a week in the sun
the lovely Cornish sun : )
some magnolias at the Lost Gardens of Heligan : )
We had the best time we have had there, beautiful weather, great places to visit, and the first time in a long time where none of us have wanted to come back home, we all wanted it to last longer!
Unfortunately there was one episode which slightly spoilt our trip to the Eden Project, which you may have read about on my Twitter account.
Even though I don’t really want to linger on a foul 5 minutes that was a pinprick in our week, I will, because I said I would, and also, if it helps someone reading this understand autistic/aspergers children, then that can only be good.
We had spent a very enjoyable time at the Eden Project, and were just finishing off before we headed back up to the main entrance building to have a cup of tea before going home.
We had been to The Core, the education section, I was waiting for Edward and my mother in law to return from the toilet to meet up with John and William who had already headed to the entrance/exit. Edward saw me, and so I turned to go to the exit and they followed me.
I got to the entrance, and went and stood outside. At this point I should try to explain the entrance visually, there is quite a big entrance, with a wide opening, no sliding doors or anything, and to one side there is a little slide entrance for children, with steps on the outside and on the inside as well.
This is where William and John were. William has a thing about slides, he wants to, but very rarely can go down ones he doesn’t know very well, he has a thing generally about heights, especially stairs, steps and escalators.
So there I am waiting outside, having seen them on the slide steps on the inside of the entrance, in the entrance is two women, I assumed at the time that they were mother and daughter, and with them a small child, I thought about 3 or 4, who kept going up the outside steps and then down the slide and repeating this.
After the child ran out again, the younger woman, about 35 to 40 said very loudly ‘well he must be retarded to behave like that’ to the older woman, at this point they were both looking inside, and I assumed at William, my blood started to boil. However, I couldn’t be sure, so I left it but then as John and William came out as Edward did with his nana, the woman looked at William and repeated the comment ‘retarded’.
At this point I couldn’t control myself, and stormed over, now to be honest I can’t completely remember what I said, I didn’t swear or punch her, though I would have happily done both, but basically I said that my sons are not retarded, they are both on the autistic spectrum, and that she should keep herself under control.
When I say ‘said’, I guess that should be shouted!
Her response was that ‘his father’ should have told her, and controlled him!
John at this point had come over as well and informed her that maybe she should get an education, her reply was that she was, at this point it was quite obvious that the only ‘retarded’ person nearby was her, so even though she was still going on at us, I felt if I carried on any longer I would punch her and so we walked away.
As we did so, her son said ‘I’m good I am’, what a relief! The fact that I had seen him 20 minutes earlier knocking seven bells out of a display with no parental supervision was obviously a hallucination!!
Of course I had been unaware of what had lead to this unbelievable comment from the woman, as my blood was still boiling over, John filled me in on what had happened as we walked up to the cafe.
Imagine the scene, boy comes up through hole to go down slide, William standing on top step, but not in the way;
small boy – ‘I’m 4’
William – ‘I’m 7’
small boy – ‘I’m 4’
William – ‘I’m 7’
small boy – ‘I’m 4’
William – ‘shut up you’re annoying me’
small boy goes down slide
Now maybe he shouldn’t have said that, but the small boy quite obviously to William eyes was being blooming annoying and he had every right to tell him to shut up!
Can’t think how can finish this, but we did have a lovely time other than this, and Fowey was very lovely too : )
5th April 2009 @ 6:54 pm
it’s shame that happened to you, as something small can offen affect the memory of an otherwise good day, glad the rest of your trip was great, it can be hard, i remember a time when we were at a farm and my 3 year old was following an older child around, maybe of 7 or 8, i think at first he liked the attention but after a while he told my son to stop following him as it was annoying! i have to say my heart broke at the look on my sons face & i had to stop myself from rushing in to scoop him up, but he held it together & walked off to do something else! it’s tough but thats how children can be, & i’m sure he’ll be the same when he’s older (infact he already can be to his sister!)
5th April 2009 @ 9:50 pm
Grrr this annoys me so much, I’m not surprised you nearly whacked her xx
5th April 2009 @ 10:56 pm
As awful as the whole scenario sounds, I couldn’t help a giggle at William’s “shut up, you’re annoying me”. That’s telling it like it is. Hopefully after some (justifiable) venting you can swat away the entire incident and concentrate on the good stuff of the day!
6th April 2009 @ 3:53 pm
Oh Alice, it truly was a very unfortunate episode in what sounds like a lovely week else. What saddens me most about this is not the woman’s apparent ignorance on Autism but her lack of vocabulary and completely inappropriate words. You did well to be so restrained, I’m not sure I could have been.
That said, Eden is a wonderful place and so to are the lost gardens. I’m taking my mum there for a weekend later this month – she last did the lost gardens over 13 years ago and has never visited Eden. Didn’t spy any nice looking B&B’s whilst you were there did you? 😀
7th April 2009 @ 2:06 pm
what a horrible association to have with Eden, a place i hold very dear, as it is where I got married, some 8 years ago, soon after it opened. ‘Retarded’ has become such a loaded and insulting word, but was once an accepted ‘technical’ term I guess. Do hope you can have lovely visits to Eden in the future.
8th April 2009 @ 5:36 pm
what a clearly stupid woman. I didn’t even think it was socially exeptable to use the word “retarded”, especially when referring to someone’s children.
It’s her ignorance, some people live such sheltered lives. Your son is right that boy sounds really annoying! x
9th April 2009 @ 10:23 am
Unfortunately in my experience of working with special needs children for the past 16 years, many people do not know how to handle or express their feeling when they come across special needs children!
In the past myself and many of my colleagues have had many comments made at us (some of which have been very abusive), been accused of not being able to control them and I think the worst I ever had was being told that “These children should never be allowed out, nobody should ever have to see them!!”
When we go out now we always carry cards with us that we can hand out to the public if any incidents happen or any comments are made by any member of the public. The cards say that we are from a special needs school and if the have any comments or questions then they are to phone the school.
Unfortunately “retarded” is a word still used a lot in the US. This is a word I hate and when I hear it I have to control myself! So I have to praise my sister for her self control, so well done my dear!!!
14th April 2009 @ 7:05 pm
Hi Alice, I know I don’t visit often but I was just reading this post and what struck me is that William’s exchange with the 4 year old doesn’t sound much different from any 7 year old’s response to an annoying 4 year old!
I’m sorry you had such an annoying episode. A similar thing happened to me the one other time I went to Millets Farm (long before last week’s meet up) when the children were a lot younger. There was a huge-scale connect 4 game and Daisy, who would have been about 3, went up and “showed” the father and son playing the game how to release the pieces at the bottom! Of course this ruined their game. But that, in my opinion, was no excuse for the father to shout at my small child! So I told him off too!
I hope you don’t get too many of these horrible episodes
Lucy x