I’ll be completely honest with you — I used to be absolutely terrible at celebrating the small stuff.
When you’re in survival mode, which is a place a lot of us autism parents know far too well, you don’t always stop to mark the moment. You just keep moving. You get through today and then you gear yourself up to get through tomorrow.
But somewhere along the way, I started to realise I was missing something important.
Because the small stuff? It’s actually not small at all.
A new word. Eye contact with a stranger that didn’t end in meltdown. Getting through a full school day. Eating a meal without a battle. To the outside world, those things might seem ordinary — barely worth a mention. But if you’re raising an autistic child, you know exactly how much effort, courage, and sheer determination it takes to get there. You know what’s behind that moment. And that’s worth celebrating. Loudly, if you like.
When we stop and say I see what you just did, and I’m so proud of you, we’re doing more than just being nice. We’re showing our children that their effort matters. That progress — however it looks — is enough. And that is something that stays with them.
Setbacks are a different thing entirely, and I won’t pretend they’re easy. They’re not. When my boys hit a wall — when something they’d been working so hard towards just didn’t come together — it was gutting. For them and for me.
But I’ve learned — slowly, and with a fair bit of trial and error — that how we respond to those moments matters just as much as how we respond to the wins.
Because a setback isn’t a verdict. It’s just information.
What did we learn? What can we try differently? What does this tell us about what they need next? When we ask those questions instead of quietly grieving what didn’t happen, we shift something. For our kids, and honestly, for ourselves too.
The goal was never perfection. It was never a straight line from A to B. It was always just — keep going. Try again. Find another way in.
And when they do? Celebrate it. Every single time.
