omfg, this is WILD to read 14 years later.
Around the time the OP posted, I was busy giving birth to my first child, who grew up to be a sweet, lovely, awesome person who also HATED being touched and always has from when she was a tiny kiddo. She is also on the spectrum. These two things are related. (Actually, she is okay with some mild touching now, like she will now hug her grandparents when they visit once a year, but this is a fairly recent development.)
I only read the first 50 or so responses before I had to stop because the chorus of “this is a You problem” was just so off-putting to me. The parents were definitely SUPER overstepping their boundaries! If the kid doesn’t like being touched, the parents need to respect that, not be all “you have to OR ELSE.” Heck, THAT probably makes the kid more dead-set against it! My kid is okay with mild touch now because I never pushed it and let her develop at her own pace. My need for kid snuggles (which are awesome and I’m really glad my second child likes to snuggle) do not outweigh my kid’s need to have her own bodily autonomy!
I hope that this is just “we collectively as a society didn’t know what neuroatypicality and consent looked like fourteen years ago” (and I get it, I didn’t either before I had my own kid) but gosh, that did hit a nerve for me.