When my dog died we got her paw print done, I just found out that my little sister completely ruined it. I can’t really be mad at her since she’s a 10 year old autistic child and I think this might have happened a month or two ago but I’m still angry and omg
Edit: I talked to her about it and she doesn’t remember it and was very confused about what I was showing her. I’m probably not gonna try to get it reprinted because it won’t be the same and it’ll probably be expensive, especially since I found her painted paw prints that I made with her the day before she died. Also the paw print was stored in a bookshelf in a hallway at my house, it wasn’t in my room because everyone loved that dog so it wasn’t on display, we didn’t think she would be interested in it but we think that she thought it was makeup and she has a habit of messing with and destroying makeup
Also I’m not going to break her stuff, I’m not going to teach her that breaking stuff when you’re mad at someone is okay.
It’s just hard because it was probably around a month or two ago, I don’t know if she would really understand me since it’s not recent. I’m going to try to talk to her about it tomorrow. I don’t want to talk to her when I’m still upset
Affect is a verb meaning to influence or change, while effect is a noun meaning a result or consequence. Affect would be the correct word to use here I hope you edit your comment.
Well, considering I can read and write, the sister is obviously more autistic. Based on that metric, it seems that OP would be more autistic than myself also.
As an autistic person who struggled growing up, its important to have the conversations sometimes even if they are difficult. You dont need to blame her or make her feel guilty, jus tuse it as an opportunity for learning.
Some people with autism can't speak, read or write. Some spend their days slamming their heads into walls, scratching at their own eyes and biting themselves and others.
Autism is a spectrum, including some people that literally do not have the capacity to understand complex norms, or even communication. It very much “dose” work that way sometimes. You do not know ops situation
brother you're yelling about a child with a high needs disability who can't read or write at 10 and has memory issues per OP. Kindly take a walk and log off of the internet because you are not in a place to be giving any advice to anyone
They sent like 4 incoherent ranting responses to me and then deleted them and claimed they were making fun of that sort of behavior the whole time so I'm guessing yes
explanations are not excuses. People who *are* higher support needs *do* need a different level of understanding and compassion because they literally are not processing the world the same way. imagine being on meltdown mode 24/7, when everything is Too Much. Do you think you, when you are in full meltdown, imagine you have 10 people who are all screaming conflicting things at you, you cannot get away from them, they all are DEMANDING you get things done, and its too hot, and you're hungry, and you cannot get away....
imagine the meltdown you would have in that situation, imagine 10 people screaming conflicting things at you, and telling you you will be homeless, you will be unloved, you will goo hungry if you do not meet all 10 conflicting things...
and imagine your life like that 24/7. that is just "normal" for you. do you think you could manage to understand things the same way if you had that going on?
Autism is a spectrum. If someone is on the end of the spectrum where they are medically considered intellectually disabled it’s absolutely an excuse. She said her sister cannot read, write, or remember things so it’s very likely her sister is closer to that part of the spectrum.
You should be a kinder person towards folks with severely impairing disabilities like that, their lives are hard enough.
What is the "it" you are saying doesn't work that way? The comment you are responding to doesn't mention an excuse anywhere, they are saying the child needs to understand the consequences of their actions. Do you disagree? What about that "doesn't work that way"?
Some people with autism have significant cognitive and intellectual challenges as a part of what are often related umbrella disorders as well as autism itself. Accepting reality is not an excuse. Autism is a spectrum, and it includes people with profound challenges and people who face very few. We have no idea where the sister falls on the spectrum.
Disability, not excuse means does not mean we demand people function above their capacity, it means we set realistic standards and expectations. Asking someone to cognitively process what their brain won't process is like saying "you're paralyzed, so just get up and walk." Most people with autism are fully capable of cause and effect and understanding that their actions were hurtful, and to talk to communicate about it. We don't know it it's the case here, so assuming it's an excuse is flawed logic due to lacking information.
As someone that's on the Spectrum, I can tell you that depending on where they fall on the spectrum, it may be a bit hard for them to completely understand it. I'm high-functioning, and I've learned to comprehend what's going on around me. I have a sibling that's on the lower-end of the spectrum and only a year younger than me, and he still struggles with learning the consequences of actions and whatnot.
I have an autistic sister. It’s not that simple. It’s like the neurons that need to connect are miles apart. I’ve tried to teach her to play games and she still can’t handle the concept of holding a joystick forward and also hitting another button at the same time
Autism is a extremly wide spectrum. Your experiences with your sister are relativly irrelevant here if you don't know that ops sister has the same limitations.
To be fair, back in the day we called everyone the R word. But we only meant it for people who would be on the the much lower functioning side of the autistic spectrum. By using the word autistic and its incredibly wide spectrum its impossible for anyone to know what you mean when you say you are autistic. Does it mean you cant dress yourself, or you only eat fish sticks?
Some of the problem is...its a spectrum and there are people who can dress themselves sometimes, but other times cannot, and that makes it even harder. What happens when someone is able to function so long as they have their routine, they have everything going and all the invisible supports that they relied on to function are there....
and then suddenly cannot because those invisible supports are gone?
Is a guy who is able to dress himself and have a job and pay his bills and function in society *because* he is in a position to only eat fish sticks, only wear "Safe" clothes, can order food in, doesnt have health needs that require things like doctor visits, and has a wife who does a lot of invisible work with helping with structure, noticing he's hungry before he does because the lack of interoception results in not noticing that he's hungry until his brain is short circuiting and in meltdown mode....high functioning? especially if when his wife goes on vacation with her friends from college for a week he regresses and loses that? we tend to just call him a lazy ass and a slob, instead, but is it that, or is it that he's high functioning *because* of supports?
Do you have a picture of the print? It might be possible to create a stamp and recreate the print.
It won’t be the original, but this is a beautiful memento, and I think it’s worth a shot to preserve her memory.
Im sorry thats sucks, but she cant erase the memories you had with your dog. Having a physical keepsake is definitely nice and its a shame that got broken. Maybe you can scatter it like ashes somewhere as a tribute.
Yeah that sucks. Its not easy. Our son is 4. The latest trend is secret peeing spots in the house. He has an innate ability ro find hidden scissors. Its uncanny. Our place is childproofed extreme edition.
I suggest you never ask you parents what they talked about you with their friends. Pretty much all parents do this as a way of venting and connecting with other parents.
We’re not born innately with knowledge of what’s normal child development. We talk about it with friends and learn, oh yeah all kids go though a phase where they gnaw on things we don’t need to be worried. Despite what my mom says, my baby shouldn’t eat honey at a year old. Kids can have accidents a lot later than we expect because of how the brain develops.
It also serves as a warning. Hey did you know boys are really really likely to pee on you when you change them? They make a lil thing for that or you can use another diaper or wipe. Hey did you know kids may think the hole in the ground is another toilet? Maybe put down a cover so your whole house doesn’t smell like pee when it gets in the air vents.
I'm not sure if your little guy is a sitter or a stander (or learning to stand while peeing), but if he's standing, tossing a few Cheerios in the toilet and telling him to hit the spaceships can help with aiming and making it a little more fun. He might be seeking novelty with the secret pee spots, lol.
I am so sorry OP. That is incredibly hard to deal with, losing the paw print. But very strong of you to realize your sibling may not have known better. You still have all the memories and hopefully some pictures of them. That really sucks :/
These pawpals are made with something similar to floral foam. So a very nice texture to crunch if you're not aware of what value it holds.
When we make a bad print at work and use the replacement foam block to make a better one, we often crunch up the bad one just cos it feels nice. I am not at all surprised a child, let alone an autistic one, would enjoy crunching the foam without realize the gravity of value it has for its owner.
I’ve stored most of it in a vial it helps to know that I still have something that she at least touched, I found something I thought I lost that I made with her, so luckily I do still have some paw prints.
That really sucks. I completely understand how you feel. Even if it was an accident the hurry is still there. I hope you can find other momentos of your dog to help you right now.
Yeah, I’m autistic. If she is Level 1 or even Level 2, she understands the gravity of the situation and knows what she did was wrong. If she isn’t Level 3, then I think your parents are coddling her and creating a deeply unfair environment where she can do what she wants without consequence while you must withstand and blanketly accept her resulting actions. Regardless, I am sorry this happened OP. I recommend talking to your parents about setting boundaries going forward.
So she has no memory of doing this? Are you even sure she did it, then, and it wasn’t accidentally dropped by someone else who would have been in your room?
Yes, the paw print was on a bookshelf in the hallway. No one in my family would mess up something so important especially since they loved the dog too. The only person that would have messed it up is someone that didn’t understand what it was (my little sister)
K, so I’m going to be a little harsh here, because I was also an autistic kid who got blamed for everything because “who else would have done it”.
You don’t have actual proof. You have circumstantial evidence of her … existing with autism and you yourself said this probably happened months ago.
Months ago means lots of people have likely been in and out of your house and any number of them could have messed with it. Is it likely? Maybe not. But a lot of unlikely things happen in this world.
You yourself said that even if she did do it, it was months ago and she probably has no memory of doing it. So while you might be frustrated, it probably wasn’t even worth bringing it up to her, and likely caused her significant distress.
But you brought it to the “hates autism” website to complain about and that’s had a rippling effect.
You now have a lot of people advocating for you to abuse your sister(meaning these people, some of whom are probably real, are now sharing their fantasies about abusing children) and advocating for child abuse in general. And it’s frankly horrifying.
It probably would have been best to vent to your parents or friends about this.
I’m also diagnosed with autism and it’s actually so weird to assume that my family thought it was her just because she has autism. She has a habit of getting into makeup and other powdery things (like the paw print). I know when it probably happened, I found her covered with powder and I thought it was just makeup. I’m not blaming her for no reason. I brought it up to her because I wasn’t sure if she remembered it, I learned she didn’t but we still had a talk about her asking to touch other people’s things.
I don’t know much about people’s views of autism on this website but the breaking her things is a “parenting technique” for any child. It’s not a good one but people think it works (it most likely doesn’t). I wanted to vent about something that really hurt me and I’m allowed to do so.
which may be worse, as lying could mean she knew what she knew that it had some sort of value. which if the actions are not properly punished for can lead to sociopathic behavior.
I mean they were very apologetic but they also know that is happened a bit ago and my little sister won’t understand. My dad is upset about it too but not as upset as me. I’ve always been a sensitive person especially when it comes to my animals
Your parents let her into your stuff, kinda sucks. I hope she got a talking to but at the end of the day it's hard to teach that into someone with autism
You can't do something like that to a very young child or someone autistic because it just scars them and leaves trauma, and sure they might be scared to touch your stuff later but they will never forget the time you destroyed their favorite toy with a hammer.
Yeah I would never do this to anyone, I feel like it’s an immature thing to do. Breaking their stuff teaches them that they should do that when mad at someone
please never try to teach any children anything. doing this to a NEUROTYPICAL kid is cruel and doesn't teach them anything. if you can't teach them with words, breaking their shit is only going to teach them you're an asshole.
Yeah, I really wanted to ask OP just how severe their autism was before giving advice.
Because it's a spectrum, most autistic people actually fall on the "perfectly functional" end of the bell curve, but they get treated like they're a moving vegetable which results in them being... well, spoiled AF.
This is the guy that would make his kids skip dinner for being too loud or some shit. I know several people who's only ability to communicate how they feel is by "breaking" others around them and it just makes everyone hate them. kids included.
They're the type to think any bad action they experience is the planned and intentional action of others around him but when he hurts someone it's innocent and "I didn't mean it" and can't ever come to terms with it.
You sound like the kind of person who would lecture your kids on why what they're doing is wrong when they didn't do anything wrong they just did a thing that you didn't agree with.
Why are you taking about breaking the kids stuff in so many comments? Bro, why are you so bent on breaking things that belong to an autistic 10 year old? I hope you don't have kids, there's tons of ways to teach a kid not to break things without throwing your own temper tantrum and braking their stuff. Seriously, who hurt you?
Ultimately, this is not ok. Your parents need to step up and provide you with a secured means to protect you from your sister's destructive behavior, since they're not adequately monitoring her.
I’m so sorry op. When my cat died, we were assured by the vet that the cremation place would take an ink paw print, so we didn’t.
When we got it back, the only ink print that was there was very obviously not of my cat, who was a polydactyl (which is one reason I REALLY wanted his print). It was just a generic paw print.
I never got over it. Now I compulsively get multiples of both ink prints and impression prints long before any of my animals dies.
I’m so sorry that happened to you, I can’t believe they gave you a different print. I hope you’re doing okay now! And I’m sorry about your cat, I’m sure he was a really good pet
We had our dog put down in our house by a vet because we wanted her to be as comfortable as possible so I watched it get printed myself.
it doesn't excuse but it can explain. she may not have thought about the consequences, even at my big age i often don't until it's too late. that being said it doesn't mean the consequences shouldn't apply, nobody here is saying autism means you can do whatever you want
She's like the can't read, write, or fully take care of herself kind of autism. It's a spectrum, I thought that was pretty common knowledge these days.
Please just like Google autism or something. It's a spectrum that gets pretty severe. It can get bad enough that you can't learn those things. There are autistic people that are nonverbal, some that basically just rock back and forth all day or lash out violently.
Autism doesn't make sm1 incapable of understanding how their actions affect others, it's just gotta be explained, she won't know if u just tell her not to do it unless she knows why (or at least that's how shit worked for me as an autistic kid). Just try to be calm abt it, this should b a learning moment for her yk
I think she maybe would understand if it wasn’t so long ago, the paw print didn’t mean anything to her so I don’t think it really stuck out in her mind. So when I tried to talk to her she just seemed confused
I'm autistic. Autism doesn't make you destroy other people's property and then forget about it a month later. Getting overwhelmed can make you have destructive urges, but you have control over what you take that out on. When I was an undiagnosed kid with no support, I'd destroy pencils, erasers, blank pieces of paper, etc. because I understood value and property, having been explained that early on (if you break something special, you can't get another one/don't touch things that aren't yours). I'm somewhere in the medium support needs area on the spectrum so thorough explanation and patient question answering is typically enough for me. Depending on your sister's support needs, she might need a little more than that.
If she's tearing through things looking for something to stim with with no regard to what it is, maybe she's not getting the support she needs. Do your parents provide her with outlets for when she gets overwhelmed or do they just ignore her and claim it's pointless to try? Do you collaborate with a support center and if so, is it one that tries to "help children with autism reach their full potential"/"support families of children with autism" (not good) or is it one that actually caters to individual autistic needs and offers the varying levels of support to help navigate a world built for neurotypicals?
Despite what the media would have people believe, destructive meltdowns are not normal for us. If they're frequent, it means we're stressed out constantly and have no means of regulation. This is by no means your responsibility since you're not the parent, but it might be something to bring to your parents' attention.
She didn’t mean to destroy things, she wasn’t acting maliciously. She has an interest in makeup because she’s seen me do it and has destroyed makeup pallets because she’s wanted to try. I don’t think she really has a grasp on ownership. She does go to a lot of therapies to help her read and do other fine motor skills and the person who helped diagnose her also meets with her on a regular basis.
Replying to your edit. It's not unusual for autistic children to lie or blame others when something happens. They will bend over backwards to justify that something isn't their fault even if it's something completely minor.
I’m so sorry this happened. It’s not really the same but I remember when my brother broke my laptop as a teen I was so mad. Not so much that my laptop was broken but because there was no repercussion that he would understand at that time. It can be so complicated sometimes.
I assume your sister is level 3 based on what I can see in the comments. Take some time to grieve and calm down. Have a talk with her but also expect that she won’t understand. Be patient with her. As someone who’s autistic myself, I understand grave things like that but sometimes I’ll say something or act a way and genuinely not know it’s hurting someone unless they say it. She doesn’t mean to hurt you. I’m sure she loves you greatly. I’m sorry for your loss of both your dog and the print.
My autistic younger sister killed my pet rat when I was little. She didn't do it maliciously. She put it on the bed and was jumping around with it because she didn't understand that would hurt it. It tore my heart out. She ruined a lot of things of mine over the years.
Please talk to a professional about this. You are right not to take it back out on her, but these hurts build up. I wish I had been able to see a therapist as a child and young adult. You can be angry at her for doing this and also not lash out at her because you know she doesn't understand, but it isn't fair for you to carry this alone. If you're in school a counselor can help direct you to services. If you have a job, you can often get employee assistance program help for free.
I’ll be honest I’d never forgive somebody who did this to one of few physical artifacts of my baby. Doesn’t matter that she’s a kid or autistic I couldn’t get past that
Breaking her stuff just reinforces that breaking stuff is an okay thing to do when mad. She would also not understand it because she doesn’t really care about physical items
“Break this disabled child’s things! Abusing them will surely make their brain work the way I want it to! I am so smart and definitely not an uneducated fool!”
Think of it from your dog’s perspective. Did she love your sister too? Would she want you to be mad at your sister? I think dogs just want everyone to be happy and love each other. So don’t be mad at her.
You're being very patient with someone who's wronged you. She might be young. She might be autistic. But there's no doubt there are things that she holds dear and I'd bet she'd have a meltdown if you did anything to them. Call it petty, but sometimes folks don't realize the pain they've caused till it happens to them, nuerotypical or not. Parents claim she won't understand, but i wonder how far they've gone to convey to her what she did was hurtful and thoughtless before giving up.
I feel for you, I wish I had something closer to advice to offer, but you're already dealing with the situation better than I would.
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u/Busterlimes Aug 03 '26
Autistic or not, you need to explain to her the gravity of what she has done.