How do you deal with people trying to interact with your kid

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I have had similar. My son doesn't display a lot of visible traits a lot of the time and is verbal and will chat away to people he knows but he sometimes doesn't know how to respond to greetings and is wary of strangers. If people are friendly I'm generally glad that they don't just ignore him - I always chatted away to him even when he wasn't verbal. I've never had anyone actually come out and say they think he's rude or try to push interactions though.
The worst thing is people who just think they can pick him up or ruffle his hair (until recently he had a big mop of curls). Then when he pulls a face or cries they'll say something like 'oh he doesn't like people messing up his hair does he?' and I just think 'would you like it?' but tend to just nod and smile and move away and explain to my son that people do that sometimes and they don't mean to upset him. He's 5 so not a baby. I would never go and lay my hands on a 5 year old I didn't know or pick them up - unless they were about to run into the road or something.

I would not talk to anybody (except my mom and grandmoter at that age) it only changed a little bit when I came to school. But I was not non-verbal I just chose not to speak (for quite long periods - guess I could not see the point of it).

As far as I remember my reasons for not speaking:
Early years (2½-maybe 3½-4). I did't really consider "other people" to be real humans (?) that needed answering. I totally understood everything but did not see any reason whatsoever to answer. It is a bit difficult to explain but these other people were not part of my world, they were just walking around talking, maybe a bit like robots. I would walk straight to any dog and talk with it, but not humans. Dogs were more easy to relate to than those strange creatures. I hated when they touched me and broke down crying if they tried to tickle me. I did not like other children except my cousins.

4-6 years. A bit of the same but slowly changing. I had a very very intense feeling of not wanting to talk to anybody not well known to me. I might not have been non-verbal (talking incessantly with a few select people close to me) but still not see any reason to interact with people. I also was very shy (or that is what people told me (?)).

School years: Still did not talk a lot. Did not like the other children much, I was afraid of them most of the time and I did not understand their world. Wold only talk a very little bit to my own classmates not to the ones from the other classes.

High school: New environment and new inpulses. I had learned to cope better and started speaking with other people. Still did not like other girls, did not understand their strange world. Made a few best friends among the other odd people from school.

University: Nice! lots of weird people

Now: Still do not see the reason to talk to a lot of boring people. I have learned to talk about the weather and such and is pretty good at it. But I do not seem to master the subjects in between "the weather" ---- "deep conversation"

By the way - I can pass for quite normal now and no people would ever suspect asperger. I have mastered the art of playing the act - thereby tiring myself totally

...Well , I'm sorry .