[Yaelle]

It was my first child and I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. It was horrible. By his age 10 I learned to leave him home for everything. He couldn’t handle family parties or a trip to the store. He is still so smart, he can compensate much better now, and he is a great person.

I saw an Asian mom in a very Asian neighborhood with a boy having an obvious autistic meltdown in front of a mall she wished to enter. Poor thing, she was terribly embarrassed and was still trying to get him to go in. I was driving or I would have tried to help, but it could have been she didn’t speak English and I would have only mortified her more. (Help would have meant give it up, go home, or distract him with a bit of favorite food, etc)

[miss marmelstein]

Asians lose face very quickly. We were at a restaurant with our friend who is married to a Japanese woman and we watched her kid have a meltdown (spoiled, not autistic). I sympathetically patted her on the back and I truly thought she'd commit harikari in front of me. Never again after watching her hysterical embarrassment!

So glad your son has grown up to be a healthy person. God bless.