The most important thing I learned from my ASD son's pediatrician

My son's pediatrician was a woman who was shorter than I am and I swear half my weight; she was also in her fifties. I met her when she was doing the round of newborns at the hospital at which my son was born. She was the *only* adult who could, when he was newborn, handle him at all without causing an outburst of screaming. So I asked if we could continue to see her outside of the hospital visit. She agreed.

One of the things I really liked about my son’s pediatrician was that she was ultimately an extremely pragmatic, no-nonsense woman. She had strong ideas of what would be best for a child - but she also had strong ideas of what would be best for a family dynamic. She understood that asking parents to do things they simply could not willingly/happily do over the long-term was courting the type of anxiety and resentment that eats away at a family.

( Advice from the pediatrician, applied )