Is she alright??

Glad to be home again doesn't come close to how I feel at the moment. I have met the equivalent of Basil Faulty this morning, without the measuring presence of his precious Sybil!

(image from majorten.com)

If Basil Faulty did Specsavers could be an alternative title for this post.


(image from twitter.com)

My 8 year old daughter hates any sort of medical appointment or machinery/testing/pressure to have to engage etc but unfortunately wears glasses, so has to have annual eye tests. With our move last year and no problems with her eyesight or glasses, we decided to skip one and have been today.

Obviously, when I booked the appointment I made a note that she has autism and selective mutism, therefore the quicker and less faffing about the better. I also prepared her for what would happen so she knew what to expect at every step. She was actually pretty excited to be going there to choose some new glasses today- although I knew that would change when it came to actually being there.

It all went relatively smoothly- the pretest machine was not too bad, the optician included her cuddly toy in the appointment and had lots of patience with her, less talking and more testing, she chose two pairs of glasses and they fitted her- then they needed to measure her pupil distance. Without any explanation the woman who we had been dealing with called a man over (mistake #1), the man sat directly opposite my daughter, lowered his chair to her eye level and asked her to look at the top of the pen whilst he held a plastic ruler to her forehead (mistake #2), then, realising he needed her to stand up he asked her to stand without any explanation (mistake #3) and when she said no he asked me "Is she alright??" to which my response was 'Well, she has autism if that is what you mean? So the pressure of sitting opposite you not knowing what you are doing is a lot' accompanied by internal annoyance and anger that he felt it was OK to ask that infront of her and in such a manner. He watched me explain what he was doing to her and then took my lead and measured her cuddly toy's pupil distance and then hers with her sat on my lap and her chin resting on her cuddly toy.

I find myself so frustrated at the lack of awareness or understanding in some people- people who must encounter many people with autism every day in their work. He was lucky he didn't ask me that question with my son sat there- that would have ended very differently as he would have taken exception to his question without a doubt.

I am wondering whether to set up a form that I can then feedback to places we have visited and had such simple tasks blown up into issues for my children because of the ignorance of the staff there. Nothing malicious or nasty, just helpful hints to help my children and others in the future.

I am also left wondering what their approach to her would have been if she was either with a carer in a uniform, or in a wheelchair.....

We have a week until we need to return to collect her frames and have them adjusted to fit comfortably......then the dentist!!