Originally Posted by
ramAnag
You’re a lovely man, Sith, one of the kindest on here. I take all your points and am uncomfortable disagreeing with you to the slight extent that I am.
Rightly or wrongly a child’s ‘inappropriate’ behaviour is rather different from a grown man’s, but sticking with the child aspect for a moment I feel very conflicted.
As a parent it was always important to me that my children behaved well in public places. As a grandparent I am proud of the fact that I can trust them to behave appropriately in public and that, in turn, is testament to the upbringing provided by their parents.
As a teacher who specialised in dealing with children with behavioural difficulties I had, believe it or not, something of a reputation for including kids who others wouldn’t take anywhere. That didn’t make me a ‘soft touch’, far from it. If kids broke the trust and let me down they knew it’d be a while till they were picked for a team/invited to the theatre/took part in a residential again, but part of that process was them understanding the expectations.
You know, when you’re taking people with ‘difficulties’ into new and challenging situations that you have a responsibility to all concerned to manage that situation. That’s as true in the theatre as it is on the football pitch or a cycle track and I’m reminded of one occasion in particular. One kid, let’s call him Jack, was particularly difficult - he was killed in a gang fight in Derby about two years after leaving school which might tell you something - anyway he really wanted to see a production of the Hobbit at Buxton Opera House.
The consensus amongst the staff was that it was madness to take him but I did, on the condition that Jack sat next to me throughout the performance and never left my side. He managed it and each time he looked like getting ‘over stimulated’ at what was a very visual and exciting performance, a look or a nudge would calm him down.
He was a young person with complex behavioural needs. His behaviour was frequently dangerous, unpredictable and inappropriate. I don’t know to what extent it could be compared with Tourette’s because, tbh, I don’t think I’d heard of the condition until MUFC signed Tim Howard, but I do suspect that if someone had taken more responsibility for the guy at the BAFTAs and there’d been a friend/significant other sitting alongside him just to recognise the warning signs and provide a calming/guiding presence then much of this might have been avoided.
