foot in mouth moment

[Guest guest]

We went to the lake yesterday with my 3 girls and an extra 8 yr old

friend. Well, the girls were playing in the water and this little

punk boy starts calling 'em names. The people that appeared to be

the parents said nothing. I told the girls they'd just have to

ingore them and swim in another area, that there would be difficult

people they'd run into their entire lives and would have to learn to

deal with them. So a little while later a different kid was in a

float and splashing like mad, getting water in they eyes of my

nearly 4 yr old. Again, the parents of this one didn't say a word to

the boy. So I said very loudly, " Girls just swim away from him,

obviously he doesn't know how to behave. "

Then the mom and another said, " First of all, he has something

called autism and he doesn't know how to play. "

I went from 5'7 " to about 1' 3 " , lol. I immediately apologized and

told them I was so sorry, and pointed to Allie and told them she

also has autism. They went to tell me he just doesn't know how to

play. I felt so bad and explained to the girls that he has autism,

they were fine with dealing with his splashing after that.

I felt so bad that I put this family in a place we've all been. But,

at the same time, if Allie did something like that to another kid, I

wouldn't have ignored the situation, I would have used it as a

teaching moment to teach Allie how to better play with the kids.

They didn't try to teach this little guy or apologise to the girls

or anything. Seemed like they were just ignoring the whole thing.

Pretty sad.

Debi