How to explain negative cheering to a child with autism

Negative Cheering/Cheering Against Your Team

Our child has been to numerous sporting events ever since he was a baby.

We never let autism get in the way of taking him with us to a sporting event (or anywhere public).

Especially a baseball game.

Baseball

My husband attends a fair number of Dodger games each year and often takes our child.

Our son is now twelve and is finally beginning to appreciate watching the game (instead of spending the whole time watching a DVD). He’s even attended a game or two without his bag of goodies (drawing paper, DVD and headphones, Smartphone).

He cheers for the Dodgers and does so (sometimes) quite loudly and with much exuberance. Besides the Dodgers, he has also attended spring training game in Arizona (our yearly sojourn).

Recently, he was with us when we attended a game in San Diego—the Dodgers verses the San Diego Padres. This game was literally an eye opener for our very literal child.

What happened?

We were attending the game with some family members, celebrating the birthday of a family member by going to a baseball game.

We had good seats, on the field level, down the 3rd base line, and thirteen rows up.

Even though we had good seats, there were two times when my son hung out near the railing. He did this because he wanted some space and needed to regulate his body. (In times past, he would request to go walking around in order to get a break.)

As long as he wasn’t blocking anyone (and, he wasn’t), we allowed him to stay along the railing.

Turns out, while he was at the railing, our son was receiving unwelcome and rather surprising input, part of it turned out to be educational but also upsetting.

Jeering your team

Our son experienced an angry fan jeering against the team we wanted to win.

This went down because our son was used to going to Dodger Stadium. It’s acceptable to roots for the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium.

The Problem

He was becoming a real fan of the Dodgers, however, we weren’t at Dodger Stadium.

We were in San Diego at the Padres home stadium.

Padre fans were jeering at the Dodger players.

Jeering/heckling

The jeer or the heckle is quite common in the sporting world.

Not that my son knew that. Nor did he have that experience at Dodger Stadium.

Unfortunately, my son didn’t like it.

What did he do?

First of all, he told us that something was bothering him.

He said he wanted to know why some Padre fans were trying to make Dodger fans feel bad. They had made him feel bad. He wanted to know why they were doing that.

This conversation

On the one hand, this was a great conversation to have with our son. Our child was describing his feelings.

He told us that he didn’t understand why the Padre fans were being so mean to the Dodger players and, seemingly, to the Dodger fans. Some of the things he heard had hurt his feelings. In his experience, fans didn’t behave like that.

What made it worse was when the scoreboard flashed a “Beat LA” sign and the Padre fans began to sing “Beat LA.”

We explained that this is the way some sports fan go to games. We had our son sit with us the rest of the game, and things improved for him.

Post-Game

When talking to us after the game, our son said he was sad and confused. He did a great job of explaining his feelings.

What did we tell him?

First, I told him my opinion on the Padre organization flashing the “Beat LA” sign. I told him that I didn’t like it because it meant that the organization began the negative cheering/jeers/heckles, etc. They should be bigger than that.

Second, our entire group began a discussion about the different ways “mean” fans cheer. We told him that people like that pick on opponents’ players, they heckle, and try to rile. That’s just what some fans do.

Third, I told my son that it’s okay not to like it, and it’s perfectly fine to talk to us about it. Most importantly, he has to learn not take it personally.

Reacting

We warned our son to not react to really mean fans. No good can come of that.

What did we take away from this experience?

My son said he had a good time at the game, but he was surprised not only by what he was hearing but by his reaction to it. He’s becoming more and more of a baseball fan every day, and he said he didn’t realize how sensitive he was to negative cheering.

Plus, he was zooming in on what other people were saying. He was realizing that the language people use (whether curse words or not) is not always “pretty.”

Our son has to learn how to interpret what people are saying and why.

Furthermore, he has to learn to ignore people who are cheering negatively.

The whole topic

The whole issue was a great learning experience. Our son dealt with a confusing topic by discussing it and learning from it.

It may have not been the best experience he’s ever had, but it was an experience. A valuable one.

He was confused about why people cheer in a negative way. But, he fought through it, and (apparently) moved on.

Until the next baseball game!

Here’s a great article about involving your child with autism in more than just being a fan, but rather actively involved in sports.

http://autism.about.com/od/childrenandautism/p/sportsideas.htm

 

More on Kimberly Kaplan:
To purchase “Two Years Autism Blogs Featured on ModernMom.com”
or “A Parentsʼ Guide to Early Autism Intervention” visit Amazon (print or digital) or Smashwords
Twitter: tipsautismmom
LinkedIn: Kimberly Kaplan
You can also find this autism blog on ModernMom.com

 

 

 

Happy that he expressed himself so well — explained his emotions — his feelings were hurt!