A mum has been shamed for inviting all but one child from her son's class to his 10th birthday party. She explained how she organised a party at an arcade, knowing the children would 'love' its games and overall atmosphere.
However, she decided against inviting one child, named David, because he might find it 'overwhelming' due to his autism.
Trying to justify her actions, she said on Reddit: "My son's 10th birthday is next Saturday - and my husband and I have been planning a party for him.
"To make sure we gave everyone enough time, we gave out invitations two weeks in advance. I had my son pass them out on Friday.
"We invited every one in his class - except for one child, David."
She went on to explain how David only joins her son's class once a week, spending the rest of the time in another room as part of a "program for special needs kids".
Using harmful terminology, she added: "David is a high-functioning autistic child, who was put in my son's class to help him socialise and to help the other kids learn to not discriminate against special needs people.
"From what I know about him and his mother, they are just doing their best and I have nothing against either of them. However, there have been incidents with David before."
She claims David "freaked out" at a child's birthday party last year after being told he couldn't open their presents.
"In the end I decided to not invite David," she said. "After my son passed the invitations word spread around that we had excluded the special needs child in his class.
"This got back to David's mother who called me last night and confronted me about this.
"She told me that I am awful for excluding her son and that I'm teaching my son to discriminate.
"When I brought up the logistics and the past incident, she told me that I'm an a***hole for assuming what her son can and can't do before hanging up.
"I woke up this morning to a passive aggressive post [on social media] by her and many other parents are siding with her."
Not understanding what she's done wrong, the mum has taken to Reddit to share her reasoning for excluding the poor child.
In response, one user said: "Look, I understand your concern about the meltdown.
"But you could have spoken to his parents beforehand about the environment and potential ways to mitigate that; you could have spoken to your son's teacher to see if s/he has advice for how David is in group situations.
"You don't even know how his behaviour may have improved over the past year specifically because of being included socially.
"This would have been a good chance to teach your son to include people, and instead you taught him it's okay to exclude someone if their disability makes your fun time slightly more difficult."
Another user added: "This happened to my son a lot when he was younger. It's hurtful to deliberately exclude with no warning.
"For anything my son was invited to I would either go and stay with him, leaving early if needs be, or if I checked out the venue in advance and thought it wouldn't be practical I would decline the invite but say thank you.
"Excluding on the basis of a disability isn't something to teach your child. You could have discussed it with his teachers first if nothing else."
A third user said: "I don't know how she can even think she wasn't discriminating in this situation.
"Someone was intentionally excluded from an event because of something they can't control - literal discrimination right there.
"At the very least if you didn't want to hurt this little boy's feelings, you could have mailed the freaking invites instead of having your son pass them out at school where there's only 14 other kids in his class, so it'd be way obvious to everyone there that David was intentionally being left out.
"You had your son take them in the on the day of the week David is actually in that class. That's just pure malicious stupidity there, which is what solidifies you being the a***hole. And you should genuinely be ashamed of yourself."
According to Spectrum, some autistic people are described as 'high-functioning' because they "do not have intellectual disability but often still struggle with daily living skills".
Andrew Whitehouse, professor of autism research at the Telethon Kids Institute and the University of Western Australia in Perth, Australia, claims this term is harmful and outdated.
He explained how "policymakers have used the term to decide which individuals should receive services or funding rather than carefully evaluating individual needs".
It prompted him to run a study with more than 2,000 people on the spectrum to determine whether this terms should be put out of commission for good.
After the majority agreed it should be done away with, Mr Whitehouse concluded: "The term completely disregards the difficulties these individuals have on a day-to-day basis."
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