7 things I’d do differently as a mom of neurodivergent kids
I’ve been parenting for nearly thirteen years now. Please, hold the applause. Jokes aside, over a decade of kid-wrangling has left me with more than a few moments where I desperately wished for a Ctrl+Z shortcut for real life. One of the most heartfelt moments I remember was when the psychologist, having just spent 3 half days assessing and eventually diagnosing my first child with ADHD, said “If this feels really, really hard, you’re not crazy. You’re parenting on a different level to most parents”. I burst out crying. A rare occurrence for me as you’ll discover in point 6 of this article. But she was right. Parenting children is hard. Parenting children with neurodiversity is like being a pioneer in a land where the laws of physics keep changing—you’re constantly inventing new ways to gravity-proof your life while everyone else only seems to be worried about the weather. If you’re on this journey too, just know that you’re a freakin rockstar. I’m far enough down the parenting road now to look back and see the 'if onlys'—those moments I would have handled so differently if I’d possessed even a fraction of the perspective I have today.
Screens
This goes for all of us in the family. I have to include myself and my husband in this one because it's not an understatement to say I’m wholly fused to my phone. It’s my 5th limb. I genuinely don’t know how I would do life without it. I day dream about the days when we all had a Nokia 5110 (RIP), and how peaceful it’d be to go back. But a huge regret of mine is introducing small screens to my kids too early. At the time I thought ‘well it's the same as watching Peppa Pig on TV, just smaller’. But no, it’s not. I never watched TV in the car as a kid. I never watched TV in the bathroom while I potty trained. I never watched TV while my mum grocery shopped. It's only been ‘normal’ for about 0.75 generations. As the research continues to roll in about how detrimental screens are for little developing brains, I’m kicking myself for allowing my kids to be guinea pigs for tech corporations. Screens are a fantastic ‘cope’ tool. A ‘cope’ for boredom, anxiety, fear, sadness, noisy kids, whatever you need sweet relief from in that moment. Of course there will be those who say small screens are beneficial for their kids. Lessening pressure when interacting with peers for instance. And to that, all I can say is each child’s neurodiversity is different. I’m only speaking on behalf of one family’s particular set (ADHD, level 1 ASD and social anxiety). As a child I was incredibly shy. But I was part of a very large family. I’m talking 60 to 100 people when everyone got together. I know that if I’d been given the chance to not interact with aunts, uncles and cousins, I would’ve taken it. If my parents had handed me an iPad at the start of a family function, you would’ve found me tucked away in a dark corner engrossed in a glowing screen. I would have missed a lot of practice interacting with others. Interacting is messy. You have to listen and understand, interpret meaning, body language, different vocal tones etc. When you compare that to a nice predictable screen that asks nothing of you in return, it’s a no brainer. It might sound harsh to us today, but I think the fact that my parents didn’t avoid social situations, despite my protests, is why I’m so able to talk to anyone as an adult. I needed that for my development. I wasn’t able to avoid the uncomfortable interactions so I learn’t how to swim through them. I’m hoping it’ll work that way for my kids too. And if not, at least they’ll have plenty of ‘My parents capped my screen time’ material for their therapist.
anxiety parenting
If someone had given my eldest son a dollar for every time he heard the words ‘careful sweetie’ before the age of 5, he could buy his own house, with room for a pony. Funny story though, I wouldn’t have described myself as an ‘anxious parent’ at the time. Just a mom of an accident prone little boy who seemingly had zero sense of self preservation. At least I think he was accident prone. I didn’t let situations get that far so we’ll never really know. What I do recall is my friends' toddlers running towards the play equipment, while my child did a full 180° and sprinted towards the road. Me in full pursuit behind him. All that running I did in my 20s paid off. When you have a neurodiverse child, it’s really easy to blur the line between good parenting and smothering. I could go back, knowing what I know now, I would zip it. Unless he was in actual danger obviously. I became so used to saying “careful”, it’d slip out even when there was no real danger. He picks up something heavy, “careful sweetie”. While covered in padding learning to ride his balance bike, “careful sweetie”. Playing with our geriatric cat, “careful sweetie”. It morphed into a performative habit I wasn’t even aware of, but he was. It shouldn't have surprised me when at 8 years old, I had a super anxious kid on my hands. I’d so stifled this poor child’s opportunity to make mistakes and learn the hard way his way that I’d managed to totally erode his confidence in taking any risks at all, and created my very own velcro child. Six months of intensive (and expensive) parent training later, I realized I wasn’t protecting him, I was appeasing my own anxiety. It took a while to dismantle but we did turn it around. It’s been a different story for his younger brother. At a park playdate recently, little brother came running back to the parents with a trail of boys behind him and a mouth full of blood. He’d face planted on the first hill of the pump track and his tooth had gone into the back of his lower lip producing a gnarly looking cut. Feeling the make or break moment that had just dropped in my lap, with an audience watching, I took a beat. I knew that if I made a big deal about this, he’d freak out. My worry was that he’d reject the bike completely. I gave him a hug, assessed the damage, made sure no adult teeth were loose and said "Doesn't look too bad, I’ll just get you a tissue”. I showed him how to press the wet tissue against his lip until the bleeding stopped. My friends, also parents of neurodivergent kids (we tend to move together in tribes) were looking at me. Each displaying her own version of the grimacing face emoji. They knew exactly what I was trying to do and the tightrope I was walking. On the inside, my heart was pounding with thoughts of the ‘what ifs’ that hadn’t happened, outwardly I was trying to show my child the casual concern of a well adjusted parent, hoping it wasn’t coming across as uncaring to my child. I knew he was watching me, trying to gauge how bad the situation really was. He refused to get back on his bike and wanted to go home, but I wasn’t leaving that park til he’d willingly gotten back on his bike. After about 30 minutes of complaining, I finally said “Look, falling and hurting yourself is a normal part of being a kid. You can either let this moment beat you or not. Your choice”. After another 15 minutes, he got back on the bike. I didn’t say a word. [Hold for applause]. Parent training just paid for itself.
Only offering food they want
There’s a misconception that the kids of dietitians eat well all the time. Aaaah, no. Our kids go through all the same selective eating issues other kids do. They love ultra processed foods as much as the next kid. I’ll admit that before kids, I was the person who thought ‘Picky eating? Pfft, not on my watch!’ Fully confident that what, where and when my kids ate would always be in my control. You make plans and the universe laughs right? I still remember the exact day my 3 year old came home from pre-school vowing he would ‘never eat vegetables again!’. The reason for this unwelcome announcement was a learning unit they’d started that was teaching themall about the importance of fruits and vegetables. They identified which foods are vegetables in class, many of which Mstr 3.5 ate on the daily without question. They were just ‘food’ in our house. I had purposefully not put foods into categories for just this reason, I knew my child well enough to know what he would do with the information. Then his school had to go and tell him that mom, dad and society at large really wanted him to eat those foods. All it did was give my neurodivergent preschooler ammunition to power his resistance. I. WAS. LIVID. I could hardly march up to the school and read them the riot act for educating my child. They were right after all, vegetables are important. But I didn’t want my kid to know that! Either way, my headstrong little boy had found his hill to die on-and he wasn’t budging. I’d been well versed in the teachings of Ellen Satter. If you’ve ever heard the phrase ‘Parents are responsible for what, when, and where their children eat. Kids decide how much—and even whether—they eat’, that’s her. This philosophy proved completely useless now. Clearly Ellen Satter encountered children with weaker resolves than my little guy had. I’m sure you already see where this is going. He made it abundantly clear that he’d rather starve than eat anything that had so much as touched a vegetable. Cue low blood sugar meltdowns. You know what happens when you present previously rejected food to a hungry, strong willed, neurodiverse child? You’re cleaning spaghetti bolognese off the walls. And you still have a hangry preschooler on your hands feeling more righteous than ever. Part of ADHD and ASD can be a reduced ability to interpret inside feelings, like hunger. OTs will refer to it as poor interoception. All the child knows is that they feel terrible, but can’t link the inside feeling to what will cure it externally i.e. the food mom just gave you. So began my era of ‘leprechaun smoothies’ and pureed pasta sauce. My kids still ate veggies, they just didn’t KNOW they ate veggies. Over time the extra effort required to hide veggies became too time consuming. More and more convenience foods entered their diets, simply because I knew they would eat them. Less resistance made my life easier. They also saw me eating pretty poorly. Their main role model was grabbing food where I could because I hadn’t prepared my own food ahead of time. I know better than to think there’s any actual nutrition in a ‘Veggie Chip’, but sleep deprivation, a pandemic, my ‘fed is best’ inner monologue and my own neurodiversity loosening the wheels, it became easier and easier to believe there's more nutrition in a plate of chicken nuggies and buttered pasta than there actually is. I had to start reintroducing foods the way I would with any client. Low and slow, no pressure, be ok with throwing uneaten food away. Surprisingly, part of our recovery included…
not being afraid to eat in restaurants
I know, I know. This is a hard one for folks whose children can be unpredictable. Trust me, I hear you. The thought of battling just to get everyone out of the house fully dressed, driving to a venue, finding parking, getting seated, going through the menu only for someone to announce ‘there’s nothing they can eat here’ like you’ve offered them a selection of concrete dust to choose from. It’s enough to make you put your slippers back on and order a pizza. And obviously, this is a case by case situation. Our family had stopped eating out because our kids were overly rowdy. And a tad destructive. We’d get seated and they’d sit quietly for a few seconds (my guess is they used the time to choose their first target). Then it was on, someone would be under the table while the other opened a sugar packet and sprinkled it all over the table while the other, now out from under the table, would ‘accidentally’ knocked over his drink while trying to make the squeaky sound with the straw and lid. People always stop to look at a car crash and, despite their better selves, they judge. Whether they were actually judging our parenting, feeling sympathy or I was projecting my own feelings onto them is anyone’s guess. Hands full of soggy napkin, I felt the shame and hopelessness either way. It feels like you’re not welcome in many places. But sharing a meal together as a family outside your house is a part of life, and I knew it was a skill my kids had to learn. Around the time we had an 8 and 6 year old, we felt it was time to try again. We had a game plan. If they didn’t immediately see the thing they wanted on the menu (always a burger and fries) we got something that was as close to that as possible. Even if they just ate the fries, at least we were out having a family meal together. If they behaved inappropriately on purpose, we took them outside for a cool down. The one thing we didn’t do was change our plans. What ended up happening was a surprise. Not only did our shy, anxious kids start ordering their own food, they started wanting the food off our plates. We ordered salads or some kind of fish and veg, something they’d never ask for at home, but in that different environment they’d want to try it. You know how kids always want what you have? That goes for the food off your plate too. And being in a restaurant is similar to being on holiday. It’s already different so what’s a little more difference? They started to broaden the variety of foods they were willing to eat and discovered some ‘no’ foods weren’t as bad as they thought. It also gave me ideas to try replicating at home. Restaurant food is made purely for taste so you want to come back for more. It’s a great way to introduce new foods. This is one of those scenarios where I have zero issues with screens. Sitting and waiting for food is hard for kids. Because of this we tend to opt for quick service places when our kids are little. If the choice is between McDonald’s drive through (again) or a place you actually want to eat, load up the iPads and ignore the looks. Just have an agreement that screens are put away when the food arrives. It may not be what our parents did, but I think the boomers at the next table would have done the exact same thing if they’d been given the chance.
listen without offering advice
This is such a hard one for me. I have ADHD so communicating information I feel passionate about is one of my greatest pleasures. Bonus if it ends up actually helping someone. It’s kinda the reason this gig attracted me in the first place. But I missed the memo that said ‘zip it’ when it comes to giving your kids advice. Most of the time, kids just want to vent. I didn’t know I was just meant to validate their feelings, ask if they wanted a hug and not get further involved unless they asked. When it finally dawned on me that the reason my child's issue was getting worse rather than better because I was offering advice, it was a hard pill to swallow. I gave birth to this child. I cared for him every second of his life. I know him better than anyone else on the planet. But I was also the one who told him what to do and how to do it, disciplined him, chose what he ate, what he wore, who his playdates were etc. It made sense, when I really thought about it, that I’d be the last person he’d want advice from. My second born is supremely private with his feelings. He has big rumbly feelings and hates being told what to do. Knowing him as well as I did, I could see the big feelings bubbling just under the surface and instinctively, I’d try to get ahead of them before the crash. I’d prod and poke relentlessly for information until he spilled his guts about what was bothering him. But it didn’t help. He’d just be angry that I’d prodded into his personal feelings and the problem wasn’t solved anyway. Like when you're procrastinating on a task so someone does it for you but does it wrong? You get angry because you never asked for their help in the first place. I’m not talking about situations where a parent or guardian absolutely should to step in, like bullying. These were more ‘little kid, little problem’ type of things. I thought I was helping by showing different perspectives but all he heard was me telling him what I thought he should do. Which also meant to him that I thought the way he would solve it was the ‘wrong way’. Again, this was my own anxieties trying to fix and control things that weren’t mine in the first place. And when he was old enough I had to swallow my pride and tell him all of this so he could understand that when it seemed like I was telling him how to solve something, I was actually just scared of big emotions. Now that he’s older he gets it, but for a few years there, phew, I couldn’t look at the child without him immediately getting on the defensive. No good deed goes unpunished! I’ve given both boys permission to say “ok, stop” if I start to lecture them and the deal is I have to ‘zip it’. Albeit begrudgingly.
showing my real emotions
In September of 2019, our family adopted a mature age cat from our local shelter. Her name was Thea, ‘goddess’ in Greek, and she embodied her name. She ruled our house with an iron paw. All through lock down she absorbed our anxieties. One cuddle from her and your problems melted away. But like any good thing, there had to be an end, and Thea’s came in the summer of 2024. It wasn’t super long and drawn out, but I had been managing her health issues for a while and I was prepared. Kinda. I was dreading telling the kids but in the end, she told them herself. They could see it. I know end of life is a part of life we all have to deal with at some point, but that time was now for us. I felt the best thing I could do was hold it together and be a pillar of strength for the kids. When the time came they were devastated and I felt so proud of them for being unashamed to openly express their sadness. Something I could never do as a child. About a year after Thea’s passing my eldest said something during a heated discussion that floored me. I can’t even remember what we were talking about but my mind totally blanked after he said "You didn’t even cry when Thea died!”. It stopped me dead in my tracks. Hang on, I was the one who stayed with her as she was put to sleep. I nursed her health issues for the whole year before she died. I arranged her cremation, her handmade ceramic urn, her clay paw print, the miniature Christmas decoration with her photo on our tree that year. All of these things to preserve her memory. But what he remembers is I didn’t cry? In order to not lose my ish entirely, I took myself off to my bedroom for a time out and regroup. I’ll be honest, clarity didn’t come in the moment. I can be slow to dawn on things, need a lot of thinking time. Of course I cried when Thea died, I just did it in the privacy of my room, to my husband, when the kids were safely asleep in bed. Ah, light bulb. They didn’t see any of that. His admission was a real eye opener. The kids had wanted to see me have the same emotions they were having. To share the experience with them and make the feelings they were having valid. If I’m honest, that’s the very thing I’d been trying to avoid. As a child it made me feel uneasy to see adults crying. I thought the best thing I could do for them was to show a strong front at all times. But that made their own emotions seem over the top. Why am I so upset when mom doesn’t seem sad at all? I was pretty happy my son had identified my behavior as the unusual one. It’s a moment I won’t ever forget and I’m going to try really hard not to repeat. Maybe I should purchase some ‘My Feelings’ cards.
take on less external advice
I have a toxic habit. Actually, I have a few, but one of them is definately looking for short cuts. Usually via anecdotes. I kind of feel that anything I’m going through, someone at sometime has already been through and probably wrote about it. So, in theory, the solution to my problem already exists somewhere, if I could just find the exact lecture or podcast or book or interview or Ted Talk or research paper or opinion piece, I could benefit from their mistakes and piggy back their solution. That all backfired in a big way when it started to dawn on me that our eldest was ‘different’. Granted, I was living in a foreign country, raising 2 under 4, on my own with them all day (aka the part of the day the kids are actually awake for). I’m not kidding when I say a new challenge presented itself about every 20 minutes. When I hit a roadblock, there was no friend to ask for advice or grandparent in the next suburb who’d seen it all before. Instead, I put my deductive skills to use and started to research. Ferociously. I was going to figure this out if it was the last thing I did. I’d listen to every podcast and read every book I could on early childhood behavior. My husband’s head would be swimming each evening with the new information I’d learned that day, contradicting what I’d learned the day before. Being a newbie in the realm of parenting, the advice I got from any source more educated than me, which was almost everyone, always sounded pretty reasonable. They were so confident in their method and made it sound so simple. Just take your child, and sit him on a time out pillow for as many minutes as he is years old. Cool. And if the child melts down and runs away 100 times? Just keep repeating it until they realize you mean business. Right, and what do I do with my other child while this process takes me 4 hours? Crickets. Gee, thanks doc. Great advice. Now I’m back to square one, feel worse about myself and my ability to parent and have jeopardized my kids trust in me. Spoiler, he never stayed on that damn cushion. These ‘solutions’ led to more and more despair as they continued to prove to me just how different my child actually was and how badly I sucked as his parent. You’re telling me this stuff actually worked on other kids? I now realize that when someone has something to sell, they always sound convincing. It’s no different to diet books and I’m well versed in those. The cover has to scream ‘We’ve figured it out!’ for you to even look twice at it. To get you to buy it, it has to convince you everyone else has it wrong but we have it right. Logically we know that if someone had actually cracked a life code, it’d be world news. In reality, it’s just sales and marketing. It doesn’t mean it’ll work for your family. It only means the author believes in the method. And it’s ok to just say ‘great for them, not for me’. Or my kid. It took me a long time to realize that I needed to seek out actual professionals to help rather than cheap solutions. And thank goodness I did. It really does take a village. While you can pick up anecdotes and tidbits from here and there, nothing is ever going to be as good as the real thing. A trained professional helping you with your family’s specific set of issues.
So there you have it. The seven things I wish I could do over ‘0-10 yrs edition’. As my kids are now 10 and almost 13, I’m currently working on the 10-20yrs installment, so watch this space. I can already see I’m going to have more than enough material for a follow up. This was only intended for information purposes but I hope you found some entertainment in my follies. What’s left of parenting if we can’t laugh at our mistakes right? Kids are remarkably resilient and I believe deep down (like way, way down) they know we’re doing our best. One thing I will never shy away from is being quick to say I’m sorry when I realize I’m wrong. Pride be damned, my kids trusting me is more important. Ultimately, mistakes are going to be made. Probably a few times before I learn the lesson. But I believe the most important part for us as parents will always be how we land the recovery.
