The Particularly Painful Isolation of the Autism Parent

Isolation is a huge and common problem these days. We hear about it in the context of Covid-19 and children staying home, whether because of safety concerns, or quarantine. The autism parent, however, faces these challenges as well as unique issues particular to their child’s situation. Today my thoughts have been heavy and colored with this special form of isolation. Because I am a lonely and isolated autism parent. I always have been. For autism parents like me, our sense of alienation and Other-ness begins at the earliest stages of parenthood, when we realize our children are following a different path than expected. Even if our children are diagnosed early on, we may not know how to help them. And therefore we don’t know how to help ourselves. Our confusion for them leads to a confusion of who we are and what we should be doing. This feeling smothered me during Nat’s earliest days and continues even now, in his 33d year of life. And although I certainly benefit from the strong support network among the champions of neurodiversity, as well as from the advocates for the severely autistic, there is nevertheless a deep sense of isolation that I face daily as an autism mom.  I bet I am not alone, and the very existence of the autism support networks, the huge autism community, the autism grapevine, proves this. I have found in all these years of parenting Nat, a lovely young man who is into law and order, organization, and seeks out stability, I have had to change...
Source: Susan's Blog - Category: Child Development Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs