[Closed] Autism and Blue Badges.

I think you're missing something with Parent & Child spots too - liability on the shop. If the parking area were further away, even with a safe walkway (I have never ever even seen an attempt to do this, though it does make sense - wouldn't be popular mind) sooner or later there would be an incident and the distance would be used against them I expect.

I have 3 boys and unbelievably every now and then I let something slip. Difficult to believe I'm not perfect I know. Have seen them do things like step back in to the path of a car (usually driving too fast) and I've dropped bags and grabbed them back out of harms way (and usually get an earful from said driver who gets my compliments on his driving skill by return). There are studies that showed how narrow kids visual attention - they have poorer peripheral detection until surprisingly late - that explains an awful lot of what looks to the grumpies like 'mucking around' or 'bad parenting' - they simply don't see the danger.

If you used reins nowadays you'd probably be arrested for denying the child its human rights or some other cack like that.

I find if you attach the reins to an extendable dog lead, you can get round this....... 😈

reins are something imposed by the parents not a childs choice. My nephew was not allowed out of the house without them as he would run into traffic.

My wife had all kinds of fun with our twins when they were on reins.

It was like the scene from Empire Strikes Back where they bring down the At-At, only in Morrison's car park in Barnard Castle rather than the ice world of Hoth.

johndoh - Member
Disney are exceptionally on the ball with this sort of thing.

Agreed - our autistic friend's family get queue jump passes there and I can see why – she couldn't stand still long enough to queue so it's the only way the family can go and enjoy it. They go quite regularly too (Euro Disney) as they find it so much easier than at any of the UK attractions.

The Merlin parks are good on the whole too, we have always had ride accesses passes as there really wouldn't be a point going otherwise. On the busier rides you get given a time when you can go on your next busy ride so you don't go on any more rides, you can just wait in a more open space, and not in somewhere horribly overstimulating like a theme park queue. There's no way my eldest would be able to cope with the queue for Thirteen at Alton Towers for example, but he enjoyed the ride fine.

ASD isn't like not having a limb. Or being paraplegic. Or weighing 400lbs.

Except it kind of is. The way my students have explained it to me is this. Imagine the worst feeling on Earth; fear, terror, extreme physical pain, high pitched noise, whatever. Multiply the brain stimulus and subsequent response to all of these fight/flight responses by ten. And then try to explain it to a cat. In Swahili.

For each of us, there is something that gets your goat, so to speak. For me it's spiders; I have an uncontrollable flight response to them. That isn't altered by everyone I meet, telling me (and later shouting in frustration) that spiders are great - regardless of how credible those individuals are. I just ****ing hate spiders, and anyone standing in my way will be levelled as I exit via the door, roof, wall etc. Irrational, but that's how it is.

Everything is amplified when you have a SOCCOM diagnosis, purely because you cannot explain how you feel to others. Even when you do, via C & I interventions, task boards, etc, people still don't understand the urgency or pain around a situation/issue. So then the labels come out - poor behaviour, disruptive, lazy - and a myth begins. Don't get me wrong, behaviour is part of it. But even as a former professional Rugby player, I'm telling you that trying to get a young person with ASD from a car into a shop when something has affected them is harder than putting your arm up a cats arse.

And quickly on the other two points; blue badge for open heart surgery? I don't even have on for chemotherapy; I'd be embarrassed! And previous guidelines back in the day for cardiac patients was to get off their arses and move about as quickly as possible if they didn't want to die !

Really well put Bullheart - I have plenty of years experience working in Autism too, and would wholehearted concur with your explanation.

Hopefully rather than flaming people who don't know about Autism, threads like these can be used to inform people what it's like, and what a difference simple things like being able to park close to things makes for someone with ASD and their carers/family.

Would be interesting to know if Zippy is still reading this and would stand by some of the earlier statements. Not after a flame-job, more interested if opinion has changed or not after reading this thread.

I have family members at various points on the spectrum, including a neice with learning difficuties through it. She's awesome, but i can see how hard it is for my sister, BIL and her twin brother to live with it

It was supposed to be part of his application to be a Work Capability Assessor with ATOS

morphio - Member

But honest question, wouldn't that mean no longer driving?

We're getting me a blue badge, for my mum with COPD and my blind dad. Neither drives but they get driven. Though I think I'll not often use it in practice, it's usually practical to drop them at the entrance then park.

Disclaimer: I have no problem giving blue badges to ASD folk.

NSFW 😀

Help me out here as someone who has neither an opinion or clue.

- I've read on here it can be a nightmare getting ASD kids out of the house
- I've read that it can be a nightmare getting them out of a car and across a car park
- I'm not sure that I've read on here what does or does happen once inside the place the car park serves (shop, restaurant, museum, park) except that queuing (as per Merlin/Disney posts) can be challenging

Is this a 'marginal gains' thing where a every small amount of benefit helps or is this so controversial because as British people we like to get wound up by car parking. It seems to me that if you have an ASD child, then on a daily basis car parking might be low down on your list of things to care about. Or is there really a strong correlation between the structure, nature and schema of car parks that rattles ASD people?

I'm no expert but from what I've observed with my son is that people with ASD get very anxious very quickly about things that other people don't. In a way we'd see it as irrational, and before my son was diagnosed I used to get very frustrated when he'd refused to do things that seem to me to be for no rational reason, this wasn't crossing a busy car park but very well could have been. So no, it's not the car park per se, but more what a car park may trigger.

If by marginal gains you mean, and pardon the terrible supermarket based punnery, 'every little helps' then you're right. I approach things in a pick your battles way. Some I know I will not win so avoid, if it's unavoidable then I would seek help, and if that meant asking for a blue badge because parking was a constant battle then I would.

ASD isn't like not having a limb. Or being paraplegic. Or weighing 400lbs.

Except it kind of is.

I'm nowhere near that bad, but yes, that's very well put. It's one of the problems with spectrum disorders, on a scale of 0 to 10 some people are at 1 and others are at 37. There's a joke of sorts, "if you've met one person with ASD, then you've met one person with ASD."

Is this a 'marginal gains' thing where a every small amount of benefit helps or is this so controversial because as British people we like to get wound up by car parking. It seems to me that if you have an ASD child, then on a daily basis car parking might be low down on your list of things to care about.

I'd hazard that all three of those things are true, in context with my previous post.