Labelling children.

Kids should be allowed to make mistakes. Adults should point them out and help them learn from them.

P.s. Im not blaming your GS for getting it wrong. I am blaming his "adults" for not reinforcing to him that the girl was in the right there

These lessons need to be taught when they are small enough to get it wrong from time to time with no major harm done. If a child lacks social awareness, it'll take longer to teach.

If you wait until he is too big to physically stop before you think HE is ready to learn about not grabbing girls: it'll be way too late!

But ultimately it is up to the person who is being touched to chose their own boundaries. Their personal boundaries to not need to be adjusted to suit others needs. In the case of the girls OWN body autonomy, your GSs autism is irrelevant. She has absolute final say in whether or not she wants to be touched by others.

"Consent" can and should be taught from toddlerhood and the fact that you think it doesnt apply to 4yr olds and little girls is worrying.

MORE attention needs to be put into teaching this to kids who struggle with social norms, not less! You do your GS a huge misservice if you exempt him from this lesson!

We have always told our children when playing together "its not fun unless its fun for everyone"

If they werent playing nice we told them to "look at their face, they are not enjoying this, please play in a way that everyone enjoys"

Consent can begin to be taught at a very young age

No girl needs to tolerate being grabbed by a boy if she doesnt want to be. It applies to both sexes but more accutely on our society to girls.

Teaching girls that being "nice" trumps their own body autonomy is not a lesson I would EVER teach my girls. And if someone is touching them in ANY way they dont like they have my blessing to not only shout/swear but also to use physical force.

4 year olds CAN be told not to be physical with others if it is uninvited. They wont always get it right at 4 but their parents/carers should reinforce the concept whenever they get it wrong and should have explained that he was wrong to grab the girl.

Do you know that the child saying "weirdo" didn't have some kind of autism or other issue, though?
I'm just playing devils advocate here.

None of us know others' circumstances, so I suppose in that respect some visible means of identifying them could be a help.

Maybe a little badge or something rather than a lanyard. (In my opinion)

Wow some judgemental people on here, do some of you even understand what autism is and how it manifests itself.
Conker you have obviously not read my post correctly, it was my Grandson who was called a weirdo, and at 4 years old didn't understand the concept of "consent", sorry if that offends you but I would suggest you read up on autism. My Grandson was 4 years old at the time, so a 6/7 year old needs consent and personal space from him when he only wanted to play. I thought we were supposed to encourage our children to be social and understanding of others, whether they have a disability or not. Seems like we still have bigots in our society!

Quizqueen I am shocked at your comments if you really worked in special education!! You show a total lack of understanding. You clearly had no training about autism.

EllanVannin I find your comment about medicating children who have melt downs offensive. I have a grandson who is gifted educationally so seems very capable but suffers extreme anxiety in any social environment and can have sudden melt downs. (He is undiagnosed but may be autistic).
Why should he have to be medicated because others may be offended by his behaviour sometimes. I totally understand why a parent of an autistic child might find the lanyard helpful. My daughter suffers terribly from the looks and comments of people who don’t understand. If it saves her the agony and embarrassment it’s a good thing.

I would like to know why so many more people seem to be labelled as having some sort of learning difficulty or mental illness nowadays. There seems to be one in every family, shown by many of the posts on here and mumsnet. When I was a child/teenager I only met one person with Down's Syndrome and my great aunt claimed to have depression (although I never saw any evidence of this-in my mind, she was just someone who couldn't be bothered to do anything for herself and then complained that the family never wanted to visit!). However, I did meet lots of naughty children or, for those who live in the current PC world, 'children who do naughty things!. Also, if you decide to dabble with drugs and/or indulge in too much alcohol you should expect to be affected by it, but it is something that people have brought on to themselves by plain stupidity.

Yes, in the 20th century some of these children with some learning type difficulties, I accept, may have been 'locked away' or not taken out as much and there may not have been enough early diagnoses, but I do think some people use labels to excuse just plain ordinary bad behaviour and a lot of bad behaviour results from bad parenting. Contrary to that, before someone makes the comment- bad parenting does not necessary result from a bad housing situation or not having much money.

During my career, I did actually visit a severely disabled residential unit, where some of the child had been institutionalised because of their deformities e.g. having a central eye in the forehead or one dropped in the cheek. What happens to these people now as it all seems to be care in the community. Perhaps they didn't live very long.

When I worked in special education some children, who were due to be assessed by the Educational Psychologist, would tell me their mothers had told them to 'play up' so they would get that sought for autistic diagnosis which released more benefits, like attendance allowance. One child, who was disruptive in the classroom, was even labelled with 'defiance disorder'. Don't all children have that at some time in their lives!!! I would have described him as a child who liked to push boundaries and who had weak parents who indulged that behaviour! Funnily enough, I never had any problems with teaching him. I have also worked with children where I could clearly see they had special needs like global delay at a very young age but their parents could not accept there was anything that needed addressing!

I have mixed feelings about these disability lanyard (supermarkets/airports) dementia badges, Parkinsons badges etc. Yes I can see that in certain cases they are helpful but they also show that a person is vulnerable and sadly that's not always a good idea.

Sadly there is a lot of nastiness in our society towards anyOne "different".
As a wheelchair user I have encountered it But also the wheelchair is a kind of label and it also signals to people my disability and it can also bring people who are very kind and helpful to see when I might need help.
Befoer the wheelchair when I was trying to manage I would fall over and people avoided me thinking I was drunk....also my speech was slurred.
So a label is useful
even though it can target judgement it is information that is helpful.
I think an autistic child might well need people to see that he is having to overcome difficulties and it is not a stigma to be judged.

If someone is blind and deaf they have a red stripe on their walking stick to signal the two disabilities.

This is not about labelling all children with disabilities.

It is one individual family's coping strategy for their individual challenges. And now they are being judged for doing what it takes to make a trip to the shops work...

I am sorry I dont agree with labelling children, no matter what the disability.

I can see why it would worry you. It does sound terrible to put a label round a child's neck. I assume the parents have done it so that people are aware if he has a meltdown and font judge. But I still wok ld feel uneasy about it like you boperp14

My daughter could've done with something like this when my youngest grandson was younger, he is on the autistic spectrum with anxiety and OCD and used to have spectacular meltdowns and periods of running off and hiding, both of us have heard people saying that he needed a slap, needed punishing etc.

Fortunately, he is much better equiped to deal with anxiety and OCD and has fewer meltdowns

Calling another child a wierdo is a horrible thing for one child to say to another. I'm not surprised you and your daughter were upset Mealybug. People can be so intolerant. Personal space or not, surely a bit of common sense would be a good idea. Surely all children don't always understand the issues around personal space and it should be explained gently without resorting to name calling. Kindness to others is an important concept to teach children too. Neither child could have been very old if they were on a bouncy castle.

My beautiful granddaughter is 5 and has autism. She is funny, gorgeous and full of fun. Sometimes things in life upset her like noises, lights, too many people, too much going on etc. So these things can cause melt downs. So she can look naughty or brattish. She doesn’t wear a label but I get it. She uses a special buggy occasionally because she has dyspraxia which makes her a bit clumsy. She also wears dark glasses and sucks a dummy. It all helps keep her anxiety levels down when she’s out and about. Sometimes that doesn’t even work. So when she plays up my daughter gets the looks from people. It’s the parents who should have a label saying I am a bloody saint don’t judge us.

As the mother of a son who has severe learning disabilities,I sympathize with the mother of the child.When my son was very young,he had a severe outburst of screaming and kicking his feet.Several women in the surgery were very judgemental,telling me he needed a good hiding,taking out of the surgery as he was disrupting their conversation and several more unhelpful comments,the only person in there who offered any support,was an elderly gentleman who offered me his slot so I didn't have to wait.After that I felt like putting a label on saying I'm disabled

To what age would this 'action' be in force.?
I do appreciate unless you 'walk in another's shoes' you cannot say what you would or would not do but fail to wonder what thoughts were in the mind of the parent of the autistic child when feeling the need to take such a step.

I have a grown up severely autistic son. Unfortunately it's not always as easy as 'explaining to your child' what is appropriate. My son is non-verbal. I have spent a lot of this morning preparing a way of explaining to him that I am going away for a week. Have sent it off to his speech therapist to see if she has any changes she would suggest. People getting uppity about my son 'not apologising' (complete with lemon sucking face) were the bane for a while. a) he can't speak and b) he's not even going to know that what he did was 'wrong'. Come back in 6 months when we'll have worked on it if it turns out to be an issue rather than a one off.

I had cards when he was little, never handed them out because I always had my hands full with him when the gawpers were out in force. DS2 and DS3 used to do a dance for them sometimes. His team have handed out cards at times, but there are more of them, so it's easier to find a person spare to talk to the general public.

I sometimes used to put my son in a t-shirt which had AUTISM in big letters on the back (it was from a research network, so was advertising that research network). I thought it might be a clue for some but it didn't make much difference tbh.

When we attended a festival we did have some sort of label thing attached somewhere because we were camping and were worried about son escaping. I can't remember how we labelled him in the end - it may have been a bracelet, he tends to pull most things off.

Some of the public we have met over the years have been lovely, really lovely, some just leave us to it (which is fine), but we have also had some awful things said to us over the years so I can understand why people try to spread understanding - especially in the early years. I think I did then as well. TBH I gave up in the end. Not our job to educate people and it they're ignorant so be it.

I think unless you have experienced it you don't realise how horrible some people are. I never had anything remotely like it with ds2 or ds3.

Bopeep14...so the child looked normal........ After all the awareness raising on behalf of those with autism I find your remark Ill-considered and ignorant. Many people with autism have a different way of looking at the world, their brains being wired differently. A different normal but still normal, whatever that is.
As for criticising his mother 'labelling' him, how do you know what her experience of being out with her child has been? Probably meeting a judgemental person at every turn, people who have never walked a mile in her shoes.
Please show some understanding and compassion....GN can be a nasty place sometimes

I watched a Mum sitting in the aisle of a shop holding a screaming 5 year old because he had been touched by another child when shopping. I agree with Sodapop, wait till you have walked 2 moons in my moccasins before you judge me x

I don't like it but and may be a big but, the idea is to let others know why the child is behaving how they do if they have a 'meltdown'. Sorry can't think of the appropriate word.