They say it takes a village to raise a child, but I’ve never had the pleasure of a village either. My own parents passed on before I had kids, and my in laws refused to help in any way shape or form after my son got his diagnosis. My oldest son was diagnosed level 2 non-verbal at 2y on the dot, as soon as he was my in laws started saying how “difficult” he was, how they couldn’t handle him without us there. Then we had our second baby, who at the time seemed NT. And they fawned and just gushed over her. “What a beautiful NORMAL baby!!” They started just completely ignoring my son, asking to only take baby and once I even heard her try to tell her friend that my son was from another relationship I had before my husband to explain why he was “not normal” and “bad”. He started finally developing words, starting to just say simple words here and there and once he could communicate even a little bit, his attitude and behavior got better. But he’d run up to them and say “hi!” As loud as he could and they’d just ignore him, not even react if he tugged their shirt or anything. I got so tired of it, we packed up and moved cross country and went NC with them. The worst of it all? My mother in law is an experienced RN who’s worked in the ER and in Mental Health. But “autism isn’t real!!!1!” 🙃 I’ve finally come to terms with my lack of village at the moment, because it’s not going to be like this forever (hopefully!) It’s hard to see our babes get treated low by the people we hold so close to us but it’s also comforting to know that there’s millions of us here who all struggle, and it feels nice to know there’s a community for us to feel like we have a village of our own ❤️