’ve been talking about teaching him to ride the bus for a while now, but this makes mom extremely nervous because she’s worried about (and I quote) “pedophiles and perverts.”
Let me paint a picture here. My student is sixteen. He’s 5’8, well-built, and generally has the appearance of a young man. Now I admit, teaching him to ride the bus by himself makes me nervous as well. I’m worried that he’ll get distracted and miss his stop and end up in the next county. He might get confused by the bus routes or handling the money. He might get on the wrong bus. He might step in front of a car because he’s busy talking to himself.
Hi Behavior Therapist. After dealing with as many parents as you have and as many parents, I would think that the hypersensitivity of a parent of a disabled child is rather common, regardless of the manifestation.
My child has a significant speech delay, I find I have to worry more because of her lack of ability to communicate. Now, I assume this 16 year old can probably communicate better than my 4 year old, but even the issues that you raise about his ability to ride the bus and the inherent problems thereof, can open a can of worms to the parent.
Disabled people can/will be targeted precisely because they are less able to defend themselves or protect themselves for that matter. I assume you are talking about city buses, not school buses. Does the mother take a bus? Has she ever? Perhaps her perception of who actually rides those buses is her reason for the fear.
You have my sympathies, but in all honesty, I can see where she is coming from, especially if the disability is significant.
I’ve recently been through an event that makes me want to build a wall around my house, yank my child from school and tell the entire world to take a flying leap. This mother has probably spent the childs entire life protecting him, fighting to get him help, being judged negatively for his illness/disability and possibly even being blamed for his condition.
Cut her some slack. Putting any name on a fear is better than no name.
Sorry if I came off as an insensitive jerk. You’re absolutely right that the parents (especially the mothers) of disabled children tend to be hypersensitive. But in many cases, and especially in this one, the overprotectiveness and babying is actually damaging for the child.
It’s my job to help parents push their children toward independence. So often I see a case where the child has the capability but the parent has never given them the opportunity. It can be as mild as the case of my four-year-old client who mother puts on his socks and shoes for him. Or it can be as severe as this case. Until I started working with him last year, this 16-year-old boy had never bathed himself, washed a dish, made a snack for himself, or slept in his own bed. He has normal verbal and motor skills.
This mother just has so much fear and anxiety that it makes her son anxious, too. She talks about the pedophiles, the perverts, the thieves, etc. in front of him. The difference in his behavior when she is around is astounding. He becomes distracted, perseverates on negative topics, pursues her repeating things over and over, and generally just becomes a hyperactive ball of anxiety.
But anyway, I am used to parents being anxious about their child’s safety. But it was the irrationality of the fear of a pedophile pursuing what is basically a grown man that caused me to do an internal WTF.
Auntbeast, it’s understandable that the mother will be worried. Heck, mothers of perfectly healthy people are still worried about their babies when the babies’ grandchildren are about to start high school…
But the son is and looks 16. Pedophiles would think him old!
Jerk, no, I think people do become frustrated and you certainly are entitled to vent, particularly where it’s an issue which persists over time and which seems to be hampering the child.
But insensitive, yes. It isn’t the mother preventing the child being independent; it is his disability that does that. She is not, I gather, encouraging him to exercise all his capabilities in this area and since that is your job it is frustrating for you. I get that. But the fact that he is seeing you at all suggests that she is not entirely out to lunch but maybe she hasn’t got a good handle on how to deal with this particular area. There are so many areas to have a handle on and we are not all great at all of them. Heck, I put my neurotypical 8 year old’s shoes and socks on him just today because I was not prepared to die on that hill this morning.
A fear of sexual abuse of the disabled does not strike me as particularly unreasonable considering the numbers. People with cognitive disabilities are particularly at risk. It’s possible that the mother is not in a good position to teach him about the social aspects of sexuality though if she is bathing him at 16 years old. Maybe she wants to talk about it and doen’t know how to think about it much less bring it up?
Based on post #3 I will give the OP some slack. But I want to say that perhaps it is the use or misuse of the word “pedophile” that is clouding the issue. A naive young man can be taken advantage of in many ways. For example, my son gave $20 to an obviously fake sob story at a bus station a few months ago. Nefarious people know who is an easy target. They could be looking for all kinds of mischief, including sexual mischief.
My niece is autistic, and her mother is that same ball of fear. And she is indeed passing it on to her kids, especially my niece. And the repetition and all that - I see her doing that far more when she is around her overly-nervous mother than she does when she is alone with my mom and I or other people.
In fact, as a 13-year old, she often “takes care” of her younger cousins quite fearlessly (even though many times they take as good care of her without her realizing it.)
But around her mother she is terrified of all kinds of things: falling snow touching her, doors being locked or unlocked, having to talk to people. By herself, she’s fine.
Not that it would do any good to point this out to my SIL. But it’s sad to see that she is preventing her very capable daughter from having a chance at independent living due to her own fear.
Pyper, just how high functioning is this kid? You make it sound almost as if he is nearly fully functioning, but his mother infantilizes him to the point of complete dependency. IYO, if he were forced at gun point to bathe himself or sleep in his own bed, could he do it? If he were treated his whole life as if he were very high functioning, how do you think he would have fared?
I read the OP totally differently than everyone else I think. To me it doesn’t say “mother has irrational fears” or “mother is over protective” or anything of that nature.
What I read was: Out of all the things mother should/could be worried about, she has glommed onto ‘pedophiles’ which is the one thing she needn’t worry about considering son is not a target for such (sexual abuse, possibly…but not pedophiles).
As an overprotective mother myself I understand the fears of unlikely (or implausible) situations, but I can also understand the frustration of the OP when those fears are misplaced.
Again, what is preventing her very capable daughter from independence is her autism. Not her mother. Her mother may be behaving in counterproductive ways. But it is equally likely that the child behaves in those ways around her mother because she is safe with her mother. And that she wants to do those things all the time but controls herself except when she is safe.
My husband teaches physics and has a student who is autistic who appears entirely normal at school and then falls apart entirely at home. One of his accomodations is that he can’t have certain kinds of homework because he literally is using all his energy to keep his shit together at school and needs the time at home to…well, disintegrate. Where he is safe.
Which is not to say that the other theory is impossible, people do hold their kids back in all kinds of ways without realizing it.
In a non-offensive way, may I ask your expertise in making such declarative sentences as if the rest of us do not know what we are talking about? If you are an authority, I have no problem accepting your statements at face value. But I find myself getting my back up at how decidedly you state your opinions upon situations you can only judge based on the information we have provided.
I understand the point of your husband having a student - but I do not consider that your authority, just your relating of a story third hand. Wherein the OP is actually dealing with these individuals on a daily basis, and I’ve been an up-close observer (and by no means an expert) for the past 13 years.
Again, I’m not trying to be offensive - I’m just trying to establish from what knowledge base you are asserting from.
LOL. Marienee, obviously my intent to get some clarification has gotten your back up. As for “pissing”, I just prefer to use the restroom and flush. So I apologize that my attempt to be non-offensive, but direct, offended you.
Obviously, the autism will always be a factor. I’m stating that the level of factor it plays is sometimes influenced by the focus of the parents. If the parent focuses on what may hurt the child, or what the child may not be able to do - the child in turn may focus on that, or adopt those fears. But sometimes, when the parent focuses more on what the child can do, and what will help them, the results can be amazing.
Small example:
My grandmother was told that in spite of multiple surgeries, my father would probably never be able to walk well, let alone run. My grammy had 11 other children, a farm to tend, and food to get on the table. She never bothered to tell my dad what the doctor said, or coddle him in any way.
My dad went on to be captain of all 4 athletic teams in high school, and was invited to play baseball in the farm leagues. It was only after injuring his arm pitching that he returned to college and got his teaching degree, where he then went on to coach & referee sports for years. Other than a slight amble to his walk, and the scars on his legs, you would not know that he was supposed to be “a cripple.”
Obviously, that was a physical vs. neurological disorder. And not all cases are going to end that way. But I do think there are times when the problem is or isn’t what we make of it. And as someone who has observed similar reactions as Pyper, I was merely commenting that I could sympathize on some level with what she was saying, and found it interesting what she had observed, as it was similar to what I myself had observed with my niece and SIL.
Lol back atcha, I was just coming back to post something similar. What gets my back up really is the eternal tendency to blame the mother. And I have a personal dislike of talking about what kind of guy (er, girl) I am. And I do not always respond well. So I apologize, too.
But here’s what I mean: A 16 year old boy absent some other factor does not let his mother bathe him. He makes his own snack. Okay, I grant you, the washing dishes thing is less likely to be spontaneously adapted. A thirteen year old is not taken care of by her young-enough-to-be-baybysat cousins, absent some other factor. I reject utterly the notion that these childrens’mothers did that to them. Not by being overprotective (modern meme) and not by being unavailable (traditional meme).
Now, that parents of disabled children often get hung up in the cannot and have trouble daring the can, I can totally get behind. Certainly.
And I myself was told that my eldest child would never speak, would never be able to communicate at all outside the family circle, would never make human contact and should be placed in a residential school for treatment if he was to have any hope at all – and I was overprotective and did not send him. And I have files right here in this house where therapists and paraprofessionals opine that mine was the fault and mine was the blame and mine was the origin of his behavior which in fact came from his disorder. And they sound just like the OP.
He is 10 now and no one would then or will now diagnose him with autism but he surely has a significant language disorder. And he is in scouting and in karate and plays soccer and has a band of friends and in short does everything I was told he would not do. Now they tell me he will never get past high school and needs to just go into some kind of apprenticeship program. And I still suck and the opinions are still filling the files because I think that is mistaken. He attends a school for kids with speech and language disorders and continues to perform at grade level which is of course impossible according to the same files. Adn they sound like the OP too.
But I didn’t do any of that. He did. Mine is not the fault: mine is also not the credit. All I am saying is that it is possible for a parent to be a hindrance to a child; it is also possible on the same set of facts to come to another conclusion. If the parents are doing their level best (sending their kids to behavioral therapists, allowing them to babysit their cousins) it seems to me appropriate to try to we can help them, meet them halfway. You know?
Parents of neurotypical children quite often fail at the task of instilling independence, so it is hardly surprising if the parents of autistic children also fail at that same task from time to time. Is it the parent’s “fault.” I mean fault is a weird word to apply. The parent did not succeed in a parenting task, which is only one from among many they did succeed at.
Independence is a learned trait and I have MANY times seems parents sabotage the efforts of their (again neurotypical) children because the thought of the child’s independence is emotionally painful. I can’t really see that parents of disabled children are immune from this.
Marienee, thanks for coming back to clarify. It really helped me put your statements in better perspective. I appreciate that.
**Hello Again **- I think this is a bit of what I was trying to say. My SIL has passed her nervousness on to all of her children, but it is most apparent in my autistic niece. And as **Marienee **pointed out previously, this can often be counterproductive.
To address some of the comments: My student has mild mental retardation with excellent verbal and motor skills (he swims, juggles, and rides the unicycle!)(Not at the same time). I don’t think he will ever be completely independent due to his poor math, spelling, and reading, and his high level of distractability. However, he is absolutely, 100% capable of performing grooming, feeding, household chores, and many community activities. I was quite shocked when I started working with him to discover all the things he had never done. Even something as simple as opening a package of tortillas was a disaster the first time, because he had never been encouraged to make his own food.
No, I don’t think it is completely mom’s fault. My own personal theory is that typical children will naturally seek independence. They will look to their peers and their older siblings and emulate them, trying to be more grown-up. My client is an only child, who attends a special ed class full time, and whose extracurricular activities and friends are entirely within the autistic community. That, coupled with a lack of social awareness, led him to take on the role of a very small child for a long period of time and never seek independence.
On the other hand, I think that mom’s number one fear is pedophiles is a very good indicator of how she sees her son. He’s not a young man, he’s a small child. He never sought independence, but she never pushed him that way either.
I didn’t mean to bash parents of disabled children-- I mean, it is my job after all to teach parents strategies to help their children. The point of the OP was to complain that, out of all the valid fears a parent could have over their teenager riding the bus, this mother chose the ludicrous example of pedophiles.
My good friend’s brother is schizophrenic. He’s been hardly functional over the past years, but now is making amazing progress. Why? He’s out of the shadow of his overprotective mother.
For years he lived with his mom, who sheltered (and limited) him greatly. She made up every excuse in the book why her son couldn’t improve. Recently, however, my friend finally came to a place in his own life where he could take on more of the care of his brother. He convinced his mom to get the brother in a group home. And, wow, it’s like night and day. Given the opportunity to get out from under her wing, he’s doing remarkably well at doing his own thing!
I feel for the parents that devote themselves to the caretaker role. It’s a big sacrifice. I can imagine it’s ever harder to let go after all that… Could that be where the pedophile fear is coming from?
I don’t have a problem with blaming the parents if they are making their child’s condition worse, instead of trying to help their child achieve everything he or she is capable of doing. No, the mom isn’t responsible for her child’s autism, but she is responsible if she makes her child more nervous instead of less nervous with her own actions and behaviour (and this goes for all parents, not just parents of children with disabilities).
I used to be a bank teller. At one point, I broke my right arm (unrelated – I never engaged in extreme banking), and for a few weeks I couldn’t really do my job.
This coincided with the start of a new school year, so we had a lot of new college students wanting to open accounts. Since they had to fill out a lot of forms, present IDs, etc., there was a lot of busy work that tied up CSRs forever. So I got set up at a table out front and got the new students’ stuff in order, so that I could take the burden off of the CSRs and help speed things along.
Sometimes students would come in alone, but most often they came in with a parent. And the parents usually came in two varieties. Type I would generally let their child make his own decisions and just offer some guidance. Type II would intervene and let their child make no decisions at all.
It was interesting to observe the children of Type II parents in the following weeks. They were generally the ones who got interesting haircuts, wore unconventional clothing, and reeked of various drugs.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it was interesting to see what sorts of decisions they finally made once they were allowed to.