I walked out of the panel room and down the crowded corridor. Up ahead I could see a small child thrashing and screaming on the floor. The mother was sitting on the floor next to her son, not picking him up or talking to him. The crowd veered around, eyes averted, to give the unpleasant scene more space. Some of the people passing by were trying to be kind, to not add to the embarrassment. Others may have been passing judgment. The massed effect was to isolate this mother and her screaming son in a bubble of “I will pretend to not see you.” I recognized the mother, we had been panelists in a discussion about blogging the night before. During the course of that panel she had mentioned her son as autistic. That one piece of information gave the scene a whole different cast for me. This was not an uncaring mother ignoring her misbehaving child. This was a struggling mother who had tried everything to help her over-stimulated child, but simply had to wait until he’d screamed himself tired enough to be rational again. I’ve been there before. I’ve been the mother sitting on the floor, or actively chasing the child who is a public nuisance. It does not take an autistic child to put one in that situation, none of mine are autistic, but parents of autistic children end up there much more often.
I stopped and crouched down to ask if there was any way I could help. As I suspected, there really wasn’t anything I could do for the little boy. The touch or words of a strange woman would have added to his distress rather than soothing it. But my stopping did help. It let that mother know that not all the eyes that passed were judging her as a terrible mother. I saw the tear that she wiped away so quickly. I stayed only for a minute. The little boy was winding down the tantrum even as I stopped. The mother soon needed to turn all of her attention back to him, and I needed to move along for my next event. I did not get to see that mother or her son during the rest of the convention. I hope it went well for them.
Many times I have been very grateful for a passing sympathetic comment given to me in similar circumstances. I am indebted to the many people who have helped me contain or control my children in public spaces. I am indebted to the many kind people whose words let me know that I was not an awful parent and that I was not alone in my struggles. I’m glad I had the chance to pass that gift along to someone else.