Parenting remains a headache at home, with a mum in crisis but trying to cover it up, a dad who’s exhausted and busy, and a neurodivergent kid trying to grow up with a dash of grace and lashings of sass.
Despite being in this oddball home, we work incredibly hard to cultivate peace, fun, education and engagement at every opportunity. That setup manifests in many ways, from watching her learn a new dance with her dad (badly) to sitting down and writing a thank you card for someone who was kind with me. In most cases she doesn’t remember the events well, but with repetition we can find what she really enjoys without her needing to get stressed about explaining (she also has language disorder and finds unprepared sentences quite difficult).
Even with all our efforts, we make mistakes. Usually they’re simple to brush off, forget or discuss, but never have we made mistakes that cause upset.
Until yesterday.
And it’s my fault 😔
We were playing right here, in the bedroom, and chuckling to ourselves about socks. SOCKS. She was getting changed for bed and decided that throwing her sock at me would be funny. It was hilarious because she landed it perfectly on my nose. The predictable comments about her own stinky feet made her tickle herself, and for a few minutes this pair of socks were going backward and forward between us. Silly game, no rules, just fun.
Then I went rogue, and something stupid happened that wasn’t well received.
I threw a sock out of the window.
FFS. You’d think I’d burned her favourite toys. She was distraught.
“You threw my sock. On purpose!”
Tears fell and my confidence as a parent dropped to the floor with them. I was ashamed.
In the back of my head I thought she’d laugh and my partner would go outside and retrieve it shortly after. When the waterworks were triggered he jumped to action and got it straight back in. It took a while for her to calm down, but fun broke the barrier and once again she was playing.
I apologised straight away, and tried to explain it was a joke, but, not being able to read emotions well, she saw it as something I’d done to be hurtful. It was a sudden change to the game, and the pattern of enjoyment in her head was jarred. I should have known she wouldn’t be happy about it and that she might be confused. Maybe I should have pretended, or dangled it outside, and those are also my mistakes.
It all happened in the blink of an eye, but it feels like a shame to take away spontaneous fun because of this risk. She was laughing her socks off (pun intended) before I became an idiot.
The lessons here are simple. First, that the internal workings of neurodivergent people are complicated, but can be at least partly learned individually. You can’t place the feelings of all autistic people in one box – it’s a spectrum for a reason. Second, when you make a parental mistake, rather than beating yourself up, learn from it. It’s easy to dwell on the shoulda woulda coulda, but much better to spend time figuring out how to navigate the problem well next time. Finally, apologise and explain. Like my daughter, I know many people on the spectrum struggle with emotions and conversation. Talking it through, several times, in a bright but honest way, will help to rebuild any trust accidentally lost.
I’ve spent several hours feeling ashamed for this silly but preventable mistake, now I need to stop it happening again.
Although it’s not always this funny. At times coming face to face with our daughter’s autistic traits and not knowing how to manage them is a headache, and I’ve read every one of the recommended books I was told about. But this is our first journey with ASD, and like many of you, we’re learning as we go.
There are some great autism awareness charities who have resources to help you with tackling the challenges it brings.
The national autistic society and Child Autism U.K. are good starting places.
Thanks for visiting 💜
Creative Steph 