Autistic girl kicked off airplane - Polidicks

[quote]An Oregon mom has filed a complaint against United Airlines after it removed her and family from a flight because it said her 15-year-old daughter, who has autism, had become "disruptive." The woman, Dr. Donna Beegle of Tigard, Oregon — a prominent advocate for anti-poverty programs who frequently consults with state and federal government agencies — was returning home with her family from a trip to Walt Disney World last week when her daughter Juliette became agitated because she was hungry during a layover in Houston, Beegle said. Beegle said that after she persuaded a flight attendant to give her daughter some hot food, Juliette had calmed down and was quietly watching a movie when "the next thing we hear is we're doing an emergency landing in Salt Lake City," Beegle told NBC station KGW of Portland, Oregon. "We have a passenger on board with a behavior issue." Police officers boarded the plane and escorted the entire family off, Beegle told the station. "As a mom it ripped my heart out," she said. "I was shaking." The incident was recorded in a video posted to YouTube that Beegle authenticated. In the video, a passenger can be heard remarking, "It's ridiculous." Another says, "That's going to be a lawsuit."[/quote] [url]http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/family-kicked-flight-after-daughter-autism-deemed-disruption-n356811[/url] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rOUQjqVnyQ[/media]

This breaks my Autistic heart. What the fuck is wrong with these guys? I mean I get it since a girl was throwing a tantrum, but to throw them off the plane because if it? Why? The kid stopped after she got some grub, if she continued doing it more, then that is more of a concern, but from what I've read, she only did it once and stopped after getting food.

From the YouTube comments. [QUOTE]What a way to put spin on a story. From what I read of this the mother admitted her daughter may act out and start biting people around her if she didn't get served hot food to her liking.Why should the passengers be put in a position where they may be attacked even if the person has autism or not? But don't put the full story out there as this angle will get more views.[/QUOTE] Not sure who to believe now.

tbf I wouldn't be entirely comfortable on a flight with an autistic girl screaming and shouting and potentially scratching / biting passengers. It's not something I'd want to deal with. Just sensationalist journalism putting the story on it's head to get more views.

[QUOTE=Twistai;47701852]From the YouTube comments. Not sure who to believe now.[/QUOTE] Hmmm, to be honest I wouldn't want to be attacked or bitten by anyone. I'll redact my statement (but I wont edit it cause there isn't a reason to) Not sure who to believe either.

[QUOTE=Twistai;47701852]From the YouTube comments. Not sure who to believe now.[/QUOTE] From the video it looked like she was sitting by a window with her parents next to her, she could only of bitten other passengers if she had climbed over seats, and they could of just made them wait for everyone else to get off the flight at the end so she couldn't bite anyone then.

This is where "life is a bitch" comes to mind. If you have an agitated autistic daughter who can become violent, disruptive, aggressive etc... Then be prepared to give her some sleeping pills for the journey so she's less problematic. Many hospitals allow to give small doses of injections to help calm autistic children down and even allow parents to give them it. And if the mother is one of these "my child doesn't need that, she deserves to be treated like a normal human being" then she can go screw herself. Life sucks, her daughter got dealt a bad hand with autism and these things make life easier for everyone.

[QUOTE=Xonax;47701851]This breaks my Autistic heart. What the fuck is wrong with these guys? I mean I get it since a girl was throwing a tantrum, but to throw them off the plane because if it? Why? The kid stopped after she got some grub, if she continued doing it more, then that is more of a concern, but from what I've read, she only did it once and stopped after getting food.[/QUOTE] because she posed a threat to other passengers, imagine if she started acting out for some other reason mid flight, making her get off was the right thing to do

There's two sides to every story, and I would be inclined to learn the other passengers side before making a judgement. With a autistic kid it's easy to let emotion overrule judgement, even if the family (and I'm not saying they were) were in the wrong. Hence this being a story the family were glad to take to the media, because everybody will be on the family's side because THEY KICKED OFF AN AUTISTIC GIRL HOW DARE THEY. I imagine the stewardesses were as compassionate as needed, but if the family/child were truly disrupting or threatening/causing harm to other passengers that's most likely why they got removed, even if they did manage to calm the child down eventually. The needs of the many overrule the needs of a few and you just can't cause a commotion like that up many many miles in the air.

[QUOTE=Xonax;47701851]This breaks my Autistic heart. What the fuck is wrong with these guys? I mean I get it since a girl was throwing a tantrum, but to throw them off the plane because if it? Why? The kid stopped after she got some grub, if she continued doing it more, then that is more of a concern, but from what I've read, she only did it once and stopped after getting food.[/QUOTE] People have been removed from planes for less.

[QUOTE=Twistai;47701852]From the YouTube comments. Not sure who to believe now.[/QUOTE] In that case all the excessive protections the TSA bothers with would actually be fucking beneficial for once. Pose a threat? Get arrested.

Typical sensationalist media, using autism to generate emotional feelings of the readers, not providing any info on the actual situation.

[QUOTE=itisjuly;47702037]Typical sensationalist media, using autism to generate emotional feelings of the readers, not providing any info on the actual situation.[/QUOTE] Human interest story. Prints BIG and gets people all riled up. Exactly what the newspapers want!

Unpopular opinion; as much as i respect and do what i can to people who has a disorder or disability, sometimes they annoy the fuck out of me. I dont ignore people who talks loudly in planes or buses, i warn them; why should i ignore people with disorders' actions?

[QUOTE=LaTrefle;47702306]Unpopular opinion; as much as i respect and do what i can to people who has a disorder or disability, sometimes they annoy the fuck out of me. I dont ignore people who talks loudly in planes or buses, i warn them; why should i ignore people with disorders' actions?[/QUOTE] because they cant help it? like someone with tourettes syndrome might have a vocal tick that makes them yelp or something, there isnt really anything they can do to help that, so it isn't really fair to tell them off.

Control your kid lady, her being autistic has nothing to do with your bad parenting.

I reckon we should use these on kids that misbehave: [IMG]http://www.entertainmentearth.com/images/AUTOIMAGES/NC42033lg.jpg[/IMG] Actually scratch that, all kids need that.

A Hannibal Lecter doll? as if they weren't "crazy" enough.

I'd agree to kicking to her off if she remained disruptive and potentially became more violent but she got her meal, which is all she wanted and not that big of a demand, and shut up. There was no further escalation that justified them getting the boot.

[QUOTE=Megadave;47702362]A Hannibal Lecter doll? as if they weren't "crazy" enough.[/QUOTE] It's not a doll, it's an action figure. Or rather, an inaction figure.

[QUOTE=Twistai;47701852]From the YouTube comments. Not sure who to believe now.[/QUOTE] I don't understand autism but there must be some way to have her not bite people. Maybe her parents don't understand either so just let it happen with no idea how to prevent it. If this is true that is. It must be frustrating though. Now they have to either wait for another plane or take a long ass bus or train ride where the same issue can occur.

I use to work as a support worker for kids with disabilities and while I understand some of you may not have any exposure to autism, some of you are really showing your ignorance. You don't kick a family off a plane because they are screaming, or because a kid is kicking someone's chair. It's incredibly hard for parents to manage their kid with autism, it can cause so many problems. But yes I agree with many others here, she should have been manged much better and had provisions prepared for her. Unfortunately it can be hard and my heart goes out to that family. Without more information I can't really comment further, but I do think it's a case of her getting aggressive, people not liking it, and the family getting kicked off. It's just a shitty situation which just happened. Edit: Sorry I should have explained myself better. I do believe the mother should have been better prepared flying with her daughter. I just feel sorry for her.

[QUOTE=Badballer;47702472] You don't kick a family off a plane because they are screaming, or because a kid is kicking someone's chair.[/QUOTE] I don't know if you do or don't but damn you should. Misbehaving kids should be illegal on flights longer than 1 hour. Little shits can ruin a long flight really fast.

[QUOTE=Megadave;47702362]A Hannibal Lecter doll? as if they weren't "crazy" enough.[/QUOTE] You know what I meant, silly.

After reading a bit more of this, I can see how it was justified to take her off the plane. I have a brother unfortunately with ASD, who gets very violent when agitated (unfortunately he gets agitated very easily), and I personally believe that no one should have deal with such an issue like this if it ever comes about. It was the right call to make. If I was forced off a plane because of my brother's behavior, I'd be fine with that. Edit: To add, I would never bring him on a plane in the first place.

I work with autistic people for my job. Personally I look at this different than a parent would. If someone is taking care of an autistic individual that has out bursts and stuff off that nature they need to be 100% competent in handling the situation as well as being able to diffuse it successfully. It is not the publics job to except being terrorized by an individual. It's your job to have all the "what if" situations taken care of before they happen. Whether that means a fast acting anti psychotic drug or a sleeping/sedative pill. Just like parent are expected to have there children under control. This is no exception and if this was reported to a state human services office the mother may be heavily investigated for neglect because she seems incapable of handling her daughter in an exceptable way on a plane and clearly lacks the ability to for see problems that may arise and have a solution available.

[QUOTE=Badballer;47702472]I use to work as a support worker for kids with disabilities and while I understand some of you may not have any exposure to autism, some of you are really showing your ignorance. You don't kick a family off a plane because they are screaming, or because a kid is kicking someone's chair. It's incredibly hard for parents to manage their kid with autism, it can cause so many problems. But yes I agree with many others here, she should have been manged much better and had provisions prepared for her. Unfortunately it can be hard and my heart goes out to that family. Without more information I can't really comment further, but I do think it's a case of her getting aggressive, people not liking it, and the family getting kicked off. It's just a shitty situation which just happened.[/QUOTE] I have worked with autistic kids before and I will say that this is the mothers fault. If she knows that her daughter is capable of behavior like this then she should be prepared to handle it, she should not expect the airline to accommodate her. The fact they were willing to give her the hot food is generous on the airline's part.

Reminds me back when I was like six or seven years old and my parents had to send me to some activity center after school because they couldn't pick me up right away. We had to deal with this autistic kid who was also extremely spoiled, he'd ask everyone to play board games with him but would expect other kids to let him win. Every time he lost he'd throw a massive temper tantrum, destroyed things, threw the board games around and became extremely violent (he almost fucking stabbed a kid in the eye with a stick from a mikado game once). The only thing that would calm him down was either his mother showing up or his brother just decking him in the face as hard as he could and literally throwing him in a corner. The adults in charge couldn't do shit because the mother would refuse to let them even touch her kid and would constantly claim that he was a perfectly normal child who had no anger issues, so we had to deal with this autistic asswipe for a full year until she finally pulled him out. I think she even threatened to sue one of the guys in charge when he grabbed the kid by the arm and restrained him as he tried to flip a table.

[QUOTE=Xonax;47701851]This breaks my Autistic heart. What the fuck is wrong with these guys? I mean I get it since a girl was throwing a tantrum, but to throw them off the plane because if it? Why? The kid stopped after she got some grub, if she continued doing it more, then that is more of a concern, but from what I've read, she only did it once and stopped after getting food.[/QUOTE] Look, "throwing a tantrum" on an airplane is unacceptable, it doesn't matter if the person has autism or not- autism may be the reason, but it isn't an excuse. There are no excuses on an airplane. The sense of security and safety of the passengers comes before anything else.

The mom told the flight attendant that if the daughter didn't get the hot meal she might have a meltdown and start biting people. So the mom gave the flight attendant a "do this or else" threat. That right there should get them booted off the plane. It would be wise to contact the airline and arrange for any special needs, such as a hot meal available on request, BEFORE you get on the plane.