Knowledge does not bring relief. It only means that you can recognize the onset of overload more precisely.
The scream. Every parent knows that moment when you feel: it’s starting.
For me, it is a scene from Apollo 13 — the mission in which no one screamed, even though they were running out of oxygen. Full control, of course. A known procedure. As if oxygen ran out every day.
A technical brain escapes into technical thinking. Instead of a scream, I hear: Houston, we’ve had a problem. I am a parent of two children, and my nervous system has been operating in emergency-silence mode for a long time. The alarms were switched off long ago — energy conservation, not heroism.
A generation that is aware but lacks resources
I come from a generation that became aware of the problem without gaining the resources to solve it. I am an autistic parent who knows:
- what my parents did not know,
- that meltdown is not rebellion,
- that shutdown is not an offense,
- that this is biology, tension, neurochemistry, serotonin, dopamine, too much sound,
- that traditional parenting methods belong in the attic, right next to the boxes of “good advice.”
Awareness is here — and that is exactly why
- you have no strength,
- every thought has a cost,
- you watch the world continuously and systematically wear your children down,
- you see it in HD.
It is the same world, the same good advice, the same manuals written in a language I cannot stand. The only difference is you. You know now. And while that knowledge sounds like a promise for your children, to you it sounds like a verdict — because you have no strength left.
The dominant story says that a person should work on themselves, stay open, and remain flexible. I have no flexibility except in my pain threshold. The help I need finally arrives, but it comes wrapped in normative language and interpretation that exhausts me all over again. For reasons I do not understand, there are still no workshops and no support for autistic parents. “I made it to adulthood” is treated as proof that adaptation is complete. And so, according to the logic of the world, a neurotypical interpretation of family life is supposed to help us — though no one can explain why or how. And if it does not help, then one more lesson in “the norm” is offered. For me, that is just another drain on energy.
I am trying to describe my world
So I try to explain:
- this is not about emotions, but about nervous system energy,
- the issue is physiology, not resistance,
- this is not control, but a system trying not to sink.
People look at me as if I were talking about quantum physics instead of everyday life.
“Good autism parenting is not about being emotionally perfect. It’s about managing your energy honestly.”
Parenting from an autistic perspective
Autistic parenting is not, first of all, about boundaries. It is about carrying the sensory load of two or more nervous systems in one house.
This, for me, is what autistic parenting is: signal, reception, analysis. What the world reads as cool calm, I experience as regulatory calm.
Houston, we’ve had a problem
- Houston, we’ve had a problem.
- Roger, we copy… stand by — we’re looking at it.