Parenting
The standard parenting advice doesn't apply and the standard ASD advice often doesn't either because your child isn't standard.
You got the diagnosis. Or you didn’t, and you’re sure. The meltdowns aren’t tantrums. The food refusals aren’t pickiness. The social difficulties aren’t shyness. The advice you got from neurotypical parenting books didn’t translate. The advice you got from ASD specialists worked sometimes, partially, and didn’t account for the specific child you have. You’re navigating school accommodations, sensory issues, family roles, the sibling who feels overshadowed, your own exhaustion, and the constant feeling of doing it wrong.
The therapy world is full of generic advice. Your child is specific. The match has been bad.
Some of it helped. None of it was the answer.
You very likely came to the diagnosis carrying expectations of what parenthood was going to look like, and the gap between what you imagined and what you’re navigating has been its own grief. You may have grown up with a parent who fit you into a mold and you’re determined not to do the same to your child, and the determination has sometimes left you without a framework for setting any limits at all. You may have absorbed conflicting messages from the autism community about what counts as supportive and what counts as harmful, and the conflict has paralyzed your responses in moments when your child needed a clear move from you.
ASD presents differently in every child. The advice in books targets the average child on the spectrum, who doesn’t exist. Your child has a specific combination of sensory profile, social cognition, communication style, and co-occurring issues. The advice that addresses the average has a high chance of missing your child’s actual triggers and motivators.
The strategic-therapy approach to parenting an ASD child is the same in shape as the approach to neurotypical parenting: change the parental responses that are part of the maintaining loop. The specifics differ. The principle holds.
For your own struggle in carrying this, see I’m a single parent and overwhelmed and I resent being a parent if either applies.
The advice was generic. The pattern between you and your specific child is what we work on.
Strategic therapy starts from your specific child. We map the specific triggers, the specific recovery patterns, the specific bids your child makes that you’ve been reading wrong or right, and we work on what you do at those points. Your child stays exactly who they are. The hard moments stop being locked in their current shape.
The pattern shifts. Your child stays themselves.
Write to us and we'll get back to you personally. A qualified practitioner answers every inquiry, usually within two business days.
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