What if you're an Autistic Parent...

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i am going with the opposite and say that I think everyone should we aware of his/her strengths and weaknesses when parenting (or anything else, really) because whether NT or AS/AU it is pretty helpful to know when you need a workaround and when you don't.

Sometimes I think it is helpful to everyone to be able to figure out that something is not in his/her wheelhouse and figure out a different way.

There is thread above (in the stickies) on being a parent with ASD. I know it doesn't get much activity, but that is because most of the issues ASD parents face end up being the same issues all parents face and, thus, get posted in the main body of the forum. There are some uniquely ASD issues, however, and I think there were discussed pretty deeply in that thread when it first opened. I think the thread slowed down simply because once the big concerns were hashed out, there wasn't much left.

Noise and sensory issues are definitely a big one, as are rigidity, executive function, and interaction with school communities.

Personally, I think that any parent who is diagnosed or is able to look at themselves an see that they too are on the spectrum can find both joy and peace and more than anything, a spectacular bonding with their AS child. Reading in these forums and figuring out what makes YOU tick, what upsets YOU, what sensory issues YOU have, what allergies, etc. you have can greatly help you to understand your child better. When my son was diagnosed, I was worn out trying to do things as "the doctor said I should or some other person". Once I realized that without a doubt, I was probably on the spectrum (not to be taken lightly, over 10 years researching this...), I began to figure out what made me tick, stressed, angry, etc. and had MUCH MORE compassion for my son when it happened to him as well. I have been able to work with my issues and therefore, address his issues. I have to say that 90% of the time, our family, especially my son and I are very peaceful and have an amazing home life and relationship. It is when I go to the outside world, those who expect my son to act like theirs, that I begin to get stressed and so does my son. Good luck to you!

Autistic SAHM of Four Kids weighing in!! Here's our cast:

BeeBee: 37-year-old ASD Level 1 SAHM to four kids, self-diagnosed 1998, formally diagnosed 2011, with a whole raft of contested comorbids

Daddy: 35-year-old survivor of childhood verbal and emotional abuse. Self-diagnosed ADHD. Overworked engineer.

K: 14-year-old daughter, test-baby, and model child.

The Boy: 8-year-old Dxd ADHD son with heart of gold.

Al: 6-year-old suspected ADHD, suspected gifted daughter with extremely strong will and short temper who thankfully no longer appears to meet the diagnostic criteria for ODD.

Ab: The completely, utterly, and totally unplanned 3-year-old baby of the bunch. Noted some delay in expressive verbal language development. Still watching for ASD, too young to have a "suspected diagnosis" yet.

Ah, goodness... I remember when I was the 24- or 25-year-old autistic parent of a 19-month-old... We were both undergrads ("home work" is a lot like "work from home"), him in engineering and me in liberal arts... Oh, and we didn't know he had ADHD... Oh, dear, yes. I worried all the time, flipped out over everything anyone said, cried myself to sleep. I sounded a lot like you...

If I could rewind, I wouldn't do very much different. I have a really short list of things I would change:

1) Wouldn't have bothered finishing that BA in English. It wasn't worth the time I spent feeling bad about myself and missing my baby girl. I would have spent the time teaching myself to write/blog for money instead.

2) If I were doing it now, in the Age of WiFi, instead of in the Dark Ages of Dial-Up (2003), I'd have bought myself a tablet/notebook computer and done it at the playground.

3) Speaking of the playground: More time at the park, less time cowering in the house being afraid of Mommy Judgment. All that time was wasted time.

4) I'd have worried about imposing less, and taken K to visit family more. We saw my dad and stepmom pretty often (at least once a week, often 3x a week), but I wish now that it had been more, and that we'd spent more time with other relatives too.

5) Isolate less, playgroup more. I did one really good thing: I refused to give up my friends and my adultolescent life. I just took K along. College party?? We put up baby gates, got drunk, and danced to loud music with a toddler. D&D night?? We put on some Blue's Clues, rolled our dice in a shoebox with one end cut off so they wouldn't fall where she could choke on them, and passed her around the living room. Everyone was going to the Renaissance Faire?? We loaded up the sling and the stroller, and away we went. I remember chewing up a turkey leg and spitting it into a Styrofoam cup to feed her the summer she was too old for formula and too young for a turkey leg. I felt horrible about it at the time. Fast-forward 10+ years-- not only did she not die and not suffer, but she's more mature, more independent, cooler with her parents, more self-assured, and better rounded than most of her peers. She's turning out better than her middle siblings, who "benefitted" from more conventional parenting.

6) Less flash cards, more flowers. Seriously.

7) Less time worrying about "doing parenting right," more time spent doing stuff with my kid. By the time I decided to stop worrying about scarring her, or offending someone, or otherwise doing it wrong, she was almost four years old and school was right around the corner.

. With the middle two, I would have spent FAR LESS effort trying to make them into the kids people told me they would be if I were a "good mother," and more time loving, enjoying, and working with the kid in front of me. This has been, to date, my single most horribly destructive and regrettable mistake as a mother. It was horrific. The consequences were really, really, really bad, and I will probably die apologizing for having done it. And we all survived, and got over it, and got on with life, and no truly irreparable damage was done even though I will spend the rest of The Boy's childhood reassuring him that it's OK to make mistakes and that PsychoMommy is never coming back and explaining what I thought and did wrong and what I should have thought and done instead.

Other than the anxiety, all the "autistic s**t" that I did that people told me was terrible or that I worried constantly about turned out, in the long run, to be stuff I actually did RIGHT that I have had to go back and re-train myself to do with the other 3 after "successfully" teaching myself to be an "NT-analogous" mother to the middle two.

On that subject: I don't know if it's a matter or personality or of Ab (the baby of my bunch) not having ADHD (my son is Dx'd and I suspect my middle daughter has it as well, but may evade diagnosis by virtue of being female, being brilliant, and being red-shirted), but she came along about a year before I decided to go back to "autistic mothering" (ie, does not remember having an "NT-analog mother"). She is much less destructive, much less defiant, much more emotionally stable, much more independent, and generally of a much less trying disposition than the middle two who I tried so hard to parent "normally." I had to DRAG development out of the middle two. With Ab, as with K, it just seems to flow, and all I have to do is guide it and feed it and enjoy the ride.

I'm sure there are exceptions, and you have to make efforts toward things like flexibility from the get-go and Theory of Mind as they get old enough to KNOW their own mind and THINK, but I have come to the conclusion that the children of autistic parents generally come wired to thrive best when parented in a somewhat autistic fashion.

Other than for the purposes of suggestion and rough developmental benchmarks, throw the parenting books out the window. Other than an old one entitled "Kids: Day In and Day Out" and a humor book entitled "Sh*tty Mom: A Parenting Resource for the Rest of Us," it is my considered opinion that parenting books are not for us (unless your kid turns out to be on the spectrum too, which is an entirely different thread).

If you MUST have a parenting guide, T. Berry Brazelton was about the best of the worst for me. Following his advice almost to the letter when Al (middle daughter, now 6) was a toddler/preschooler and I'd forgotten how to mother due to severe and compounded depression was better than nothing, but it also resulted in an extremely strong-willed and hyperactive pint-sized dictator running my house. I had to resort to some extreme tactics of my own (like tying the bedroom door shut while she spent 90 minutes throwing toys and screaming "I HATE YOU!! !") to take back authority from attachment parenting run amok. She had next to no possessions for a large part of the latter half of 4 and the early half of 5. She's much more human now. I got a GLOWING note from her kindergarten teacher about her behavior this week. I gather the kid s**ts rainbows at school. At 4 going on 5, she drove the extremely well-seasoned preschool teacher (in a class of 10, with an assistant) to the brink of tears.

Resources for ASD parents-- LMAO!! There aren't many, and the resources that are out there seem to be mostly aimed in the direction of teaching us to parent like a neurotypical, which is infernally stupid. Obviously there are things you don't do (muzzle the kid to cut down on noise, get so wrapped up in the object of your obsession that you forget to feed the kid, et cetera), but trying to teach autistics to parent like NT's is something that is done for the self-aggrandizing comfort of the NT's giving the advice, not the health, sanity, or well-being of the ASD parent or their kid.

Too much of the therapeutic community still labors under the delusion that we seldom reproduce and/or can't become good parents. Feh.

Complete and total crock of s**t. OBVIOUSLY we reproduce; you don't get 1:whatever number the CDC is using now entirely (or even mostly) from de novo mutation. Human beings don't reproduce at a speed or volume to allow de novo mutations to proliferate like that.

There are de novo mutations and birth injuries and brain injuries that either cause autism or mimic it so closely that you might as well call it autism, but by and large, it's caused by people with autistic traits (often to a clinically significant extent) reproducing.

As far as competency goes-- WOW. It's a highly subjective job that will vary even from child to child within a nuclear family (never mind with different parents, kids, cultures, standards, situations, ad infinitum). There are some basics:

1) Feed them, clean them, and keep them safe from death, dismemberment, and catastrophic injury.

2) Don't beat them, shake them, strangle them, intentionally burn them, et cetera.

3) Don't completely neglect their education.

4) DO NOT confuse #3 with demanding that they be A students with a long roster of extracurricular activities and community service and perfect marks in deportment whom everyone in the neighborhood/school/church/club simply adores. In other words, never demand perfection (and try not to lust after it, either).

5) Don't actively and deliberately train them in self-hate.

6) Do not intentionally try to turn them into little carbon-copies of you, the other parent, siblings, or others.

7) Provide them with SOME KIND of affection/approval on a daily basis. Even on the days when they've made you so damn mad that all you can manage is to sigh, "I love you even though I'm really, really mad."

Provide them with SOME KIND of boundaries.

9) Don't expect #1-8 to come without some serious struggles and screw-ups. Be willing to listen to your kid, and acknowledge and apologize when you screw up. YOU ARE GOING TO SCREW UP. I AM GOING TO SCREW UP. YOUR PARENTS SCREWED UP, THEIR PARENTS SCREWED UP, AND THAT LADY IN THE PARK WITH THE PERFECT HAIR AND PERFECT CLOTHES AND BEHAVIOR STRAIGHT OUT OF A PARENTING VIDEO SCREWS UP. SHOULD THEY CHOOSE TO BECOME PARENTS, YOUR KIDS ARE GOING TO SCREW IT UP.

Imagine reading a Help Wanted ad in the paper: "Applicant must be able to be on call 24/7, instantly available, always happy, and able to meet all the client's needs and whims without any input from the client. Job requirements change constantly; applicant must adapt instantaneously. Applicant must be able to do this every day for eighteen years straight without fail."

SERIOUSLY?!?!?! NO. EFFING. WAY.

Compare that to: "Applicant must have open availability and respond to calls within a few minutes. Applicant may show up with a puss on and duties can be modified, but applicant must be willing to work regardless of physical or mental state. Guesswork and adaptation required; solution by trial-and-error expected. Mistakes must be acknowledged and generally corrected, but forgiveness is part of the job."

Screaming: Noise-cancelling headphones are legit. Ear plugs are legit. Music through headphones is legit, as long as you can still hear SOMETHING and you're not in a dangerous area. Baby-proofing a room and putting her in there with the door shut (as long as you know she's not hungry, sick, or dirty and you CHECK every 15 or 20 minutes or so) until either she stops screaming or you lose the desire to rip your eardrums out with a salad fork is legit.

Toddler meltdowns: See comment about a baby-proof room with a shut door (or a car seat, in a car, with the windows rolled down and you leaning against the trunk, as long as it's not horribly hot outside and you DO NOT LEAVE). Toddler meltdowns happen. Your job is not to prevent, pacify, or stop them. Your job is to make sure they're not happening because the kid is sick, hungry, thirsty, dirty, or in pain-- and then ENDURE. Prevention and pacification turn into spoiling and ass-kissery really, really fast. A friend of mine did that with her ADHD son-- all the trouble you prevent up front comes back to bite you with compound interest about the time they hit school age. Stopping them turns into either ass-kissery or abuse.

K had this really nasty habit, at about 2, of laying down in the middle of the aisle and kicking, screaming, and sobbing when she was fed up with the grocery store (or didn't get something she wanted). I tried everything. I eventually hit on the tactic of taking along a book. When she threw a meltdown, I hauled her out of the way of traffic, sat down beside her, and read my book until she got bored and got back up. I got a few dirty looks and a lot of people wanting to know how I managed to stay that calm in the face of a screaming toddler. Caveat: It only worked because K was a kicker and screamer, not a runner. Not sure how I would have handled a runner. Probably by parking the cart and manhandling them out to the car.

Work-at-home parents: Either remove the child while the parent is working, or find a workspace for the parent that puts a door between the parent and the child. LOCK OR OTHERWISE OBSTRUCT THE DOOR. The child will protest. Loudly, vociferously, and persistently. Invest in music/earplugs. The work-at-home parent MUST learn to put aside any guilt they feel about not indulging the child's whims for attention/play during work time. Boundaries (including boundaries that the kid does not want) are a necessary part of parenting. Failure to set them is highly contraindicated, both of maintenance of parental sanity and for teaching the child to function healthily in the world. If attention/play are provided at other times, the child will adjust. Eventually.

I realize that's a novella of a post.

And maybe some day I'll regret taking such a flip, make-it-up-as-you-go-along, basically unanxious approach to doing the most important job anyone can ever have. Maybe it's stupid and sinful to take such a devil-may-care attitude toward the care, sustenance, and shaping of another human life. I wonder about that some times.

But when I look at it that way, my house runs and my family is more or less content and s**t does not break down nearly so often as when I think constantly about "right enough," "good enough," "normal enough," "appropriate enough," and the rest of it.