Armchair Quarterbacking

So there's this list that I'm on, and some of the members are prone to very silly, blanket statements. Anyway, there was this one LONG description of a bratty kid at some picnic this woman attended years ago, with digressions on the parents sitting there clueless and letting the child run rampant. The writer finished by commenting that she wouldn't be surprised if this child was in trouble with the law by now thanks to the parents' overindulgence.

We really still are a Puritan culture, aren't we? If there's one thing I've learned about parenting a kid with issues, it's that no one ever truly knows what goes on in someone else's family, and that you shouldn't fucking pass judgment unless you know the whole situation. My daughter used to tantrum like you've never seen--her torso would go entirely rigid, her fair skin would turn cherry red ("increased vascular skin responses seen in autistic children," I've read somewhere), she'd scream nonstop, she'd flail her arms and legs. I'd have to bend her body in the middle to get her to sit in her car seat. In short, this was one unbelievably tough customer. Those of you who think your kids tantrum, I laugh at you. Your kids are amateurs.

Eight years later, I think she most likely had a very immature nervous system and the behavioral and psychological rigidity that goes with autism, strong bodily responses because she had no way of differentiating anger, disappointment, or fear (it was all one to her, I think: the "no!" emotion). But I didn't know all that then, and I had to put up with the "spoiled child" comments from the elderly women at the Y who were passing by, and the open stares of other parents as I was leaving with a screaming, but otherwise perfectly healthy and gorgeous-looking, not to mention well-dressed, child every single day. Yes, I'm still angry. No, I shouldn't care what ignorant, officious people think, but people's readiness to pass judgment too quickly has always irritated me, their sovereign faith in their own perceptions and beliefs.

Feh.

Assume nothing.