Hi, thanks coming back and here we are again, picking up the tale of me and my incredible, exploding daughter about to attempt a death-defying expedition to the grocery store. Sounds like pretty mundane stuff, right? Well, you would think so, and I'm sure for millions of people all over the world, contemplating the prospect of something as simple as taking your kid to the local mall to pick up groceries wouldn't be an occasion for terror and trepidation, not to mention feeling like you were taking your life in your hands. I wish I could say, in days gone by the daily shop was a no big deal but I gotta tell you, every time I stepped out of that apartment I felt like I had a great big bulls-eye painted on my back.

You see the kicker was, the truly ironic part of all of this, if you looked at Shannon then, you would have seen this very beautiful, very quiet, very solemn, very normal looking child. The distinctive autistic mannerisms that mark her now, the rocking, the exaggerated hand-flapping, the inappropriate vocalizations, back then she didn't do any of it to the degree she does now, a trained observer would have picked up on the few tell-tale physical behaviours she manifested too subtle for the average eye but to Joe and Josephine by-stander she looked like every other child who didn't have these challenges to deal with. She didn't come with a big, blinking 'autism' banner over her head, she didn't look like she had a problem. Therefore anyone seeing the pair of us and taking in one of her unscheduled but regular floor shows were left to draw only one conclusion. And believe me, they did so, and nine times out of ten were none to shy about sharing their disapproval of the spectacle – her for providing it and me for apparently letting her do so.

This irony caused me many bitter moments of contemplating the basic, innate unfairness of the whole thing, I don't mind telling you. I couldn't help but think if she'd had a visible affliction rather than drawing the ire of the crowd I'd be getting accolades. More than once I considered getting her a T-shirt that said something like "I'm not BAD I'm AUTISTIC". But I didn't, I kept telling myself I could deal with it.

Again, let me stress it wasn't Shannon giving me the grief, the tantrums I could deal with, and was managing to do so, I just wanted people to leave me alone so I could help my daughter. We'd be going along, minding our own business, she would start going off, I would drop everything and try to calm her down, and then, the inevitable crowd would start to gather.

Now, to be fair, some people were intelligent to realize the force of the fit she was pitching was way over and above a mere temper tantrum. They got there was something not 'normal' going on here. I did get a few kind offers of assistance, but they were very few and far between. However, as much as I appreciated them over the usual abuse, at the time I couldn't spare them a lot of time to chat or offer explanations. I needed to stay focused on Shannon.

What I really wanted was for everyone to go away and leave us alone. The fewer people, and the less distraction the better, not to mention I was able to stay on an even emotional keel if I didn't have to deal with having to deal with the gawking – and mostly hostile public.

But of course, that virtually never happened. Shannon was a show-stopper, all right, and she never failed to draw a crowd. Most of them were determined to share their extremely uncharitable opinion of my daughter's obviously undisciplined upbringing and my lousy parental abilities. And they weren't too shy about getting right in my face about it.

I was outright threatened. I was maligned. I was told I didn't deserve to have children, and they were going to see to it my daughter got taken away. I was told I should be arrested for child abuse. Not just once, but many, many times, practically every time we went out and Shannon had one of her lapses I was subjected to this ordeal. Everywhere we went people attacked us. I was appalled and daunted by the sheer viciousness of some of the comments, how mean people were to us. I mean, I know she was a tremendous disruption; unless you've experienced it you really have no idea how violent one of her tantrums could get – just short of an actual seizure, but what hurt so much, what little an explanation I could spare to give to them, they wouldn't even listen.

It truly wasn't her fault, it wasn't my fault, I didn't want to disturb or inconvenience them, we were doing the best we could, and we did have rights too. Inwardly, I bristled about the injustice of it, I told myself they were just a bunch of narrow minded poo-poo heads and I shouldn't care about what they thought about me and my daughter because I knew the truth, but you know what?

It's hard not to care. It's hard to turn your back when people are throwing verbal stones at you, and it's hard not to cry when they say terrible things about your child. Things you know she doesn't deserve, things you know they would be appalled have come out of their mouth if they could only spend a few, short minutes in your shoes, see things from your perspective and learn the truth.

I tried my best, but I got caught in this self-defeating spiral of feeling worse and worse about myself the more I kept hearing about what a terrible person I was. I knew it wasn't true, but I started believing I deserved to be censured. It also didn't help the few friends I had left stopped dropping by, with apologies, but they just couldn't deal with Shannon.

Not a really happy time in my life, as you can well imagine. The low point, the absolute nadir came one day in January when Shannon starting acting up on the bus, something she almost never did, and the passengers commenced complaining, loudly, to the driver. The upshot was, the bus driver pulled over and apologized, but asked us to leave.

I'll never forget the sound of the passengers cheering as Shannon and I were thrown off the bus.

Did I mention it was January? In Winnipeg? And it was -30 Degrees Celsius? Fortunately we were dressed for the weather, but still, we had to walk from Sherbrooke to Broadway, which, if anyone is familiar with Winnipeg, is no small hike, even if the weather is nice but in January, not my idea of fun.

As I trudged on homeward on that cold afternoon, with my now silent daughter by my side, I was feeling pretty low. To be honest, I was feeling like a victim. We had done nothing wrong, and yet, here we were, judged, condemned and cast out.

And yet, to be treated like criminals, did that make us so? No, it didn't. We hadn't done anything wrong. No matter what everyone on that stupid bus thought or said, none of that changed what I knew about Shannon, and about myself.

I was okay. She was okay. That's all that mattered. And you know what, it took that unceremonious and humiliating ejection for me to see, for the first time, the innate truth, the lesson in all of this. See it, understand it, and really believe it.

It didn't matter. None of it mattered. I was only a victim if I thought of myself as one. My baby was fine, so was I, I was going to continue to do whatever I needed to do for her, the whole rest of the darned world could take a flying leap, who cares what they thought of me and her, you don't want to help me, who the heck needs ya, shut the heck up and stay out of my way.

That was it; that was all it took. After that epiphany nothing changed, not immediately; Shannon still had her public fits and folks still lit into us about it, but you know what, for me it was a completely different experience. It just flew on over me without touching me, the proverbial water off the ducks back thing. I focused on her and tuned it all out. And another funny thing, once I stopped listening to the nay-sayers and caring about what they said, I don't know if it was a case of it stopped happening or I just stopped paying attention, but whatever, our daily journeys became less and less of an exercise in terror. And yeah, Shannon grew, gained more life and coping skills, improved her ability to communicate, and though it took years of patience and effort on both our parts, the terrible tantrums gradually became a thing of the past. She does occasionally have a wee melt down from time to time, but nowhere near the scale of her youth, and she is able grasp the need for self control and exercise it.

Only one of the many small but meaningful miracles she has manifested in her life and development.

Oy, this was a little more than I meant to share, but I hope it's brought you a new perspective on judging based on appearances, and maybe the next time you see a situation think you know what's going on, consider maybe you don't. Maybe the next time you see a young mother struggling with an obstreperous, loud child you won't automatically assume the worst of them both. Maybe you'll offer a kind, encouraging word instead of a harsh one. I hope you'll ponder it, and also consider the tremendous power you have to affect another person, either positively or negatively, simply in passing.

The choice is yours; to help or harm.

Do good and you'll never go wrong.

Thanks for stopping by

Phoenix