What I’ve Learned About Myself Through Raising Autistic Children
I used to think I was pretty good at knowing myself.
And then I had kids. Autistic kids. And everything I thought I knew promptly jumped out the window.
Raising Blake and Matthew has been the most chaotic, exhausting, joyful, heart-stretching thing I’ve ever done. And somewhere in the middle of the meltdowns and the school meetings and the sensory nightmare that is a supermarket on a Saturday afternoon, I started learning things about myself that I genuinely don’t think I’d have discovered any other way.
Some of it was lovely. Some of it was uncomfortable. And some of it knocked me completely sideways.
I’m more patient than I ever thought I was. And also, occasionally, a lot less patient than I’d like to admit.
Before the boys, I’d have described myself as reasonably patient. I could wait for things. I didn’t lose my temper easily. I was fine.
Ha.
Parenting autistic children is a masterclass in patience… the kind of patience that doesn’t come naturally, that has to be built, slowly, through thousands of moments where you choose (or try to choose) calm over reaction. Through explaining the same thing twelve different ways because the first eleven didn’t land. Through watching a meltdown unfold and reminding yourself… this isn’t defiance, this is dysregulation. He’s not giving you a hard time. He’s having a hard time.
I’ve grown so much in that space. I genuinely have.
But I’d be lying if I said I got it right every time. There have been days where I’ve sat in the bathroom for five minutes just so I could breathe. There have been moments where I’ve said exactly the wrong thing and immediately known it. Parenting is humbling like that. You find out very quickly where your edges are.
I learned that I’d been masking my whole life — I just didn’t have a word for it.
This one took a while to land. And when it did, it landed hard.
The more I learned about autism for my boys’ sake, the more I kept reading things and thinking… wait. That’s me. That’s always been me.
Coming home wrung out after a day of being around people. Taking things too literally. Feeling like everyone else had been given a social instruction manual that somehow got lost before it reached me. Never quite understanding why the world felt so much louder, so much more much, than it seemed to for everyone else.
I just thought I was a bit odd. Or anxious. Or… as someone once helpfully told me… dippy.
Turns out I was autistic. I’d spent decades doing the work of fitting in without even realising that’s what I was doing. Watching people. Copying how they behaved. Smoothing my edges so they didn’t catch on anything. And by the time I got home at the end of the day, there was nothing left.
Finding that out… properly understanding it… was strange and sad and also, genuinely, a relief. Because suddenly I wasn’t broken. I was just me. And me made a lot more sense than I’d given her credit for.
I’ve learned that the things I was most ashamed of are often the things that make me a better mum to these particular boys.
My heightened sensitivity. The fact that I can walk into a room and be overwhelmed by a smell before I’ve even clocked what it is. The way I feel things very deeply and take a long time to process them.
I used to see these as problems to manage. Embarrassing quirks to hide.
Now? They’re part of why I get it. Why I can sit with Blake when his senses are in overdrive and not minimise it, because I know what it feels like when the world is too much. Why I can understand, on a bone-deep level, that what Matthew’s feeling is real… even when the people around us can’t quite see it.
My sensitivities aren’t a flaw. They’re a feature. I just didn’t know that until my boys came along and showed me.
I’ve learned what it means to truly advocate for someone.
Before the boys, I was the person who said sorry too much. Who softened every sentence. Who worried constantly about being too much trouble.
Motherhood… specifically, this kind of motherhood… burned that out of me. Slowly, and not without difficulty, but it happened.
When you watch your child be dismissed, misread, underestimated… when a professional tells you it’s all in your head when you know something isn’t right… something shifts. The apologetic version of you has to step aside, because there’s someone in the room who needs you to speak up.
I have sat in meetings and politely but immovably held my ground. I have pushed for assessments, for support, for people to see my boys the way I see them. I have been the person who advocates, consistently, even when it’s uncomfortable.
And here’s the thing… I’ve started doing it for myself too. Slowly. Still learning. But I’m getting there.
I’ve learned that joy is found in the specific, not the general.
Before I became a parent, I thought joy was the big stuff. Achievements. Milestones. The moments you photograph.
My boys have taught me otherwise.
Joy is Matthew’s face when he discovers someone who actually wants to hear a fun fact about Russia or Iceland. It’s Blake belly-laughing at something ridiculous, that laugh that takes over his whole body. It’s the two of them, arguing about something completely daft in the back seat, and realising this… this right here… is everything.
There’s a quote from the film Parenthood I keep coming back to. The grandmother talks about loving the rollercoaster over the merry-go-round… because you get more out of it. The fear and the thrill and the sheer aliveness of it all, together, at once.
That’s this. It’s not always easy. It’s not always pretty. But by God, we get more out of it.
I don’t have a neat, tidy conclusion for this post. Because the truth is, I’m still learning. Still unpicking things. Still occasionally getting it wrong and trying again the next day.
But I think that’s the point.
Raising my boys hasn’t just made me a better mum. It’s made me a better version of myself… more patient, more honest, more willing to understand who I actually am rather than who I was trying to be.
And I wouldn’t change a single bit of it.
Even the Saturdays in the supermarket.
(Well. Maybe those just a little.)
