very cross that my sister gets critical comments from other parents in public!

[eragon]

My 6yr old niece has Dravet syndrome, and has developmental delays and still needs the comfort of a dummy and her blanket. More often after being ill and having a severe episode of her epilepsy.

A very loud woman made a comment about the dummy, and the need to remove it at an earlier age as she did for her child.

My sister is pretty hardened to this sort of thing, but I could see she was upset.
My sister had an older daughter with the same syndrome and was treated the same and was still in a pushchair at the same age. We lost her to the condition 2 yrs ago.

So its hard to be non reactive to such big mouthed people.
am I being unreasonable to ask every parent to keep their big gobs shut and stop digs at my sisters children?!

I'd say something - very loudly - and hope that there are plenty of other people around for her to embarrass herself in front of. Perhaps call on her for advice on handling your niece's condition seeing as she is clearly an expert....

I have a friend with a large family all born close together (8 DCs).
The second oldest has some lifelong medical challenges and also SN.

She is an energetic and very hands on mum, owns a large vehicle, and took the whole lot of them to lots of places beach, museums, funfairs, you name it when they were all small, often while hugely pregnant or with a very small baby in tow as well as all the others, like steps of the stairs. She is no shrinking violet, and very capable. She was a gym teacher and personal coach before deciding to do SAHM, so well able for the physical challenge.

She got very tired of the negative remarks about the large family, but just blew them off.

The ones that got to here however, were the comments about her child with SN, the behaviour, loudness, occasional tantrum, messy eating, lack of appreciation of other people's personal space, etc, and in particular about the fact that she ended up carrying this child quite frequently.

Instead of trying to talk to people over and over, she tried just ignoring them, but some people are incredibly rude and would attempt to talk to the child very critically, assuming they could be understood. She took to carrying with her a few cards, like business cards only twice the dimension and folded over, which she would hand out to people without a word if they criticised or challenged or questioned.

They began "Thank you for your interest in my child who has X condition" and went on to list some of the symptoms of the condition in general and refer to further information (a few websites and a medical textbook).

It worked really well.

I think if people are going to be rude then they deserve the same kind of rudeness back. I'm think along the lines of "she has special needs, so will please just fuck off and mind your own business". I most certainly wouldn't be taking any crap off complete strangers

Rude people only get defensive and self righteous if someone stoops to their level. You might feel like telling them what to do with themselves, but in the end they are no further enlightened and are more likely to feel justified in what they have done, and will blame your 'attitude', 'anger problem', 'bad example', 'inability to take criticism or knowledge from authority figures [i.e. them] on board' or 'ignorance' for the 'poor behaviour' of your child.

People are ignorant. I sometimes put them right about ds1 (severely autistic), I sometimes ignore them. Usually ignore them tbh.

Mathanxiety i think you friend handled it really well. Its so sad its even necessary though.

I think no matter what people judge (even had someone make a nasty comment directly to ds when he was 18months for being in a pushchair - he is tall so looked older but still horrible). I cant imagine how horrible it would be for parents with a SN child.