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A three-year-old autistic boy is accused of being too noisy on his trampoline; Pete and Donna Masters, his parents, have been ordered to move the trampoline out of their garden, the Evening Telegraph (Peterborough, UK) reports. An “anti-social behaviour officer” has also requested that Donna Masters attend a meeting:
Because the meeting coincides with a visit from Buster’s occupational therapist, Mr Masters has agreed to go along instead.
He said: “I will fight this all the way – not for me or Donna, but for Buster.
“It is getting beyond a joke. I cannot believe we are arguing over an 8ft trampoline.
“The trampoline is there to stay. If they don’t like that, I’ve got a bouncy castle in my garage instead.
“Are kids not allowed to make a noise any more when they play?
Accused of being “too noisy”—-I think the anti-social behaviour officer would not be too thrilled to visit our household, where Charlie likes to do nothing better than to run and warble, chatter and yell, as he runs amid the old pine trees and up and down the driveway. Silence, in our house and yard, is never golden.
I have a two and a half year old autistic boy who makes lots of noise by screeching and running through my apartment. People that have complained about that I simply tell that if you don’t like it move. The whole trampoline thing is a bunch of crap. To the parents of the child my advice to you is to move the trampoline back and tell your neighbors if they don’t like it then freaking move. They are a bunch of uneducated bastards.
I’m not proud of my children being noisy, they’re just children and that’s just how they are. For the record, my daughter is quieter than her brothers.
And I’ve been doing my best to teach them not to make excessive noise around others. My 6-year-old has been making an ear-splitting variety of sounds lately, and we’ve taught him to tone it down when he’s around other people, especially indoors. But outdoors in our backyard, my children can scream and holler as much as they want, and they come in happier.
Outdoors in the kid’s backyard is an appropriate place for noise. Indoors with other people who may be bothered badly by it is NOT an appropriate place for noise. Forcing a child out of his own backyard for being too noisy is ridiculous, IMO, but Angela is being perfectly reasonable when she doesn’t want children being noisy in the waiting room at a doctor’s office (also IMO).
I don’t know why you’re so proud your children are very noisy. Nobody can put up with constant noisy children. In fact, I have Aspergers and it is one of the noises that causes me deep distress.
Children yelling/screaming causes searing pain in my head and leads to a complete meltdown.
I even got rushed in to see the doctor once when I went in there and there were 2 noisy children in the waiting room and within 5 minutes I had become critically anxious and shaky. They had to rush me in out of the noisy environment before I hit the irrational/anti-social stage where my Tourettes tendencies kick in under the “irrationally defensive” part of the syndrome.
I think we need to assemble task forces of big burly guys with hypodermic syringes full of mercury to go out and accost, hold down, and inject those ASBO officers so they all become autistic themselves, and stop harassing decent families with trampolines. ‘At’s wot I think.
1834 days ago
[...] British alternatives were not, and are not, pleasant. Kristina Chew of AutismVox.com writes about a Britain where an autistic boy cannot jump on a trampoline suggestion of a visit to an [...]
Trampolines are cool! I bought one a year ago, and hope to set it up when I get a place of my own. I’ll be 60 yrs old in a very entirely too few years, so I need to get my bouncing in while I still can.
If Bill Gates can have a special trampoline room in that big house, why can’t we poor folks have one out in the yard?
Besides, the neighbors might be amused by it. We had some Germans as neighbors a while back who were into freikoerperkultur, and bounced nekkid on their trampoline. Alas, I did not see that, but only found out after one of the prudish neighbors turned them in to the cops.
A shame it was; there was at least one good-looking wummun who lived there.
(I will only bounce when clad; bouncing man-boobies are not something one should display, I think.
If there was an ordinance against young children streaking across the neighborhood in nothing but their smiles, I’d have been served long ago.
Tobey loves my neighbors’ automatic sprinkler systems. Thank goodness everyone knows to send the naked 6 year-old home when he shows up on their lawns.
I do hear you there—and when I hear Charlie’s voice, I know just where he is!
We’d be in big trouble, fast. Our boys like nothing better than yelling, squealing, and racing around the yard at top volume. Of course, they do that in teh house, too. Sometimes I can’t hear myself think. But it’s so precious, after the silence we had before…
I have heard more nonsense stories coming from the UK with their ASBOs, especially with autistic kids. I’ve also heard it’s very difficult to get properly seen and diagnosed. Either they don’t have enough specialists trained in ASD or their clearinghouse (some kind of pre-screening process) misses/ignores ASD traits and refers parents of autistic kids to social workers instead of neurologists.
When my son was born we started getting complaints about our dog barking. I thought the timing was suspicious. He barked before the baby was born.
BTW, am I the only one flashing on Anne McCaffrey’s novel Decision at Doona here? (If I am, I can explain!)
The Noise Police would have hauled us away a long time ago!
What’s the world coming to? No, don’t answer that.
This is worse than the neighbor who was complaining about construction on the lot next door to him at 2PM weekdays, and that was one of the stupidest rants I ever heard. (If you need to nap, do it at the other end of the house — the house under construction will be finished in a few months, at least the parts that can be heard from next door!)
What? This was at 3 am or something? Doubtful.
If you can’t make a little noise in your own backyard, then where can you?
In some ways the “Nanny State” is worse in Great Britain than it is in some gated communities in the US.
Oy. This is ridiculous.
Boys are noisy. Unless there’s a rule against children in the neighborhood, this is utterly unfathomable.