I have a 13 year old autistic DS who is significantly language delayed and has a Learning Disability, although he can talk. I feel that my whole family has constantly criticised my parenting over the years, I'm either too soft or too hard or I 'just need to tell him'. Parenting DS has been very difficult and I'm sure I have got it wrong many times but I have been left feeling like a really shit mum.
DS has this thing where if he hears or reads a rude word or phrase he doesn't understand the meaning of (he is very innocent) if we try to tell him not to say it, it becomes this really big thing and he ends up saying it lots. Most of the time he discovers a new rude word (because he has spent time in PRUs etc) the best thing (we've found out from trial and error) is just to ignore, however we are not always composed enough to do this.
Anyway, a few days ago we were in a really public place and DS was innocently singing some song about 'Julie' something and then started to break it down and echolalia shout random fragments of the song. This culminated in him shouting 'Ju!' (sounded like 'Jew') sort of at random people. I was obviously mortified and tried to explain we couldn't 'break the song down' like that, I told him I knew he didn't understand but that people would get upset. This did not work particularly well. Yesterday I visited my Mum and Stepdad. DS repeatedly laughed in my face and said 'I want to break Julie down' and shouted 'Ju' right at me. I tried to stay calm and explain several times. After lots of him laughing in my face and shouting 'Ju' I raised my voice (but did not shout) and said 'this needs to stop, go and sit in the other room until you can stop laughing and we can move on'.
Now apparently my Stepdad and mum feel I dealt with it all wrong, I should have just let him shout 'Ju' and that it's not that bad. They may well be right, but they appear to have an opinion on everything I do with DS and it's really getting me so down. They also don't have to deal with the social consequences of stuff like this. I already feel like a failure all the time anyway.
Don't even know what my AIBU is tbh.