This jumped out at me: "I’m excited that she has opened herself to the possibility of emotional intimacy with someone outside the family." Does her daughter not have friends? appear to resist making friends? I'm wondering if in fact LW's kids aren't all that neurotypical, and the worry is that her daughter is making friends with a kid who has a LABEL and that is TERRIBAD because people will think she too might need a LABEL, and that would mean she isn't SMART and of course she's SMART. (And I might be going overboard as regards the LW, but I have definitely met people who think this way.)

Or maybe she just thinks regular friendships don't count as what she means by "emotional intimacy," but in that case the contrast with "outside the family" is kind of oogy.