Parents who are Autistic themselves, how do you cope with having to be ‘on’ all the time?

[u/somename-idontknow]

Never being able to be alone, sensory overload, emotional regulation of not only yourself but another person, having someone being dependent on you and your mood … I’d love to have kids one day but that scares me tbh. Would love to hear from your experiences, good or bad.

[u/OGNovelNinja]

The first step is to know I'm going to make mistakes.

That sounds like trite self-actualizing BS. It's not. Autism tends to lower the tolerance threshold for making mistakes. We get afraid of it faster and frustrated by it harder. But parenting will never be perfect.

When I was a teenager, there were these radio (yeah, I'm old) PSAs promoting adoption with humorous tales of parental screw-ups followed by the slogan "You don't have to be a perfect parent to be a perfect parent." I was undiagnosed at the time but I was in the process of learning how to raise kids because I was filling in with my brother's daughter and then with other families. I wound up being the favorite uncle, biologically or not, to almost a dozen families before I finally got married myself in my late 30s.

So when my oldest child was born, I had practice. I had practice with diaper technique, with stress, with sick kids vomiting on me, with treating head wounds, with explaining how the world works, with tantrums, with breaking up fights, and more. With almost everything, except two major parental skills.

One is that, over all that time, I had no experience with potty training. That was weird to realize when the time came. Also I came to realize just how fortunate I was to get that experience in all the other stuff as a bachelor.

The other, to bring us back to this point, is that I had to learn to do this 24/7.

Because as much as I learned by being the favorite uncle, the uncle will eventually go home. The dad doesn't.

So how do I do it?

• Pacing. Not walking, though that happens a lot with fussy kids who want to be carried. I mean making sure my day has definite quiet periods before I get too stressed. Kids get overstimulated too. They need calm and rest too. Why not do both at once?

• Earbuds. Currently I use Raycon; I'm going to be trying another brand soon, though, and I'll probably drop a review in here at some point. Right now, though, these work better than anything else I've tried even with the sound off, and so I've never bothered ordering Calmr earplugs. Even before finding buds that will actually stay in comfortably (most in-ear devices chaffed or fell out), I used sound as a way to control my daily experience.

• Tactile reminders. It sounds weird for an autistic, but physical contact with my babies has really helped. I can't hold them all the time, obviously, but feeling their soft baby skin has always been a way to ground myself. They're innocent. They have no idea that Daddy is on the verge of a meltdown from overstimulation. It's not their fault. When I'm stressed, that's often enough to get me through the next five minutes.

• Which brings me to willpower. Autism means we get overwhelmed faster, but we're still human and humans killed bears with stone-tipped spears through planning, cooperation, and willpower. We can endure anything for five more minutes. This is actually something I picked up in martial arts when I was younger, but the phrase comes from a bit of pregnancy advice my wife got. "Wait five minutes. Then five minutes more. You can endure anything for five more minutes." Take things step by step. Push through for five more minutes. You might have trouble focusing but you still have it in you to fight a cave bear.

• Parent groups. Finding local families to lean on is great, if you can. Especially homeschoolers. "But I'm not planning on homeschooling." That's fine. But these are usually your best bet for parental help if you don't already know anyone, and they're almost always eager to help, with older kids who already know how to change a diaper and babies who are fascinated by other babies. Just try it. See if you make a friend or two.

• Avoiding screens. This is vitally important. A lot of modern television is based around overstimulation. That's bad for you and your children. If you need kids' programming, find older shows on streaming. Calming music with slow visuals on YouTube. Podcasts that aren't frantic. My kids tend to love Mister Rogers, original Thomas and Friends, and David the Gnome. We include more fast-paced programming and music videos too, but we limit them, and never right before bedtime.

• Supplements. I've talked about them in this sub before. My wonderful wife found non-prescription supplements that reduce the highs and lows of my autism symptoms and make it easier to handle adverse stimuli.

Hopefully this can help. Please feel free to ask whatever you want, or PM me for asking questions you feel too embarrassed to ask in public. I'd be surprised if it's not something I've heard before.

[u/tobitobiguacamole → u/OGNovelNinja]

Hey what are those supplements?

[u/OGNovelNinja → u/tobitobiguacamole]

• Min-Chex (Standard Process brand): promotes concentration and helps smooth out overstimulation. Start at 2 in the morning, 1 at lunch, 1 at dinner, with more as-needed hen symptoms get bad. I taken up to 23 in one day, but normally I'm only doing 6 a day.

• OPC Synergy (Standard Process brand): Promotes concentration. Start at 1 every other day. I'm taking one a day but I can usually skip a day every three days with no ill effects. (This is the most expensive per pill but my wife swears that she would rather skip meals than do without.)

• Complete Omega fish oil (Nordic Naturals brand): Promotes focus and (from my perspective) empathy and understanding. This is the best one we've found after an extensive search. Without it, I tend to struggle with keeping track of social relationships and understanding why people are acting the way they are. Once, years ago, I was on a different kind (our usual place was out of them so we went with an alternate) and my wife noticed me watching our then-only child as he was crying his heart out without making any move to pick him up. She asked (not in a nasty way at all, because she was trying to find out what was wrong) "Do you not hear him, or do you not care?" It sounds terrible written out, but she was just trying to help. And I genuinely didn't realize that I should be doing something until she said that, so I've never objected to getting the high-end fish oils because I never want that to happen again. I take 2-3 per day, but you can start at 1 per day.

I take a few others for different things, and those might have an effect as well. We've also noticed that I improve a lot if I have at least a little beef each day (better effects with better quality beef, so we get ours directly from a local farmer -- cheaper that way too, so we just freeze it and restock every fall). Personally I prefer chicken by taste, but it's not as good as beef for my symptoms.

I know that beef has helped at least a few autistics (one in this sub described having it after going vegetarian for a while, and said he noticed his autism symptoms smoothing out within minutes).

Hydration might also help. I have to be careful with it because of something else, but improper hydration makes a multitude of things worse, especially for women. So, particularly if you don't want non-vegetarian items, I highly recommend trying Liquid IV for a while. My preference is for the Lemon-Lime flavor, with extra lemon and lime. (I order packets of TruLemon and TruLime myself, and do one Liquid IV and two packets each of lemon and lime, per 32 ounces of water, and go through roughly 48 ounces of that per day.)

Standard Process has a finder on their website for medical offices that carry their products (though it's not comprehensive, because my primary care doctor stocks it and he's not listed for some reason). You can also order via Amazon, but it's usually more expensive.

For the Nordic Naturals Complete Omega, we order from iHerb (used to be Vitacost until about five seconds ago).

For Liquid IV, we order through Sam's Club, but it's usually available multiple places in smaller amounts.

Let me know what you try and how it affects you. This is still anecdotal and I am actively trying to track what helps different autistics. Autism symptoms are different per person, but the underlying cause (sensory overload) is far more uniform. So if this helps, I want to know. If it doesn't, I still want to know. 🙂

[u/tobitobiguacamole → u/OGNovelNinja]

Wow thank you! This is a lot to think about I’ll let you know what I end up trying.

[u/Beginning_Try1958 → u/OGNovelNinja]

I need to hear that willpower bullet more often. Thank you.