Today I ran a painting activity with my kindergarten students. They had a blast but by the end of it I had over 20 three and four year old covered in paint. I told them to go wash their hands in the toilets, an instruction that I never thought twice about and have given many times. Normally the kids will go into the toilet and wash their hands in the sinks. But this year I have an autistic student, I hear his little voice ring out from the toilet block as I’m wiping tables, “NO! She said IN THE TOILETS!!!”
I dropped everything and ran into the toilets to see most of the children with their hands in the now multicoloured toilet bowls! My assistant was incapacitated because she was laughing so hard!
We got the children and the toilets all cleaned up properly but I’m going to be very careful about my word choices from now on.
TL;DR My poor word choices resulted in over 20 kindergarteners washing their hands with toilet water.
Comments
This is funny as all hell. Its always us autistics lmao
Autistic children are likely to take things literally. So when you said to go wash your hands in the toilet they probably thought you meant in the ACTUAL toilet.
This is amazing
Are you British? I’ve never heard anyone say “in the toilets.” Most people would say “in the bathroom” or “in the restroom.”
This is not the first time I’ve heard of a kid making that misunderstanding, and the one I’m thinking of isn’t autistic. I think that’s a young kids not having context or having learnt to be disgusted by toilet water yet issue more than an autism issue.