interacting with parents of autistics in public

[Guest guest]

I'm autistic, and I'm one of those autistics who usually isn't

considered disabled by people who haven't been told I'm autistic.

I've heard a lot of parents complain about people staring at their

kids if the kids are acting odd or visibly disabled. And this makes

me feel kind of guilty because very often I stare at disabled kids.

The reason why is that I'm lonely. I feel like everyone else is all

the same and I'm the only one who is different. So when I see a

disabled person out in public, I feel glad that I'm not the only one,

and I want to interact with them. But I don't really know how to do

that. With little kids, sometimes I'll just try to talk to them like

I would to any other little kid, but the parents tend to get all

tense and try to get their kid away from me, whereas they don't do

that if the kid's not disabled. So instead I usually just watch them,

but I keep worrying about if the person or their family has noticed

and if they're offended by it.

Awhile back I saw an adult man running around in a store acting very

autistic, and I asked the woman with him (presumably his mom) if he

was autistic, and she said yes, and was acting really tense, and I

thought about telling her I'm autistic but figured she'd probably

think I had no reason to feel like I had anything in common with him

and I ended up just leaving without saying anything else. So that's

an example of one of my attempts that didn't seem to work out well.

Does anyone have any advice?

Ettina