[AllegedAlec]

> “Something happening”… or “adults deciding things while ignoring the needs and desires of the children”? Most of these situations follow a pattern, in my experience:

See my comment towards the other reply. The school thing was an example. Please don't get stuck upon that. You seem to have beef with the entire school system. Fair, maybe, but besides the point.

> If cyanide was a regular ingredient in food, people with normal levels of mitochondrial rhodanese would be “hampered in their function” – they wouldn't be able to eat even a tenth of the cyanide-containing food a normal person could eat without straight-up dying! You or I would therefore have a disability that just doesn't exist in our society, without any change having occurred to us.

So you're argument is "it's not they who don't fit, it's society who doesn't fit them", which may be true, but it extremely unhelpful and a pipe dream. It's all well and good to say "society should change to include people who don't fit", but we've been a social species with complex social interactions for over 20 kiloyears. Asking to change that because of a very small percentage is both inpractical and quite self-centered.

[wizzwizz4]

> You seem to have beef with the entire school system.

It's not just the school system. It's the entire way adults treat children (and, to a lesser extent, the way adults treat adults). Ever wondered why autistic adults rarely have “tantrums” in (say) an office environment? There's the “older and more experienced”, sure, but they're allowed to have boundaries – something that most adults deny to most children.

People (usually) afford adults the basic decency they would afford another person, and suddenly the disability is less severe. Funny, that.

> which may be true, but it extremely unhelpful and a pipe dream.

We can change society. We should.

> but we've been a social species with complex social interactions for over 20 kiloyears

That's not what I'm suggesting should change. Rather, we should change some pretty minor aspects of those interactions, if your standard is “having complex social interactions at all”.

This is stuff like making computers have audio-only interfaces, or making it possible for wheelchair-users to get on trains on their own. Small things, all things considered.

[zozbot234]

Temper tantrums are in fact quite common in the office. It's just that most people sensibly regard them as a form of emotional abuse, which is to say a gross violation of any bystanders' boundaries, as well as of basic decency. It's not clear why we should focus on a supposed violation of the kid's boundaries, when the kid's own transgression is so much more readily apparent.

[wizzwizz4]

> It's not clear why we should focus on a supposed violation of the kid's boundaries, when the kid's own transgression is so much more readily apparent.

Do you want to stop the disruption? Or do you want to punish children for a perceived violation of your authority?

There is no violation of the kid's boundaries, because the kid does not have boundaries, because the kid has not been allowed to have boundaries. There is precious little that the kid can actually control… often, not even who's allowed to touch them. This is not okay.

> Once in a hotel dining-room I said, rather too loudly, ‘I loathe prunes.’ ‘So do I,’ came an unexpected six-year-old voice from another table. Sympathy was instantaneous. Neither of us thought it funny. We both knew that prunes are far too nasty to be funny. That is the proper meeting between man and child as independent personalities.

— C. S. Lewis, Letters to Children