Parenting Neurodivergent Kids

If you are parenting a child who has neurodiverse wiring, a diagnosis of Autism, ADHD, OCD, FASD or Trauma, I invite you to sit with me for a few moments and acknowledge the impact that has on YOU. Are you exhausted, exasperated, overwhelmed, baffled, isolated or constantly feeling the need for a break from it all? It’s no wonder. Here’s why…

1. You are your child’s external brain

It’s sort of like eating for 2, but far less enjoyable. You take on the moment to moment task breakdowns, planning ahead, mitigating intense emotions, helping with transitions, and the follow up check-listing to make sure everything’s been done as needed. It’s being present for the hand holding through things we probably expected our kids could handle at this stage of development. And so, you are doing all of this for 2 human beings.

I described this to someone who has several neurodiverse children, as their parent role being like an unpaid CEO of a company where the employees require you to be in the office 24/7 to keep them on track. You create novel motivational goals and rewards that work for about 3 days before needing to come up with new ones. The clock you punch in on never seems to have a punch out option.

2. It never feels like you’re doing enough to support them.

You can be doing all the right things, every hour of every day of every year, and it will still not feel like enough to meet their needs. I think we often fall into the parenting pit of believe that if we use the right approach, locate the right expert, follow the right guide, have more patience, work on our triggers, or get extra help, that the struggles will magically vanish and it will feel “normal” or “easy”. These are tools we can use to better understand and connect with our kids, to help them move through incredible intense experiences or struggles, but they don’t “fix” what we often see as the problem. No matter how badly we want to think we can protect our kids from harsh social exchanges, prevent meltdowns and dysregulation, and preemptively create a smooth path for every next step they take in the world, we can’t. Yes, we can do things that will take the edges off, help prepare them for managing the hard things, and teach them they are beautiful, loveable and valuable beings for exactly who they are, but we can’t control their every experience. So take a moment and breathe that in. Realize what this means for your role in your child’s life. Who will you be for them and what unrealistic expectations of yourself will you drop?

3. The role doesn’t feel like it’ll ever end.

Part of your parenting journey will likely be or have been the internal reckoning of what you expected from your child’s development vs. how it is unfolding in real time. You might be grieving, feel disappointment, frustration, overwhelm, or fear for your child’s future. All are normal processes for parents of neurodivergent kids. We are growing alongside them, realizing we are needed in ways we hadn’t anticipated for longer than we had planned. With that comes a sense of loss or feeling trapped or restricted. And no one wants to put that on their child – but in containing that burden, we can get stuck. Working through these feelings at various stages of our family’s development is so important for adjusting and moving forward in healthy ways.

The day to day, relentless nature of being our kids’ external brain contributes to this feeling of no progress. How depleting is it to pour into something so intentionally and wholly, to not see progress at the pace you expected, if at all? Slow growth can be invisible to us, and we can quickly become discouraged at not seeing the rewards of our hard and loving labour. Common for parenting neurodiverse kids is the experience of “they’ve got it!” one day and then “it disappeared” the next. Skills don’t always appear to stick, capacity changes on the daily, and we might struggle not to compare them to the more steady growth we see happen in their peers. As a parent who has been there and as a therapist who has supported countless parents who have felt this way – there IS growth happening and you WILL see results from all the support you’re providing them.

4. We can slip into isolation easily.

It doesn’t take much for humans to pull away from people who don’t understand them, making parents of neurodivergent kids a perfect group of people to find themselves isolated and feeling alone, not to mention misunderstood and judged. Parents who have not walked in your shoes will be quick to offer simple, black and white suggestions about techniques, discipline, and relationship strategies. They’ll often miss the opportunity to understand how incredibly attuned you are to your child’s needs and how much your life has shaped around meeting those needs. The ongoing challenges your kids visibly demonstrate on the playground, in the classroom or at the pool, can be perceived by others as a lack of something YOU are doing, which couldn’t be further from the truth – they just don’t understand.

Isolation can also occur when others pull away due to their own overwhelm. Relatives might not support you the way you had hoped, friends might no longer invite your family over to gatherings, and schools might send your child home because they couldn’t figure out why your child wasn’t responding to their boundaries and rules. Both of these tracks of isolation might be happening for you, so if you have found yourself in a lonely place, it’s no surprise.