I've got a real problem with children being described as "spoiled rotten"

[RainDog]

7. People said my oldest son was spoiled

I was criticized, etc. by the wives of professional associates, by people in my family... this criticism was compounded because people said he looked like the gerber baby and had curly ringlets - of course he was spoiled. He learned to read by memorizing words (not a "gestalt" of reading), when he was 3. So, of course he was spoiled.

...and it turned out that my son was autistic, but so high-functioning that it wasn't obvious at that age. He was very sensitive to sounds and the "mouth feel" of foods. The scratchiness of fabrics bothered him. Tags drove him crazy.

Sometimes as a toddler he would sort of "melt down" and, rather than punish him, I would hold him tight against my body and rock him to calm him. I didn't think physical punishment was a good way to discipline, either, so of course that was up for criticism as well for some of the older folks. Later, when I read Temple Grandin's biography, I learned that she used a machine she invented to create just such "pressure" to help her with sensory integration.

After I read Grandin, and my son was older, I could ask my son questions and learned that the flicker of light bulbs bothered him. Before his autism diagnosis, the pediatrician thought he might be epileptic because he seemed to have complex partial seizures. He had to have eegs and cat scans and, tho not conclusive, the doctor recommended seizure medication. my ex disagreed, tho, and we ended up "waiting and seeing."

Some of the people who were most critical of my "spoiled child" were dead before he got his dx. I did wish I could tell them, so that maybe they wouldn't be such harsh, judgmental assholes, but it was too late for them. Maybe someone else can learn from their examples.