Parenting is never easy, and parenting a child with special needs usually places a lot of responsibility on parents. And indeed, in such cases, parents are usually more reverent and more attentive to their child, making sure that they are as comfortable as possible.
This is absolutely the right approach, even if to other people and other parents this sometimes seems like a manifestation of total overprotection. As a result, sometimes there are situations when parents of children with special needs even come into conflict with relatives and friends regarding their parenthood.
A prime example of a similar case is this post on the AITA Reddit community, written about a week ago by user u/halfa**millennial. As of today, the post has already gained more than 3.3K upvotes and almost 600 different comments, where people mostly justify the mother's behavior. However, let's not get ahead of ourselves in our narrative...
More info: Reddit
The author of the post has a 4 Y.O. son who has Autism spectrum disorder
Image credits: Michael Sherrin (not the actual image)
So, the son of the author of the post is four years old, and the boy has ASD. The kid loves to play with his toys, collecting roads for monster trucks, marble runs and other constructors. As the mother says, they usually are fond of playing with figures of superheroes, of which the boy also has a lot. The child always carefully collects his toys, putting everything in its place.
Image credits: u/halfa**millennial
The boy is very upset each time when other children that come over literally trash his toys
The problem is, as the OP says, that her son's toys are also played with by her nephew or her best friends' children - and played with in a completely barbaric way. Every time the children come over, everything ends up exactly the same - monster trucks have their wheels torn off, superhero figures lose their arms or legs, fragments of marble runs are scattered all over the room, and in general there is a complete mess literally everywhere.
Image credits: u/halfa**millennial
Of course, this greatly upsets the boy, so his mother repeatedly asked her friends and relatives to talk to their children and tried to explain everything to them by herself... but to no avail. The woman offered the children a huge bin of toys standing in the living room - but they invariably stated that the toys there were uninteresting and they were completely bored. And again and again, it all ended in a mess in her son's room...
Image credits: Ivan Radic (not the actual image)
The mother finally decided to put a lock on her son's room and forbade other kids from entering
As a result, the woman made the difficult decision of putting a lock on the door to the boy's room and simply forbidding other children from entering there. In the end, as the OP admits, firstly, it is important for her that her child is comfortable, and secondly, toys are also quite expensive, and the kids constantly break them. It turned out, her friends and family members did not appreciate such care for her child, so now they generally refuse to come over at all.
Image credits: u/halfa**millennial
According to friends and relatives, the heroine of our story simply regrets buying expensive toys for her son, and at the same time is actually teaching him to be greedy and entitled. Of course, people prefer not to think about what emotions a child with ASD has due to a mess in his room.
Image credits: u/halfa**millennial
In fact one can understand this mother's decision easily, a psychologist says
“In fact, one can understand the mother of this child so well because in any case, she understands his conditions better than other people,” says Irina Matveeva, a psychologist and certified NLP specialist, whom Bored Panda turned to for advice about this tale. “In addition, the woman most likely spoke with specialists about her son, and received a full range of recommendations on how to behave with him properly.”
Image credits: u/halfa**millennial
“For people who are prone to hyper-concentration, it can really become a problem to constantly observe how their things are messed up and broken. What then to say about a four-year-old child whose psyche is still being formed? So the mother’s concern about the state of her son is quite justified here,” Irina notes.
Image credits: u/halfa**millennial
“In addition, even if we abstract from the specifics of the kid's mental health, the cultivation in children of disrespect for personal boundaries and the property of other people is definitely not a good trend. So this woman's relatives and friends should themselves pay attention to their own children's behavior and to their proper upbringing," Irina Matveeva believes.
Image credits: Alan Levine (not the actual image)
People in the comments also sided with the mom, labelling her friends and relatives entitled people
Most of the commenters immediately hurried to dispel the doubts of the author of the post about the correctness of her decision. According to people in the comments, she is in no way teaching her son to be greedy or not to share his toys with guests, but simply cares about his mental comfort. And what's more, it's the other kids' parents who are behaving like entitled people in this situation.
Some commenters even wondered why the boy's mom wants to have these people and their kids over, since they're totally disrespectful of others' space and belongings. Be that as it may, people summarize in the comments, the relatives and friends of our heroine should seriously reconsider their attitude towards the behavior of their children.
However, situations where even the closest relatives do not understand at all how to properly behave with children with special needs, alas, are not at all isolated. For example, you can also read this post of ours about the woman who called her BIL and his wife bad parents for refusing to take their small daughter with ASD to a noisy theme park for a holiday. And, of course, we also welcome your comments about this particular story.