I have 3 girls, all in their 20's now. #1 was an easy baby and easy kid, up until she hit puberty. Things changed big time with that, and she's been quite the pill since then. She was frequently nasty to her sisters from then on, and a rude pain in the patoot to us. She's successful in her work world, has nice friends who think the world of her. We hardly ever see her, by her choice.
#2 was quite different from #1 from the moment she was born. Not a difficult baby, but a big change, so I had to catch up and learn how she was different. Sneaky and devious from day one, in that she never regarded a 'no' has a reason to not do something, or that it would be unwise or dangerous, just that she should keep soldiering on with her goal and NOT LET ME KNOW about it... Puberty wasn't the ugly thing with her it had been with #1. We were talking one time when she was in high school (so 16 -18 years old) and she quite calmly told me that she KNEW how to behave, she KNEW what would make us happy and keep her out of trouble, and sometimes, she was just too angry to care, and would do what she pleased, knowing full well she'd eat dirt because of it. She ran away the week after high school was over, came back 18 months later (older, sadder and wiser). She's floundering a little at the moment, and I suspect depression may be a factor. We talk occasionally, and I'd like to see more of her, but there are no hard feelings keeping her away, just lack of gas money.
#3 was yet again entirely different from her sisters. EAsy baby. Easy kid. EAsy young lady now. No big challenges at puberty. Has her life on track right now, and is progressing up the work train to be self supporting in a field that interests her. She claims she avoided a lot of the troubles her sisters had because 'she's not stupid; she SAW what they did and how much trouble they got in, and didn't want that to happen to her'. Not sneaky and devious like #2. Not the Golden Child either, she flubbed plenty, but she did manage to avoid making the same mistakes that got her sisters in trouble. Our relat!onship with her is easier than it is with the other 2. Mostly, it's because she's an easier going person than the other 2.
I say all this to help illustrate how different my children are, how hard it was for me to learn how different they all were and how differently I had to respond to them to get the results I wanted. I don't think I was any better a parent for #3 than I was for #1, truth be told. I have a world of sympathy and empathy for parents dealing with autistic kids - I know the hard times I had with MY kids, and they're neurotypical. The challenges parents of autistic kids (or any other non neurotypical kid) face are in an entirely different league. I think some of the issues we see of parenting out and about are due to poor planning and scheduling from the parent - i.e. if you take your kid shopping at nap time, it's going to get ugly! Plan better next time! A lot of older people were raised, or did their own raising, during more authoritarian times - and while public manners may have been better much of the time, not everybody raised that way came out well or whole. Public manners, while important and helpful, are not all there is to life.