Mum Pens Open Letter to Woman Who Reported Her Son with Autism to Gym Staff

A mum has written an open letter to a woman who ‘shamed’ her when she took her son into the bathroom at a gym pool.

Single mum, Jodie Carter from Bathurst, NSW, took her 10-year-old son, Lukas (who has autism), into the women’s bathroom with her to change him before his swimming lesson.

However, as she went to the toilet, while Lukas waited patiently outside the cubicle with his younger sister, a woman suddenly rushed to the office to make a formal complaint.

A staff member then approached Ms Carter and told her that the woman felt ‘threatened’ when Lukas had innocently smiled at her in the bathroom.

The complex has an policy that boys over the age of six years are not allowed to enter the women’s bathroom.

Upset by this complaint against her son, Ms Carter took to social media to air her frustration.

“I hardly think my sweet boy who may be 10 but acts much younger is any more threatening than any other 10 year old,” Ms Carter wrote online, adding that the woman doesn’t know the struggles she faced raising a child with disability.

Aside from autism, Lukas has also battled with hypermobile joints, a sensory processing disorder and incontinence.

The night after the incident, Ms Carter told Daily Mail Australia that Lukas went to her and cried, asking her what autism was.

“He cried that night … He just said to me: ‘What is autism mum?’.

“He doesn’t really understand what autism is, I just say ‘it’s because you’re extra special.’ He just said: ‘What did I do wrong?'”, she said.

Ms Carter said she doesn’t want Lukas to think he did something wrong. “He didn’t do anything wrong,  all he did was smile at the lady. I don’t want him to think he did anything wrong,” she said.

She said that Lukas is an anxious child with a lack of social skills, and didn’t speak until he was almost five years old.

“As a child with autism for him to smile at someone is a big thing,” Ms Carter said.

After posting the letter in a mother’s group on Facebook, Ms Carter said she got support from other women who shared their experience at the same gym.

Despite this, Ms Carter said that each time she goes back to the gym, she has that ‘sinking feeling.’

“Every time I go to the gym, I’ve just got this sinking feeling that someone’s going to say something…I don’t know why I’ve got to explain myself all the time…I just wish that woman had thought to herself, ‘Is there something I can do to help her instead of jumping down her throat (and) going and reporting her?’,” she said.

The gym has no toilets for people with disabilities, nor any designated change rooms, so the centre has since allowed Ms Carter to change Lukas in the women’s bathroom – but told her she and her son are not allowed to ‘linger.’

Source: Dailymail.co.uk