Oh gosh, I forgot about the shame of the nappies (diapers). Yes, people judged me for that, particularly since he's a very tall boy, and by the time he was two and a half, three, he was already in clothes for a four to five year old. I didn't have a diagnoses for him at the time, but I just developed a really stroppy attitude. "Why are you obsessed with my son's bottom? Is there something about you I should know?" I breast fed him for the first three and a half years as well, it was an important source of comfort to him, and sod anyone who told me I should stop. Again, what's wrong with them to fixate on somebody's breasts?

It's very difficult, but one thing that can help is to ask yourself, "who are these people? why do they matter?" If they're just random people giving you the evils, shake it off. YOU are the expert when it comes to your son. Your relationship is between you and him, not you, him, and the gossiping curtain twitchers.

I know exactly how you feel, to this day I can react very badly to the curtain twitchers. I've been really poorly with it this week, only coming out of it now, so I'm not saying this lightly. I know how hard it is to train yourself not to care about other people's opinions. But it can be done.

Things I found hard, the nappies lasting longer than most, the fact that he wouldn't or couldn't walk till he was half way through his second year, and even then, for months, he would hang on for dear life, the fact that he was so tall, and people expected more from him, since they thought he was older than he was, the fact that he communicated in a most peculiar fashion, until somewhere towards the end of his fifth year... and even then (and in fact to this day) his vocal mannerisms, vocabulary and syntax are a bit odd. (Nowadays he sounds like an eighteenth century novel... you can practically hear the punctuation and paragraphs.) The fact that he would scream when bathing, and even to this day it's murder persuading him to have a bath. (I have to run it for him, and stand with my arms folded until he goes in... at least he's stopped screaming.) His hypersensitivity to sound, covering his ears and screaming because of something nobody else would notice. (Buzzing florescents lightbulbs for example). All of these things made me anxious at one time or another.

But things really have improved, and the buzzing chatterers had nothing to do with it.

My advice is this, "cop an attitude", as we say in the UK. Hold your head up high, square your shoulders, and if necessary tell them to stuff it. What's it got to do with them anyhow?