Her Friend Started Screaming At Her In A Restaurant After She Wouldn’t Allow Her Autistic Son To Put His Hands In Her Food And Eat Off Her Plate
When your friend has a child with special needs, you want to be as accommodating as possible to show them support.
However, one woman had to put her foot down after her friend’s son with autism started crossing boundaries during a recent dinner gathering.
She’s 30 years old and recently moved to a new city. However, she’s still in touch with her friend group from her previous town, which includes her 37-year-old friend Anna.
Anna is married to her husband and has an 11-year-old son named Jim. Jim has level one autism spectrum disorder, so he often needs support and can have trouble understanding or following social rules and interactions.
A few days ago, she visited her old town and reached out to her friends to schedule a group dinner at a local restaurant.
Anna mentioned she’d bring Jim, and their friend group didn’t have a problem with this since Jim had joined them on their outings before.
They all met at the restaurant, and the final group consisted of six adults and Jim. However, things eventually went south during their friend reunion.
“Everything was great until [the] first courses arrived, and Jim started walking around the table, using his hands to help himself from other people’s plates,” she said.
She was shocked to see Jim doing this to everyone at the table and leaned over to her friend Tom to ask if this behavior was normal. He said it was as Jim eventually approached her to put his hands in her salad.
djile – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual people
As a natural reflex, she placed her hand between Jim’s and her plate and asked him not to touch it because it was hers. Jim looked confused, and she told him grabbing other people’s food was rude.
Then, instead of correcting or distracting her son, Anna told her that Jim’s behavior was okay and that no one had an issue with this habit in the past. The table fell awkwardly silent until Tom went ahead and changed the subject.
“When they served the next course, Jim went at it again,” she remembered.
“This time, he was more forceful, so I pushed his hand away and said that if he wanted to share, he’d have to sit down and wait until I put the food on his plate.”
Anna became furious and started yelling at her, saying she was horrible and that it wouldn’t kill her if Jim took a bit of her food.
She also said that Jim couldn’t help his behavior and that since she’s neurodivergent, she should be more sympathetic.
Taken aback by Anna’s outburst, she argued that she should be the one to decide whether or not she shares her food.
They continued to argue back and forth at the table until she snapped and said that Jim’s autism was not an excuse and that although he’s not at fault for his disorder, it shouldn’t mean he should have zero accountability for anything he does. She also told Anna she wasn’t doing him any favors by not teaching him proper boundaries.
Their friend group started taking sides during the argument. Tom, another friend, and Anna’s husband agreed with her while everyone else supported Anna. For the rest of the dinner, everyone was agitated.
As they were leaving the restaurant, Jim approached her and asked if she was mad at him. She told him she wasn’t mad but that he should respect people when they say “no.” That’s when Anna blew up one last time and told her to stop “policing” her son before storming away.
Things have been tense in her friend group since the dinner, and now she’s wondering if she was wrong to speak up.
Should she not have said anything about Jim’s behavior, or was she right to set a boundary?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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