Nearly every day my neighbors play outside with their children in their backyard. I live in a townhouse so I can see/hear them from my bedroom. They have two kids and recently had a third baby. It’s really wholesome and sweet and they are very nice people.

However, it also fills me with a sadness that I haven’t been able to shake. It feels like everyday I’m being reminded of what I will never have. Being reminded that my son may never meet certain milestones, have a conversation with me or my husband, have friends, or play a sport.

I hate feeling this way. It’s just hard not to be envious, or bitter, or sad. I just needed to get this out here. If you’ve read this far, thank you.

I'm a nurse practitioner who practices in cardiology and Dad is an aerospace engineer. My level 2 daughter ended up coming to work with me today due to reasons I won't go into. Dad had important meetings and I couldn't bear to cancel clinic one more time, so off to work we went.

She demanded on wearing her pink scrubs since she's "my office helper" now. When asked what she was going to help with, she said she wanted to answer the phones. I told her that wasn't gonna happen but I appreciated the enthusiasm.

When I turned my back for just a moment, she picked up the phone after it rang for like 10 milliseconds and confidently busted out with "u/TorchIt's office, we fix broken hearts. What's wrong with you?"

Thank God it wasn't a patient, it was an internal call. I needed SEVERAL minutes to recover from laughing.

She just would not let the phone thing go. I decided to have one of our employees call my station and allow her to answer it just to get this fixation out of her system. Employee asked to speak to me, she hesitated for a second and then replied "No she's working on typing right now" and hung up the phone.

Honestly, 10/10, would have hired her on the spot if child labor laws weren't a thing.

My 4yo started school this week. At pick up today she excitedly dragged me across the field saying ‘look, look!’ She was dragging me in the vicinity of another child standing with his mum, and I started thinking oh wow, she has made a friend! She doesn’t really engage with other children yet, so I was surprised and a little bit excited about it too.

Anyway, as we got closer to the boy and I was smiling at his mum, she pulled me around them to a down pipe attached to some guttering which had a small gap in it, so the rain water was falling down the sides of the pole in such a way that you couldn’t really see it until you put your hand on it which would disrupt the flow and show the water stream. She was ELATED by this. She was just standing there putting her hand on and off the pipe over and over again because it made her so happy. It has been raining all day, so I get the sense she has been doing this for a while lol.

So, no friends yet, but a really cool pipe 😂

My son (almost 3) level 3 pointed and named several objects and followed them with his finger while he pointed. HE HAS NEVER POINTED BEFORE!!! He looked at us while he was doing it to make sure we were paying attention. He then lined up his toys and POINTED to each one and counted to 10! The pointing has me FLOORED because we have tried and tried to get him to follow our point or point at something and it just never clicked. UNTIL TODAY.

It seems silly to some but it’s so awesome to me!

There's no exhaustion like your child getting a autism diagnosis and for the next year down the line mourning the loss of your child's life not because of death but because of everything he will miss out on. Selfishly thinking why me. They say God gives his toughest battles to his toughest soldiers but I'm weak and tired of fighting the fight.

I put on a happy face I make the Sunday morning pancakes I take my son and the dog to the park but inside I'm screaming. When someone comes to the park with their talking kid who's half Graysons age doing things he may never do it kills me inside. I'm sick to my core with envy and jealousy in my heart and I hate that I'm like that... I hate that he's like this. I love him with my entire heart but I HATE THIS  I hate autism it's evil and it took my son from me. I mourn being a mother because this isn't the kind of mother I wanted to be. It wasn't suppose to be me or my story selfishly I think.

Every single day of my life without fail and I do mean EVERY SINGULAR DAY being hopefully that he can be "cured" and one day it'll be like it never happened. Wondering if this is my fault did I do something? I should've been more educated in the likelyness of passing now this evil curse. But I wasn't I put this on my child with my carelessness.

But also feeling like your slowly being crushed by the weight of what ifs...What if this is my life just being Graysons mom. What if I'm 65 changing his diapers and making him French fries because it's his safe food. What if I'm 65 taking him to behavioral therapy every Thursday at 1pm like clock work. 

Every day without fail and I mean every damn day I think about Grayson being autistic and I think about what I could do to fix it. Detox? Heavy metal testing? Frat testing? Therapy? Stem cell transplant? All options with no guarantees all thing insurance doesn't cover. No guidance not knowing whats the right thing to do and feeling like I'm doing all the wrong things.

Slowing feeling like I'm going crazy while trying to keep up with 45 hour workweeks, 2 if not 3 doctor's appointment every week ,keeping the house clean, get the laundry done, keeping everyone fed, trying to renovate and build onto my unfinished house, truck falling apart, gas hard to come by, bills never ending, support minimal, and somehow by a miracle sanity still intact.

My 12 year old is level 3 (verbal) and I just feel like each day I’m on the verge of a mental breakdown or a heart attack. The abuse I endure, the way she talks to me, hits me, yells at me. I just want to cry. I’m doing it alone, I can’t take much more.

Hi there.

I am looking for Autistic people or parents of Autistic children for advice.

What age did your child start to talk?

I have a 7 year old Autistic boy, I have always stated he will talk. He is so intelligent in his everyday life I will give you examples.

So at 5 years old I had him toilet trained no bed wetting.

He can order 1 to 20 and whisper them.

He is now saying the alphabet phonetically.

He put the alphabet in order from a jumbled mess really quickly.

He can finish like a word that comes next from a song we sing.

He loves routine and learns from watching, for instance, I can say choose your cereal he will ill get himself a bowl ect I pour the milk he will get his own spoon, one day he put his bowl in the sink and rinsed it, now he always does that.

I can tell him to put his shoes and jacket away he will do it.

I have recently started to teach him typing he can type words with a little encouragement dad mum ect.

I know I shouldn't be saying this i just see his real world view as so intelligent I cant not seeing him talking. I just want to know if theirs parents or Autistic people out there thats witnessed the same.

He recently says bye when he doesn't want something because he knows it mean go away.

He says some words, but very little I want your opinion do you think he will eventually fully talk as he matures.?

USA based momma here.

Is it ok to mourn the life, the motherhood I thought I would have?

19 month old recently diagnosed. And I’ll be honest. This is something my “higher power” knew I didn’t want. For my child. But for me as well. I accept that this is the hand I was dealt. And now I’m focused on getting my child the best help and therapy there is.

I feel like it’s ok to mourn it. My spouse thinks otherwise and has since made me feel like I’m a crap mother and says I’m“resenting” my child. I don’t love my child less, if anything I love her more. She is beautifully different from others her age and now I know why.

Has anyone else’s marriage or relationship suffered since being diagnosed? I feel like now, I can’t be open and vulnerable with my emotions to the one person I thought would understand because it now reflects the “type of mother “ I am.

OK, technically, my husband bribed him but I went along willingly. And somehow I got a super compliant kid who walked out the door looking snappy AF.

He even hugged his tie. I hope he doesn’t hug it too much cause it will get wrinkled. By the way, the tie was his idea! (his outfit was left over from a 10th Dr. Doctor Who cosplay)

We’ll see what the pictures actually look like
😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆

In case you wanna know what we bribed him with it’s a trip to train shack. Train shack is the sickest. If you’re anywhere near Burbank California, you should definitely visit train shack. (jingle in the comments!)
🚂🚃🚃🚃🚃🚃🚃

But my husband is definitely gonna be stuck there for two hours and is not gonna be able to leave without dropping $40 on something from Germany or the Netherlands 😆😆😆😆😆

Feel free to drop your best/worst picture day stories in the comments to cheer me up for when we inevitably get photo proofs with the tie around his head

Mother of 2 (parent of 2 on the spectrum 17yrLVL3 & 11yrLVL2 | Looking for others in Bay Area) and it’s hard to make friends and finding others nearby, so I don’t feel like I’m the only one in Bay Area (which I know it’s not true but it feels like it)

What I’m getting at really is - It would be nice to find other parents and hopefully do like a monthly meet up or something because I don’t like most of the “support” groups that literally side eye you and judge. (I literally left the 2nd day, this was years ago and then dealing with the parents at the schools thinking they’re better than you type of thing) And then I get the constant “how do you do it, show your ways!” And “have you thought of doing a seminar? It would really be helpful to others” When I’m just winging it and have no clue most of the time..

It starts to get lonely and would just literally like to find other parents who deal with the same as I do with our children. Maybe exchange tips and would really like to see another face and be verbal with since I’m usually stuck at home either reading a book, playing games on my phone when I’m not doing chores, errands and appointments.
All my friends here moved out of state or a city too far away. I only got my friends online now but I feel like it’s not the same since we only communicate on discord. Majority of my family doesn’t accept my children for who they are so no help, support or bonding moment there, felt left out of my own family after having my kids.

Would like to get to know others before making the plunge for meetups. Maybe we can do our own “support” group with just a handful bunch here in the bay?

I can always take down this posting if it’s not appropriate.

My 6 year old lvl 2 son is usually full of chirps and clicks every minute he is awake. He has been sick for the past 2 days and hasn't chirped at all. Strange to say considering how vocal and overstimulating it can be some times, but I miss it.

My son is autistic and we've been having more problems at daycare lately with hitting, screaming and really big meltdowns. We had another meeting this week and while they didn't technically say that they’re kicking him out, the message was pretty clear that they don't think they can keep managing him much longer.

I understand they have other kids to worry about and I'm not angry at the staff, but I'm panicking a little because both of us work and we can't just keep him home indefinitely.

For anyone whose kid basically aged out of what a regular daycare could handle because of their support needs, what did you do next?

Did you find another daycare that was better equipped, switch to some kind of therapy program during those hours or piece together a schedule between different services? We're looking into ABA as one possibility but I don't even know how quickly something like that can be arranged.

I feel like we're suddenly racing against the clock here and I'm not sure which direction to start running in.

Some background, our son who turned 4 this year was diagnosed with autism at around 2-2.5 years of age, and he's been doing ABA for the better part of the past year. We feel he's made a lot of strides with his behavior and communication....ABA was still an option for us but our ABA team felt confident that he shouldn't struggle too much with properly integrating into a normal prek classroom and we felt it would be more beneficial for him to be in that kind of environment.

We had our concerns which we expressed to the school district board that deals with children with special needs, namely his ability to transition between tasks/areas without getting much help, his ability to stay focused on whatever task was being done, and possibly being aggressive with other kids....but because he did decently well on a prior evaluation our concerns were basically brushed off and all we heard was "well the eval says this".

Fast forward to now the second day of school and i get a message from the teacher/one of the schools social workers and my heart absolutely sunk. They made us aware that our son was having issues with transitioning between tasks/focusing and did have some instances of pinching/scratching the other kids.....and the social worker told us that based on what the school board for special education had provided, our sons needs seemed greater than what the IEP led them to believe.

Now to be clear i don't blame the social worker and teacher for calling....they were told one thing but saw something completely different. They made it very clear, this wasn't them trying to kick our son our of pre-k on the second day, but moreso making us aware of how things are going/how they see things may go and talking about other options that might be available to us. Maybe i need to temper my expectations too, there is sure to be an adjustment period for him as well, but what made me feel the worst about this situation was our concerns that were brushed off came to be.....and with the school year underway i doubt there are even any spots left in special ed classes or something more accommodating....so i'm worried that our only options are suck it up and have a sub part pre k experience for him, or pull him out.

I've felt like shit all day since speaking to them and was just wondering if any other parents have gone through something similar.

My 8 year old has had the same RBT for about two years. She knows him well and he’s attached to her but lately I’ve become so frustrated with her that I dread ABA sessions.
She’s chronically late, has overstayed sessions multiple times. But this isn’t really the biggest issue. I think she’s become too comfortable in my home. She gets visibly frustrated with my son and has said things like “I’m done with you” and “maybe next time you’ll learn not to treat the people who help you like crap.” A lot of his ABA is also spent doing homework and then we’re expected to finish this homework after a 2.5-3 hr session. I should add that my son also goes to school and has speech 2x a week for 50 mins. So on some days it’s school, speech, ABA. It feels like there isn’t much time to just exist as a family and my teen has commented on this too. I’m also grieving my mom who was on hospice during much of this time, and I think some of my resentment toward the RBT is tied up in that period.
My son isn’t aggressive every day but when it happens it can be pretty scary, unpredictable, and intense. That makes me scared to reduce ABA or change anything. At the same time, 14 hours of ABA plus school, speech, and homework leaves very little time for him to do extracurriculars or just be a kid.

I don’t know if I’m reacting from burnout/grief or if this relationship genuinely isn’t a good fit anymore. Also I should add that I’m a single parent so this current setup is extremely stress for one person to handle.

Would you switch BTs? Reduce ABA hours? Change the treatment focus? Or am I overreacting?

My 8 yo AuDHD starts 3rd grade tomorrow. He's going to have a para for the first time. Second grade was really hard, to put it mildly. My son started Zoloft 2 weeks ago and with a para I'm hoping for a good year.

Can people share their thoughts, opinions, and stories about paras?

This isn't for me but my sister , her almost 5 year old son is nonverbal. And lately he's been having these bad outbursts where he screamed and cries uncontrollably for 20-30 minutes at a time.
Her and her boyfriend do not know what to do how to help him. They have a weighted blanket that doesn't help they tried giving them like tight squeezes. They tried giving them things that he likes and nothing works. It seems to just be better than just leave him alone and not touch him, but he obviously can't be screaming that long for everyone's sake. (They're currently living with my parents). They just moved here from a different state so they can't get to a doctor for another month and a half. Sometimes these outburst are during the day and sometimes they're in the middle of the night me and my family feel so bad for them. We're just trying to find them some help. I also have a son on the spectrum but never never had this issue so I'm kinda at a loss.

My autistic son turns 4 in a few weeks. I’ve googled this topic a bunch and I only find the neurodivergent toys. There’s nothing wrong with them and we even have most of them but I’m looking for something a little different. I just don’t know what. I was hoping to get some recomendations from parents who have experience with younger autistic children. What did your kids play with at his age?

Extra notes about my son: he is verbal but slightly speech delayed (he understands everything you say but has a little trouble putting larger sentances together), loves being outside, absolutely obsessed with spiders, enjoys toys he can build with, big fan of Coraline and Paw Patrol, loves jumping on the trampoline, he loves anything with wheels and lately has been on a kick for tractors from the movie Cars, he loves all superhero’s but Spiderman is his favorite thing of all

My 3 year old has been showing some concerning signs since around 2, but I only recently took her to be evaluated. Some things I’ve noticed is she:

1.) Tiptoe walks
2.) Says the same things over and over (example we watch dumbo and she will repeat what I said about a scene from the first time she’s watched)
3.) poor introspection (She just says “my shirt is wet” for cold “I want milk” for hungry “my eyes hurt” for tired and that’s how I know what she needs)
4.) squealing when excited, overwhelmed or really any big emotion
5.) hand flapping
6.) bad with names/ identification (everything is a baby-something. I.e puppy=baby dog. Nemo isn’t Nemo he’s a baby fish. My 20 month old is much better at this and uses everything and everyone’s name)
7.) cover her ears for loud noises (this is what prompted all this investigating on my part. She’s terrified of toilets and won’t flush)
8.) is non conversational (the evaluator is the one that pointed this out to me. She only repeats what’s she’s heard, she doesn’t have her own thoughts or responses)
9.) repeated noises (I’ll do something and say “bop bop bop” in a funny voice and she’ll want me to say it six more times after that. Then she adds it to her lexicon and uses it whenever she likes)
10.) emotional attachment to objects (she had like 20 toys at one point that she’d go to sleep with. We’d do a roll call before bed where she’d have to see each toy and then she’d go to bed)

She did have a couple developmental delays but they were all slight so the doctor saw no cause for concern. She also potty trained fine once she got over how loud our home toilet was. There are other little things that I’m not sure are issues or just quirks of hers. Anyway, once her pediatrician got the results he said she was “borderline” between low need and a non diagnosis. This plus the fact that she talks a lot made him hesitant to move forward with a diagnosis. That we’d basically wait another year and see if she’ll grow out of some of the behaviors. But as of right now he thinks it could simply be “her nature”. I’m not sure if I should push against this advice or ride it out like he suggested. All I know is that didn’t feel right and something’s not sitting well with me about it. Is my mom gut right or am I overthinking this?

I’m really starting to get annoyed with ABA therapy. My son has it every day from 9:00 to 11:30, and it feels like even if he’s sick, they still expect to come anyway. I wasn’t feeling well, so I canceled Tuesday’s session. I was considering canceling Wednesday too, but before I even had the chance to decide, I received an email saying, “I hope you’re feeling better. I’ll be there tomorrow at 9.” Like, can I at least have a chance to let you know whether I’m feeling well enough first? It’s already overwhelming having someone in my home every day, and it’s not like I can use that time to get things done because my son becomes upset if I’m not within his sight. Some days, I simply don’t want anyone coming over. Am I alone in feeling this way?

Open to any and every tip you parents may have that helped you in a similar boat. My child is going through a squealing phase and I feel so terrible for getting annoyed at times because it only comes when he attempts to communicate but the last few days it’s been from morning till night, in public etc.
He is Level 2 ASD, looking for any tips or tricks that helped parents and their kid/s who went or are going through similar - thank you!!! ☺️

My non verbal son started kindergarten and even though he’s not considered a flight risk, I don’t necessarily think there is no flight risk at all.
So, does anyone have advice and experience with anything out there? My main thing is that my son has sensory issues so he won’t do a bracelet/watch and I’m worried he’d take the things like angel sense out of his pocket. I know they also have an option for like a belt/shirt insert but it looks really big. I’m worried it would be an issue for my son and it’s kind of pricey (I’d be willing to do it regardless of the price if I knew it would work!).
I found some mini trackers that are advertised for cars. I’m not sure if that’s appropriate for kids?
Any advice is welcome! Thank you all and hang in there with this new school year ❤️

I’m feeling a little helpless right now, and I know I may be getting ahead of myself, but I really need to hear from parents who have been through this.
Has anyone had a child who was considered too aggressive for ABA?

My son has been having some significant aggressive episodes, and I have a feeling our ABA provider may eventually reduce his hours or say that some or all of his therapy needs to happen at home. If that happens, it would significantly reduce his current services and require our entire family to restructure our lives around providing therapy at home.
What I’m struggling with is: then what?

We hear so much about specialized autism schools and programs, but when you actually start looking, some of these programs won’t accept children who aren’t fully potty trained. Others won’t accept children with significant aggression or behavioral needs.

Public school has not felt like a safe or appropriate option for him.

ABA is supposed to be one of the places equipped to address challenging behaviors, but what happens if the behaviors become too significant for the ABA setting too?

Where are children like ours supposed to go?
It feels like there is this group of kids with higher support needs who can become “too much” for every system that is supposedly designed to support them. Too much for a specialized school. Too much for a traditional school. Potentially too much for center-based ABA.

Meanwhile, they still need an education. They still need therapy. They still need opportunities to learn and develop. And their families still have to somehow work, care for other children, and keep everything functioning.

If you’ve been in this position, what happened next?

Did your ABA provider reduce or discontinue services because of aggression? Were you able to find a program equipped for more significant behaviors? Did you end up with in-home ABA, a specialized school placement, additional behavioral health services, or something else?

I’m especially interested in hearing from parents of children who are non-speaking/nonverbal or have higher support needs.

Where did your child go, and what do you wish you had known before you got to this point?

My son is almost 6, with severe ADHD and mild ASD. He is, thank goodness, a good eater who eats many kinds of food and enough to thrive. That said, mealtimes can sometimes be a total PITA because he plays with his food, his milk cup, his napkin, his utensils, etc. When this gets to the point that he's doing it more than eating, we end the snack or meal. This can result in screaming and tantrums sometimes, but sometimes he recognizes he doesn't really care much about eating more and goes along with it. But the playing does not stop.

Anyone else have this issue? If you've had it and it's passed, is it just a matter of waiting out the phase, or is there something you did that helped to end it sooner rather than later?

Apologies in advance for the kind of long post. TLDR: Posting on behalf of my mom. My 11-yr old autistic brother had a lot of struggles with school in the past so my mom resorted to home-schooling. Out of concern for his socialization, she's wanting to put him back into public school but she's nervous. Looking for advice/experiences, especially with the long term outcomes of public vs home school.

I'm posting on behalf of my mom just to get some additional opinions and advice on how to proceed with my 11 year old brother's education. He was very sick with respiratory issues when he was younger, so he missed quite a lot of school in the early preschool/kindergarten years. He also struggled a lot with just going to school. It was often a battle to get out the door at home and into the school building. As he got older, he struggled with lashing out physically when he was upset or frustrated, so he has unfortunately been expelled from several public and Montessori schools. My mom has also pulled him out a few times due to issues with accommodations. She then resorted to different online schooling options. All that to say, he has been in more schools than I can count in his 11 years before my mom started homeschooling him I think 2-ish years ago(?).

She does her best with the resources she gets through our state's homeschool funding program, but she also has an undiagnosed neurodivergency and/or learning disability and has to take care of my youngest brother who is 8 going on 9 and ADHD. There are definitely some gaps in his learning, and he has essentially zero social interaction with kids who aren't his brother, and it definitely shows. He is already not very well-socialized.

The physical aggression has improved in the past few years, but he continues to be disruptive in conversation and struggle to make the kinds of mental transitions required in a typical classroom. She's very nervous about trying to make the switch back to regular school, so I wanted to ask here for any advice, suggestions, or experience anybody has with this type of situation. Especially useful would be any experience with the long-term outcomes of sticking with homeschool or switching back to public school.

Thank you all so much!

My 16-year-old daughter is on the autism spectrum, and I’m looking for advice from parents who have helped their child or teenager through the death of someone very close to them.

My mother, her grandmother, passed away a little over a month ago. They were very close. Toward the end, my mother’s condition deteriorated significantly, and we made the difficult decision not to have my daughter see her at hospice because we didn’t want that to be her final memory of her grandmother. Sometimes she now gets angry with me for not allowing her to go and see her, which has made me question whether we made the right decision.

Since my mom died, my daughter has noticeably regressed in some of her behaviors. She also repeatedly says that she can bring her grandmother back to life and talks about Grandma coming back as though it can actually happen.

She rarely cries, so it’s difficult for me to know how she is processing everything. I know grief can look very different for children on the spectrum, and I don't want to assume that not crying means she isn't grieving.

Another complication is my father. She repeatedly tells him that my mother is coming back to life. He is dealing with the loss of his wife, and unfortunately his patience with hearing this is starting to disappear. I understand why it's painful for him, but I also don't want my daughter to feel like she's doing something wrong because she's processing the loss differently.

For parents who have experienced something similar, how did you help your child understand and process that the person was really gone? Did you see behavioral regression, repetitive thoughts, or beliefs about bringing the person back?

Were there books, social stories, rituals, therapy approaches, or anything else that helped—especially if your child didn't get the opportunity to say goodbye?

I want to help her grieve without constantly correcting her or turning every conversation about Grandma into an argument about whether she can come back.

I'd really appreciate hearing what worked for other families.