r/Infuriating • u/ZenPixels Community Regular • Aug 03 '26
My dogs paw print is destroyed
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.
•
u/disheveledcreature Aug 07 '26
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.