Explaining an autistic child’s behaviour to my toddler

Today we’ve been to a soft play and there was an older child who had autism there. There was an encounter with him and some child and my child saw it and kept asking why the boy was being naughty. He absolutely was not being naughty but I struggled to explain this to my 3 yr old son, I felt so embarrassed that I wasn’t handling it properly. I’d really like to learn the correct way to handle this so I could educate my son to be more understanding. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

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I think three is a hard age to really explain it and understand it. As long as you was as kind and explained the best that you could, you did a great job x

3 is a very difficult age to understand this. However, I have a 3 year old... I also work at an SEN school. My daughter has a child at her childminders with SEN - she usually tells me that they don't want to play with her or doesn't reply back to her. For this situation (not fully knowing the other child's needs) I keep it generalised and say " some children like their own space or sometimes play a little bit different and that's okay" ... Or if she's commented on specific behaviour which she doesn't understand I say "everyone is learning and exploring in their own way" ... Hope that helps xx

@Abbie thank you for replying this is really good advice. It’s so hard isn’t it to explain but I felt so bad for the parents of the SEN child as they handled it so well and diverted him as he obviously needed some space. I just hate the thought of my child commenting on him being ‘naughty’ when he doesn’t understand and making the other family feel bad

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