Unfortunately, yes. I stopped working and dedicated all of my time to get my son where he needed to be and continue my fight for him. With this decision, everyone around me slowly disappeared.

Yes but I just pray about it and move on people will have their judgement they have no idea what we go through as parents and they're on the outside looking in.

@A MyAutismTeam Member that is so sad, unfortunately we cant choose our family but we can our friends, if you ever need to talk am here, I understand, my family fall out with me on occasions when my daughter has major meltdowns because they don't understand what's happening, and often its them that have set her anxiety in motion and I am the one she feels safe to unleash it to. Those who dont need to live it really have no idea.

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A MyAutis...

It's sad to see just how many friends turn out to have been more like acquaintances when faced with this situation. I am sadly disappointed in my younger sister and her family in particular. (Unfortunately we chose her and her husband to be my sons God parents. Awkward! Guess I'll just have to make a point of outliving those guys for sure! )

I have found that hanging out with families that also have children on the spectrum to be a lot more rewarding. You are able to relax a bit when you are not constantly having to explain a behavior my son might exhibit, etc. Because who understands better than a person who's treading water in a similar vessel, right?

If someone is not able to be kind, patient and maybe even a little understanding of my son and our situation, than they are not the type of people I want to expose my sons to. Surrounding yourself with only those who are say, worth can get
lonely sometimes. As there is a lot of ignorance to be found that's for sure!

Education! We need to educate the ignorant in hopes of making the world a better place for our kiddos!

Absolutely. We went from having large social groups of friends to almost no one. Some of this is driven by being older parents, as many of our friend's kids are already on their way and we were very occupied with our son as a child with ASD when he was young. Eventually, people just figured we weren't available anymore, I imagine. However, we have seen MANY people simply 'disappear' from friendships with us that we are sure was due to their discomfort with our son's behavior. We've never experienced behaviors like this before. I've posted about this previously. I can't believe that people are so unable to cope, as he is a nice kid, just challenged with communication skills. It has been frustrating, depressing and hard to explain to anyone who doesn't live it everyday. It appears to be happening more as he gets older and the gap between he and his peers widens. As I always say when people throw out the "Oh, there's so much more awareness of Autism now" (like it shouldn't be an issue for anyone)...there may be more awareness, but there certainly isn't more acceptance. Those small pockets of lovely, accepting souls are few and far between.