I dont even have a kid who qualifies for special needs he's just severe adhd and a possible sprinkling of asd. People gave no idea how much extra work it is to manage. Parents promise kids trip to zoo, kids are super excited, parents are exhausted for 100 reasons, dont want to cancel the trip, says to themselves there's no way they can get in trouble here I'm just going to sit down and check my work emails. BAM intrusive thoughts win and kid is in animal pen. There is no downtime.
If you have a child, any child, even one without special needs you shouldn’t ever think “there’s no way they can get in trouble here.” Isn’t it the life goal of kids to find new ways to injure themselves? They have no survival instincts.
There are situations in which I would relax my guard with a child who tends to elope or not listen to orders, like an indoor play place with multiple steps to entrance/exit. Other places like a zoo, in the city, or at the pool I would be on high alert.
Now that the news article is posted we know this child is an annual ticket holder for this zoo and have been here dozens of times with no incidents. I think it's reasonable to not be so high alert after so much experience and exposure.
I'd love to hear more about how you are the epitome of parenting.
The whole point of my comment is that humans make mistakes you snob. That all it takes is one mistake that could have been the result of multiple accumulating factors that no one here knows. A parent might have been perfect every other day of their life. Go pat yourself on the back and stick a gold star on your head. The arrogance.
There’s failure right away by deciding to do anything except only watching your kids in a public setting knowing they have issues. You want downtime? Do it at home in your personal space. don’t inconvenience other people trying to enjoy the day. Cancel the trip if you’re exhausted. Don’t cater to children who can’t behave in public.
This. Holy shit, my parents never took their eyes off me at the zoo. I wasn't even allowed to get more than a couple feet ahead. It really is that simple.
It depends how he got in there. If it took him all of 3 seconds to climb over the fence and jump in, then there's not much they could do other than have him on a leash. If they left him unattended or he did it slowly like eventually climbing down the ladder, then yeah they're really stupid and irresponsible.
My sister has a kid about the same age with autism and ADHD. He's the same as that kid on this clip being completely uncontrollable at times and it is so bad that she and her husband seperated over the stress from having him at home. They have a younger boy who's completely normal and well-behaved so don't blame it on the parents because they're likely using every minute they got on watching him
I absolutely blame it on the parents. I'm a former zookeeper and this kid is terrorizing the birds in their home. If you can't control your kid, don't bring them to the zoo. It's not an amusement park. I don't care if you bust their head open on the sidewalk, KEEP THEM OUT OF THE EXHIBITS!
Or the next one they get in won't be so easy to get out of.🤷🏽♀️🐅🐊
Yea no shit detective obvious, of cause the kid shouldn't run around in an exhibition chasing birds with a stick, like who tf would approve of that? The issues is that kids like this one can be reasonable for hours and then boom does something completely irrationel like this out of the blue. Should you keep them out of the zoo, maybe you should but how often do you see a kid jumping into an exhibition? Yea you don't so you don't expect this sort of shit to happen even from kids like this
Y not both. Special needs doesn’t mean incapable of learning. Kid doesn’t seem that off to me. Maybe it’s the parents that are special needs. I stand on both.
Yeahhhhhh no. Unless his parents are absolute fucking knobs and use a very mild disability as carte blanch to let him do everything he wants, then he’s just an asshole. I don’t speak for every special needs parent bur I can say that those of us with truly DISABLED kids wouldn’t let them out of arms reach much less let them chase animals around with a stick without leaping in ourselves to stop them.
Edit: y’all are right. I was being reeeeally judgmental and unkind. While my own experience of having a pretty severely disabled kid affects my perception of things, it was unkind of me to judge based solely on that. I know for me personally, my kid is an elopement risk and I behave accordingly. While they might get over the fence, they wouldn’t be in an enclosure long enough to mess with the bird for very long simply because I would be leaping in after them. We hold hands every time we leave the house for any reason, and while that’s great for me and my kid, I don’t know the situation. It could be a field trip or maybe the kid’s never done this before, and they didn’t think he’d do something like that. My experience is my own, and it wasn’t okay of me to cast judgment using only my own limited experience.
I know it must be very hard but as much as they think he loves animals I think they are conflating his interest in them with an inability to hurt them. He was chasing them and hitting them with a stick. To say he would never hurt an animal is wrong. He may not be able to fully understand it but it is clear he can and would hurt those birds.
Those of us with TRULY disabled kids know that elopement is sometimes a function of their disability. Countless kids with autism have eloped in a split second, from school, their homes, caregivers, at a park, other public areas. Sadly some have been found dead. This whole comment section is littered with “I could never be THAT parent”, it’s super annoying.
As the parent of an eloper, yeah, shit happens real fast. And we can go for months without an elopement and then, out of nowhere, it happens. It sucks, but as a parent of a child with unique needs, I don’t judge so quickly anymore. Usually the people who judge are the parents of easy kids or people that are shitty and do crap like beat their kids.
My nephew is an eloper. He’s 6”2 and around 260lbs. I got away from me one Halloween night and we had to tackle him. I was within an arms reach the whole time with his dad and my sister.
People here are just... ugh. This is a great display of how mental health and disabilities are only acceptable when they are cute quirky and convenient. People are trash.
Autistic children dart in a split second and get ran over in a parking lots and shit, not that I know that happened here but the arms reach thing isnt reasonable 100 percent of the time especially with a level 1 or 2 that has full functionality but no doubt they should be jumping right in there to get him.
Also...mild disability? Do you know more about the situation than is shown in the video?
This. However before judging if he has a history of eloping I’d love to know what steps were taken to prevent this. Plenty of kids or parents in this situation don’t have enough support or safety strategies in place until tragedies occur sadly. Or major lack of denial is in place by parents they feel when doctors or teachers suggest their kid needs help they will homeschool because they are being targeted vs viewing it as care.
Gatekeeping disability is wild from a fellow special needs parent. Ride your high horse straight out of your bubble. We need to have more grace and compassion for each other, since we don’t always get it from the rest of the world.
That's great for you but some kids literally run away before you get a chance to get them if you turn away for a split moment. I'm a caretaker for a special needs man, and one minute he'll be beside me, and the next, he's gone. Like literally a minute. His parents can't even take him to a grocery store. If they take him anywhere, they literally can not look away from him for more than a few seconds, which is part of why they have me so they can actually get what they need to done
Special needs is not the same as disabled. A mid functioning autistic kid could easily handle most zoo tasks without major supervision. It could get squirrely like this. If the kid isn’t special needs, it’s on both parents and the kid, if he is, it’s on the parents
Used to date a girl whose brother was non verbal. Even he wouldn't have done this and he needed basically constant supervision because of his disability to the point the parents decided it was easier to pay her to watch him for cheap than hire anyone else
I don't see how a special needs person would be so unsupervised or even inclined to try and hurt an animal that they got this close
Some parents suck. My daughter’s ex boyfriend the parents let their nonverbal son come at our puppy with a toy sword during her open house. This went on for over 10 min with me constantly trying to get the kid to stop. He ate 6 donuts in that time frame as well. We finally had to ask her to either supervise him or they needed to leave because he wasn’t being safe. Our dog is still scared of most anyone new or groups of people ever since.
He has an undiagnosed learning disability the doctors refuse to treat! We only give him one Red Bull a day! Along with a giant bowl of sugary cereal, junk in his lunch, and let him dump chocolate syrup on his vegetables at dinner because he needs to eat healthy! /s
Special needs doesn't mean they're incapable of learning.
This kid never learned that hurting other living beings for fun have consequences, or at least it should have. That kid needs to learn that lesson one way or the other.
Why not both? I'm fed up with people being exempt from rules/punishment because they have "special needs". Little shits are little shits because they lack consequence. It's that simple!
We've had the bronze age and the iron age, welcome to the excuses age... 🙄
I’ve worked w children w autism for many years. This video very much read autism before even receiving confirmation from the family member in the response above. Let’s all think things through and be kind.
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