Your not a bad person. Your human. I would worry if you didn't feel the way you described. Is it really that bad to feel hate towards someone that is cheering about something "normal" that your child with a disability cannot do. I don't think so, to act on that hate would be wrong. But make no mistake that your feelings are normal and human. I wish I had advice for you but just remember to never give up, my son surprises me everyday. Mess him up, pull him out of his world even though he doesn't want to leave. It's ok to hate, just control it. Try to tell your friend to tone it down some. Or maybe to ask her to listen to your achievements even though they seem small compaired to her stinking snot nosed kid.

Scyllas... the master runaway kid catcher.

My previous comment probably came across a little harsher than I intended - I had to vent a little.  My real point is that we ASD mom's have to find a variety of ways to work through a wide variety of emotions - all of which are normal considering the degree of stress we frequently find ourselves under.  Most of us tend to hold onto far too much guilt and we find ourselves questioning our decisions to a point of paralysis (and we wonder about our essential "goodness.")   I am sure that any decisions you have made about your children in the past (such as to innoculate or not to innoculate) have been made with your best possible effort and good intentions.  Don't let the doubts paralyze you from continuing to make decisions (even though there have always been and are still risks involved) - whatever you decide eventually for yourself will be the best decision you could possibly make.

Don't doubt that you are a good person - sometimes it is the "rest" of the world that has the real problem.  The people who said they would come to my son's birthday party and then did not come are in the wrong, not my son who invited them in good faith, and not me for being there at his side to get him through this tough time for him.

On a broader scale, it is the ultimate responsibility of the pharma industry to ensure that everything it sells to us is safe.  Whether or not they are living up to this obligation is an open-ended, emotionally loaded question; but it is still they who shouldn't be able to sleep at night IF they knowingly are "selling us a bill of goods."

Your friend, if she is a true friend, should understand how her comments might cause you some pain and you two, as friends, should be able to work it out form there.

Have enough courage to keep taking pictures of your son, even when the smiles don't seem to be there.  If you keep taking pictures, someday he will learn to smile.

No, you are not a terrible person. I am definitely envious of people with [seemingly] nuero-typical children. It makes me feel sorry for myself as a mother and tormented for my child with that question, "What would he have been like if he didn't have autism?"

But, what does make me feel better and remind me that I am a good person is that I really do want to see an end to autism so no one has to go through this again. A week, month, or year or two from now you will turn on your computer and read, just like I am doing today, about some other mother's pain who is just beginning to have to deal with autism. And you will cry for them and for yourself, and it's okay.

Sometimes, if someone is particularly rude and purposefully humiliates me about my son's autism, I do find myself fleetingly thinking that I hope autism touches their life in some way so they get a taste of what I am going through--I mean, no one is safe from it, rich or poor, it can strike anyone and no one knows the cause, so no one can protect themselves. On the topic of rude people, one thing that I am grateful for is that my son usually doesn't realize or care if another parent/child has said something mean to him.

I sometimes got jealous of my friend whose oldest boy at 5 is a year older than mine. But her boy recently got diagnosed with Aspbergers. Now she is crazy worried for her two younger children. Her two-year old boy last year had a reaction to his MMR shot (fever, rash, sick and listless for over a week) so she did not get him the booster. She just had him evaluated for autism but they said that he only has deficits in gross motor skills. She doesn't know if she will get the MMR shot for her one-year old daughter, so she is at the same crossroad as you are.

I have never known my friend to be anything other than upbeat and happy, but since going through these worries this year, she started having some physical signs of stress (skin problems, insomnia, etc.) and the doctor put her on an anti-depressant. When I was crying in my doctor's office about everything I was going through with my son's autism, my doctor gave me some Xanax to use sparingly. Having your child diagnosed with autism is a major life event and high on the stress scale. Of course you are going to feel intense emotions! You are only human.

Also, I think it is just human to brag about your kids and be excited about the things that they can do and the progress that they make. Maybe you could find a tactful way to let your friend know that you are hurting right now and that it would be helpful if she would tone it down on her "cute kid" stories for a while.

Well, if I'm a good person (and I know I am), then you must be one too. 

Over my son's life, I've had many, many days where the only way I could describe what I was feeling was "hate."  I hated it when the other "normal" kids tormented my son.  I hated it when they goaded him into fighting back on the playground and then tried to paint him as the aggressor.  Most of all, I think, I hated it whenever they "pretended" to include him in their lives.  I hated it when last night, now an adult, he invited numerous people he thought were his  "friends" to a birthday party at a public bar and sat there (with just me) for 3 hours while not one, not one bothered to show up.

My son is a wonderful, caring person.  He has done everything in his power, worked hard every single day of his life just to learn to communicate with people in this world.  He has done it all and whenever he became frustrated or angry, we encourage him to give the "other people" a break - to forgive.  And he has done that too, becoming exceptionaly tolerant.

As I sat there in the bar with him last night listening to him make up a list of "plausible" excuses for why no one was coming - yeah, I hated those other "kids."  Today, I think I still hate them, maybe tomorrow I can find a way to forgive and forget... but even if it takes a few more days than that, I know that I AM STILL A GOOD PERSON!

Maybe all the other "good" people out their who didn't show up last night should look a little closer into the mirror.

jnc772000:  Rest assured, you are just a regular mom with a kid with an ASD.  That alone makes you an exceptional mom.  if you keep taking pictures, someday your son will again look into the camera and smile with a smile that will go right into your soul.

Without a doubt, my son today is my truest friend - he possesses a genuiness and honesty that puts the rest of the world to shame.  Someday, some one else will see my son for the exceptionally good person he truly is, and if they take the time to be a true friend, too... they will be rewarded with the truest friend they could ever hope to have.

I think tears are something all ASD mothers share. I cannot imagine one of us never breaking down in a never ending cascade of tears at least once since diagnosis. I too find myself staring up at the wall of pictures and wonder what broke in my baby along the way.

It is a choice you must make with the shots. I suppose I am one who believe that if the shots were a significant and proven cause there would have been something done by now. Perhaps they are but a factor in a world we cannot really change. But I hope like all mothers for nobody else to have to endure what we have. Do remind yourself that boys are 4x more likely to be ASD than girls. And personally I would prefer my son like this than to have died or be blinded from measles. 

To be honest I found tears streaming down my face reading this post. You are not a horrible mother, I think you have proven to be a wonderful mother just now. We all have our faults, and us ASD mothers seem to have ours cut open for all to see. They expect us to be strong. Some even compliment on how much we can handle, but they do not see us at the end of the day when all we can do is hug a pillow and weep.