Thanks to the inquiring public

How can you explain to people what things you deal with, and what things your child goes through.. when they look like there is no issue at all? How thick should your skin become? Things I have been pondering the past few days.

On the weekend, his older brother had an Akido demonstration, (Japanese martial arts) we turned up early, for him to rehearse, stayed for everyone's presentation, and for the medals at the end... around 4 hours all together.

After 1 and 1/2 hours he got very overwhelmed, cranky and lost it... started crying, so daddy took him outside for a bit. He calmed down and came back in and was ok. After another 20-30 min I wanted him to sit next to me for some food. A lady was sitting to the left of him, and had her shoes off and on the floor next to her. Jono was a bit distressed and fidgety, and kept bumping this ladies shoes. After a few bumps, instead of moving to the left, or picking up her shoes and moving them, she protectively covered her shoes and glared at me... /sigh

Then yesterday I wanted to get some sandpaper from Bunnings, so after picking him up from school, we drove through Macca's to get chips. This was an issue.... we don't go Macca's very much, and when we do we usually stop and play. So he broke into tears, and started panicking - 'this one, this way, turn, play '... and so on. He calmed a little so I decided to brave Bunnings, and thought he could go in the playground there. He was very very sad when we stopped, and didn't want to get out of the car. I got him out after a few minutes, and he didnt want to walk along. I got him into the store (still crying and panicing... but I thought I only want one thing, we'll be quick) I took him to the playground to give him a chance to play... but by now he had no interest. Then we found the water fountains... and they has rocks around them - this provided much joy for quite a few minutes.

After he had calmed right down I thought he would be ready to move on, and tried to get going. but he just couldn't cope... the routine had been broken and he was just too out of sorts... so I decided that the stress on him (and me) was not worth it and went to the car. As we loaded up a man came past and made a comment about Jono being tired... I said 'No, he's autistic, and this is out of routine and he's not coping'.

He was literally screaming the store down, people were looking at us, and I'm sure more than one thought 'what a bad mother'. Ahhh just one of those days.