Last updated on November 26, 2023
Podcast Episode 0030; Season 03, Episode 02; October 1, 2019
Parenting while autistic is… parenting. My wife and I are like other parents: unsure of ourselves and doing our best to be good role models. If there is something different about being an autistic parent, I’m not sure what that might be.
Note: Forgive the quality. Recorded in an empty room in our new house with horrible echoing.
Transcript (lightly edited)
Scott: Hello and welcome to The Autistic Me Podcast. I am Christopher Scott Wyatt, speaking as The Autistic Me.
[00:00:13] This will be a short episode as I have been extremely busy and wanted to get something posted, but I didn’t have time to create a clear script.
[00:00:24] What I wanted to talk about was parenting because the last few weeks have been busy with those issues that all parents face.
[00:00:32] When I am asked if it is difficult to be an autistic parent, my general response is “I don’t know.” I don’t really have anything else to compare it to. I haven’t been a normal parent. I’ve only been me. And my wife and I had no parenting experience before both of our daughters arrived in our house. Because we began as foster parents, we knew that we would have children with some unique challenges and needs. And we also know that we are by our nature’s… We are very introverted and we have our own unique characteristics to say the least.
[00:01:14] So what happens when you take an autistic parent and an introverted parent and then bring into the household two daughters with their own special needs and backgrounds of difficult experiences?
[00:01:30] Those difficult experiences, also known as Adverse Childhood Experiences or ACES, certainly shaped our daughters and they also have shaped me. When I look back at the things that I endured, from a traumatic birth through being treated for scoliosis, having surgeries and other things that occurred in childhood… And they don’t compare to what my daughters has been through. I think it’s very important to understand that as parents we bring our own baggage into the situation and in some ways that makes us either more or less sensitive to the needs of our children.
[00:02:15] In my case, I would like to think that I am more sensitive to the needs of our daughters in some ways, while at the same time, I understand my autistic traits can make me less patient and less understanding under stress.
[00:02:32] So what does it mean to be an autistic parent?
[00:02:36] Over these last two weeks, well, unfortunately the Wyatt-Schnellbach (or Schnelbach-Wyatt) household endured something of a stomach bug. That meant that my wife, myself, and one of our daughters suffered the worst effects of the stomach bug. And as a parent that meant that I was vacuuming and steam cleaning after one of our daughters was sick in her room — and for some reason she found it necessary to be sick in her sister’s room. So two rugs had to be steam cleaned late at night.
[00:03:19] The reaction to that is what any parent would have. It’s, “Well, this is frustrating. It’s midnight and here I am cleaning a carpet and changing sheets on the bed and comforting a child.”
[00:03:34] But I don’t think we handle those incidents that occur any differently than other parents do.
[00:03:42] I know that I’m more sensitive to the smells. I’m certainly more sensitive to sound. But that’s okay. It just means that I’m going to spend a lot more time vacuuming and steam cleaning and trying to get rid of the remnants of the illnesses.
[00:04:03] Our daughters, when they run fevers, I do tend to notice very quickly. I notice the change in their coloring. I noticed the changes in their voices. And I can sometimes sense the heat when they’re next to me.
[00:04:17] I don’t think that that’s unusual.
[00:04:20] I think parents are very attuned to their children. I don’t believe that this is or is not my autistic traits coming through. What I think it is… is my absolute concern and near-obsessive need to make sure that my children are safe and cared for as best we can do that.
[00:04:43] My wife is likewise, very attentive to the children’s needs.
[00:04:49] I have been asked what our schedule is and if our schedule reflects our personalities and I don’t believe it does.
[00:04:56] Our children have to be up between 6:15 and 6:30 — ideally as close to 6:15 as possible. They have a bus to catch at 6:45 to get to school. And then they have their school day. Our children arrive home in the afternoon. My wife telecommutes, so she picks them up from the bus stop and when I say pick up, I mean that she greets them there and they walk back home. And then the girls read or play until dinner time.
[00:05:30] When all of us are home, we eat dinner at the table together whenever possible. We do have a no-phone rule and no television rule for dinner.
[00:05:40] Again. I don’t think that’s unusual.
[00:05:42] It does help me. Because of my sensory processing, I don’t like a lot of input but I don’t think children need a lot of input at the dinner table either. I think all children need to focus on the family and the family conversation. So my need to have a quieter environment at dinner, I think benefits the children. We put the phones away. We turn off TV. We might have some music in the background quietly, but we try to remove those distractions. And we encourage our daughters to tell us what they did that day.
[00:06:16] Another thing that I don’t believe is that unusual is instead of asking, “Did you get in trouble?” or “What color were you on?” or “Did you get any check marks?” the questions that I want to ask the girls, “What did you learn? What did you do? What was fun about today?”
[00:06:36] I think because I don’t want to be criticized, I’m hesitant to ask our girls things that might begin as criticisms about their school day. In fact, I do wish that schools would decrease the emphasis on points and checkmarks and color ratings for behavior. These are children and they’re going to make mistakes. But that’s how a lot of children are. I know our daughters, when they would get home from their previous school, the first thing they wanted to share was whether they were on green that day for being good instead of wanting to share what they learned or what they read or what new exciting science project they did.
[00:07:18] Again, I don’t think it’s my autistic traits that make me sensitive to this. If anything, I think it’s my background in education as a professor and as someone who has studied for a K-12 credential. I’m just very hesitant to approach education as something that you enforce on children. I think instead you want to encourage it and make it fun and exciting.
[00:07:44] After dinner time in our household, there’s bath time followed by reading time and, ideally, by 7:00 to 7:30 the girls are asleep.
[00:07:55] This means that we really don’t get to spend a lot of time with them during the week. And I don’t think that, unfortunately, that’s unusual in our culture or any other culture.
[00:08:06] Children spend so many hours in school Monday through Friday.
[00:08:11] On weekends everyone in our household is generally up between 8:30 and 9. We do let the girls sleep in, though it seems that they don’t really want to. They tend to be up by 7:00, 7:30. My wife likes to read. I like to take it slow on the weekends. But again, we generally have breakfast together as a family.
[00:08:35] And then we will do our yard work or we will go run errands.
[00:08:41] Our weekends are probably no more or less structured than any other family.
[00:08:47] Right now we don’t have scouting activities or sports on the weekends. This does allow us to go to the library or a bookstore on Saturday. Saturday is typically our running about and doing things day.
[00:09:03] We, again, typically have dinner together and we try to stick to the 5:30 for dinner 6:30 for bath, 7 to 7:30 for bed routine. We believe that that routine should occur every day, not just on the weekdays, to make sure it’s consistent for our daughters.
[00:09:24] Sundays we get up and we do yard work. And I think, again, just as my wife and I were raised to help out and do some chores, the girls are expected to help us weed the flower beds.
[00:09:38] They like to help out with the yard work. And then they like to spend time riding their bikes. While we are finishing up the lawn care. And following the lawn care, everyone cleans up and then sits inside and takes it easy.
[00:09:55] And sometimes we allow them to watch a Disney movie or something similar and take it easy for Sunday afternoon.
[00:10:04] One of the things that has changed since moving to Texas from Pennsylvania is our neighborhood does have a pool. So, several times a week and sometimes on the weekends, the girls do like to go swimming for approximately a half hour and my wife goes with them and watches over them. I have also gone with them to the pool.
[00:10:28] And again, we are no different than any other parents. We like them to start off with their little floaty vests and some flotation devices and paddleboards. But now the oldest is starting to swim on her own and so we’re slowly letting her go without the flotation devices. And the little one is learning to float and dog paddle and eventually they’ll be going just fine.
[00:10:55] I don’t believe we are any more or less sensitive to the safety of our daughters than any of the other parents we have observed at the pool.
[00:11:04] So what is it that makes autistic parenting different?
[00:11:08] As I think back on it, it’s really minimal compared to what the girls need.
[00:11:16] We have one daughter who is definitely sensory sensitive. Sensory input can cause her to have a meltdown. She doesn’t like a lot of noise. She doesn’t like a lot of yelling or any sudden noises — explosions or popping or anything like that.
[00:11:35] But we were able to go to a circus together as a family the noise was actually, I think, a greater problem for our youngest daughter than it was for me. I actually managed to stay for the entire performance. We then went to dinner. You could tell that the youngest daughter had been stressed. She was uncooperative at dinner and a little tired and whiny. But, again, I don’t think that’s any different than any other child. And I don’t think that our response as parents was that different.
[00:12:07] My wife notes that I do sometimes skip dinner and that’s because after working or sometimes after a long day, I do get migraines and I do become very sensitive to sound. So there are days I do have to tell the daughters, “I’m sorry, but Daddy’s not going to be joining you for dinner. He needs to rest. He’s had a long day.” And I think explaining to that to the girls and being honest with them is a very good approach and I don’t think any other parents would want to take a different approach.
[00:12:41] Being honest with your children and saying that Mommy and Daddy have certain limitations, I think is good for them. And it lets them know that we are normal people. We’re not special or super in any particular way.
[00:12:55] We do tell the girls that Daddy has some days where he doesn’t want to go anywhere and doesn’t want to drive. That there are other times when Daddy needs to focus on his work. Unfortunately, when I watch other parents, I often see only one parent able to participate. The other is always working.
[00:13:21] And we see a lot of anxious, aggressive, pushy parents. I know they’re called helicopter parents. There are other words for how they push their children: stage moms, soccer moms, football dads. I have seen fathers yell at coaches, yell at their children. I have seen mother screaming at gymnastics and I would like to think that my wife and I aren’t going to do that.
[00:13:59] So far, we’ve been pretty good about treating the girls with respect and understanding that they’re little kids. They’re now 6 and 7 years old and they’re not going to be perfect athletes or perfect gymnasts or perfect girl scouts or perfect students. And they’re certainly not going to be perfect little adults at restaurants or at the zoo or anywhere else.
[00:14:25] And I think having reasonable expectations, again, is not anything to do with how my wife and I are. It’s simply our efforts to be the best parents we can be.
[00:14:38] Looking back, I don’t know that being an autistic parent has made me different from any other parent. I think what has made me a better or worse parent, or whatever I am, are my experiences. And I think that my overprotective nature at times comes from being hypersensitive to what I fear the girls have experienced.
[00:15:09] I am very aware of how it feels to be isolated at school for being either smart or slow, and so I am vigilant in terms of their educations. I want to make sure that teachers are including them and actively engaging with them in the classroom.
[00:15:34] I will say the school here in our new home town has been excellent with the girls. We do have their plans in place. We have supports. We have those things that the girls need for success. The teachers are very good at communicating with us.
[00:15:53] And again, so being The Autistic Me and knowing that I have special needs might make me slightly more attuned to the fact that our girls need those supports in the school system. But I don’t know that every parent of every child with some special needs or challenges tries to be as engaged as possible.
[00:16:18] What I wanted to cover in this episode was the fact that being The Autistic Me and an autistic parent doesn’t make me special. It doesn’t mean I have any special challenges. It doesn’t mean that I have any great successes or any unusual failures. I am sure all parents have those moments where you just sigh and shrug and wonder why your child did something that seems so incredibly thoughtless at times.
[00:16:56] Our littlest one touched a stove… and that happens… and it burned. Our oldest has climbed up things and fallen down and she’s crashed her bicycle… and all those things that kids do. They have had scrapes and bloody noses and blisters and warts and all those things.
[00:17:20] I admit — I do not like the runny noses. I don’t like when they’re sick, but I don’t think any parent does. I’m just a little more sensitive to some of the sights and sounds.
[00:17:32] That’s just being a parent though.
[00:17:34] You get over it and you deal with it and you move on. I am sure, like every other early parent by wife and I would never have imagined sharing food with slobbery little kids with their dirty habits. That you still end up sharing ice cream with your kids and you still split peanuts with them at the circus and do all those things because they’re your kids. You share drinks and you share straws and you get sick when they get sick and that’s sharing the good in the bad.
[00:18:17] If someone believes that being an autistic parent is different than being a parent, I don’t know what to say other than watch us. Observe us and let me know what I’m doing differently.
[00:18:32] But, as I watch other parents, what I find is my wife and I are trying to emulate the best parents we see and avoid making the mistakes of the worst parents we have seen. And sadly, we have seen some pretty bad parenting. But, we have also seeing some exceptional parenting and I’d like to think that we are doing at least as well as our parents did.
[00:19:00] I’d like to think also that quite honestly as the generations have gone by and we have learned more about child psychology and child development that maybe my wife and I are doing a little bit better than our parents because we have more information. Not because we’re better people, not because we are trying to do something different, but because we have learned from the books we’ve read from the training we’ve attended, from the supports we’ve received.
[00:19:31] The inputs that we have given to our children have been shaped by all of the information given to us by the foster-and-adopt agencies, by my training as a teacher, by my wife’s experiences substitute teaching.
[00:19:47] We have tried to be good teachers. Good role models. Good people overall.
[00:19:56] I’d like to think that The Autistic Me is a good parent and will continue to be a better parent every day.
[00:20:04] You’ve been listening to The Autistic Me Podcast. I am Christopher Scott Wyatt, and I look forward to our next meeting.
[00:20:11] Thank you.
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