Not a competion.

All to often when you meet other people who have an ASD person in their families (not just the primary carer) and you mention that yes your child talks, that suddenly you have this wall that goes up.
Because you are the "Lucky" ones, that they have it so much worse off than you. That suddenly your child is not Autistic enough to be considered Autistic because they can talk. And this is all before you can get a word into say well being able to talk does not mean they can effectively communicate with you in real time or have any sense of reasoning skills.

The truth is each has their own set of challenges and it isn't a competition between the two. It is why the saying goes "If you have seen one ASD child, you have just seen ONE ASD child." They are all different. They all do things at their own pace and working order.

This blog posts comes from an evening out. We went on a rare family dinner night out. Our little man was very good at the start. (I will tell you now it did not end well, but that is another blog post.) My Inlaws kindly booked a table for us and the band, the other members did not take up the offer to join us, but another group of seniors did. Little man sat quietly in his buggy after he ate playing his iPad whilst we finished eating and we spoke. He was beautiful and cute. Next thing I know one of the ladies stuck her hand in his buggy to tickle him on his cheek.

I saw red. I asked her nicely please DO NOT touch my child, it may not end well and I can't guarantee he won't go off. She then told me about her grandson and asked if he could talk... well it went downhill from there. Automatically the assumptions were there. I really hope they were still in the club an hour later when the epic meltdown began. It was not pretty. I wonder if the same assumptions about being lucky he could talk would be the same as he screamed the and yelled all the way through the club and to the car at me?