That's true, she did handle it well. :) But still she didn't eat it, and learning to handle things outwardly is different from learning to change your inward reactions to things that bother you. (Things that bother you unnecessarily, or for insignificant reasons, I should say.) That second thing is a lot harder, but it can be done, and it's similarly important, I think.

"Insensitive"... There are different types of insensitivity. There's the type where you're not addressing the problems someone is having because you don't think they're important. But hopefully that's not the type I'm displaying. I want to acknowledge the problems, but propose that it's possible to overcome them, and that it is better for the individual to overcome them. And maybe that's a type of insensitivity, but I think it's a good type. It is my opinion because I am the individual and I've seen that it's better. And it doesn't mean conforming, or meeting other people's standards necessarily, (although we do live in a social environment so society is one factor we have to consider) it just means finding the strategies that work, no matter what they happen to be.

She doesn't have to eat a burger if it's prepared in a way she doesn't like. I don't have autism, but if I got food that was prepared in a way that was unpalatable for me, I'm well within my rights to not eat it and ask for something prepared differently, especially if I'm very polite about my request and offer to pay for both meals which is exactly what happened in this story. Why is it different for her? Why should she be forced to do something a person without her disorder isn't forced to?

You would have escalated the situation by refusing to do a very acceptable request and probably upset her a good deal more than having a broken cheeseburger did. That is why your insensitivity is not good, that's why "deal with it" does not apply in this situation. She was just fine with how she handled things, you saying she should do it differently in the future for absolutely no other reason that to force her to do something she wouldn't like and something that would discomfort her in an unnecessary fashion.

I'm sorry, you've misunderstood most of what I said.

I don't think I have at all. First you claimed if she didn't learn to deal with stuff she'd be unhappy, when pointed out she had in fact dealt with it without any fuss and in her own way you said she still didn't handle it the way you would have preferred to and therefore needed to change how she handled it. Why? Why does she need to change how she reacted when her way of handling things hurt absolutely no one and had a perfectly reasonable outcome?

At no point in this story did it say anything about her falling to pieces over the cheeseburger so why are you assuming she was unable to manage it and trying to say she should change so she can be "better"?

Apologies for assuming that you had limited understanding of the condition. I still do not believe that your commentary was fair though. We do not know to what extent this little girl's autism affects her, or what sort of therapy she is going through. We do not know nearly enough about her diagnosis to form a reasonable opinion about her prognosis. Yes, she should be working with her multidisciplinary team to help teach her strategies to help her deal with the challenges she will face as a person with ASD, which she is probably already doing. She should be working with her team and her parents to make the most of the malleable neuroplasticity that will allow her to form different pathways to cope with stimuli and react appropriately. She is probably already doing this.

I suppose the exception I take to your comment is more about the unnecessary negativity and absoluteness with which you delivered your statement.

I agree that it is something that will be a work in progress, but considering that we know nothing about the intricacies of her diagnosis, she may have already made huge steps in not blowing up into a hysterical mess. She merely became sullen at the thought of her cheeseburger not being perfect. While I agree that you should never limit someone's potential, it is also important to take into consideration pathology and prognosis and be realistic about some goals. I am not suggesting that she doesn't need ongoing help in dealing with her ASD, but just that your comment seems a little out of place and unnecessarily critical of a seven-year-old child.