Shout out to other autistic people with autistic children

I am an autistic mum, I have two children and my son is under SENCO and referred for autism assessment. I know he is autistic, 100% no doubt about it, other parents randomly came up to me not knowing I was autistic and said to me they had autistic children and noticed my son and thought he was autistic too. My daughter is very young at the moment but noticed she has been following a similar pattern of gross development delay as my son. My husband also has ADHD so we look for signs of that too in the children. I know for me personally some of my autistic traits overlap with his ADHD traits. 

What we've been doing is making sure that our children's needs are met, good example we won't force them to eat certain foods and pass it off as being fussy. I will always give an alternative. To some people I'm sure it would appear I was giving in, but I know from experience as a 37 year old woman I still do not like the foods I rejected when I was 3/4 years old. I got starved because I was seen as fussy, resulted in me being taken away from my mother. So being an autistic mum to potential autistic children (until he finally gets seen on waiting list) I have lived experience of being an autistic person and I see that as an advantage to them. Same for my husband with ADHD, he was treated appalling growing up and he remembers it all vividly, so he knows what should be done to help etc.

From the negative side of things, I often feel like I'm a failure because I can't do things I see other people do with their children. I've tried and I end up having a panic attack in public places and crying and it becomes too much. So we do things that takes everyone's needs into consideration. There are times when my husband tells me go upstairs and stay up there for the night and relax because he knows I'm experiencing sensory overload and burnout. It helps me massively and I always feel guilty for it because it feels at times that he is both their mum and dad because I struggle. And no matter how much I say this to him he understands and tells me not to worry as he understands (he experiences the same types of sensory overload and burnouts as me but from an ADHD perspective). 

So yeah, taking each day as it comes.

I am an autistic mum, I have two children and my son is under SENCO and referred for autism assessment. I know he is autistic, 100% no doubt about it, other parents randomly came up to me not knowing I was autistic and said to me they had autistic children and noticed my son and thought he was autistic too. My daughter is very young at the moment but noticed she has been following a similar pattern of gross development delay as my son. My husband also has ADHD so we look for signs of that too in the children. I know for me personally some of my autistic traits overlap with his ADHD traits. 

What we've been doing is making sure that our children's needs are met, good example we won't force them to eat certain foods and pass it off as being fussy. I will always give an alternative. To some people I'm sure it would appear I was giving in, but I know from experience as a 37 year old woman I still do not like the foods I rejected when I was 3/4 years old. I got starved because I was seen as fussy, resulted in me being taken away from my mother. So being an autistic mum to potential autistic children (until he finally gets seen on waiting list) I have lived experience of being an autistic person and I see that as an advantage to them. Same for my husband with ADHD, he was treated appalling growing up and he remembers it all vividly, so he knows what should be done to help etc.

From the negative side of things, I often feel like I'm a failure because I can't do things I see other people do with their children. I've tried and I end up having a panic attack in public places and crying and it becomes too much. So we do things that takes everyone's needs into consideration. There are times when my husband tells me go upstairs and stay up there for the night and relax because he knows I'm experiencing sensory overload and burnout. It helps me massively and I always feel guilty for it because it feels at times that he is both their mum and dad because I struggle. And no matter how much I say this to him he understands and tells me not to worry as he understands (he experiences the same types of sensory overload and burnouts as me but from an ADHD perspective). 

So yeah, taking each day as it comes.