Today, at a birthday party to which DS5 was invited, some moms wanted to compare notes. Three of them by chance have autistic kids, so much of the conversation centered around that.
I've found that the ease of deflecting questions varies with the intensity and agenda of the asker. I don't know which make me more uncomfortable: the ones who are really out to brag, or the ones who have noticed something about my son and want to somehow disprove what he is. Both come from insecurity, I know, but I just don't like drama.
Recently a mom from our sons' daycare invited DS1 over for a play date. She expressed (passively aggressively, not openly) disbelief in DS5's reading ability, and started quizzing him on stuff around the house. I find such stuff a mite ridiculous and more than a little annoying, especially because I think there are more early readers with every passing year, at least here in the U.S., and a lot of kids can read extensively by age 5 these days. Early reading doesn't make one out to be a genius, just like late reading doesn't imply the opposite.
I definitely sympathize with being painted into a corner. It's happened to me more than once. Sometimes I just reply with a direct refusal to engage-- "I find comparisons worthless, because kids are so different and I don't like reducing them to a set of statistics" or some such.
