I think Lee, that loulabelle doesn't just come from a mother who uses a harness, but one with a spectrum child who just doesn't live amongst our cultures ideals of teaching boundaries. I've been through so much with DD1 and seen and been judged in the shops again and again.

I used to put her in the pram with the 5 point harness with a monkey harness on her back and she still wound up in the car park running many many times. Its not a matter of boundaries or anything or even teaching them.... its a daily struggle and even at 6 years old I still can't trust her to run off. For years she was an escape artist, and still could be if she wanted too. Its a different lifestyle parenting a child on the spectrum... and I guess that its hard not to take things personally when people are assuming that its easy to teach them boundaries as you could other children.

I've had strangers stop me in the shops to tell me how bad a parent I am, I've had people try to smack M in the shops, I've had to hold her down to strap her in and leave my handbag/trolley everything in the middle of the road... I've been lucky and had people offer to help, but most of the time someone wants to tell me how horrible she is and how bad I am at being her parent. I'll tell you, she's alive.... and therefore I've done an awesome job.