Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello, just wondering if there is anyone here who has an autism diagnosis and is a parent?
I received my diagnosis at the age of 35, it was liberating and a relief that there was a reason to what I felt was happening to me, now it is something I'm struggling with.
I am ccurrently experiencing a period of burn out and have taken leave from work as a result. The largest stressor and trigger unfortunately are my children. They are aged between 2 and 7 and typically with young children very demanding.
If anyone is in a similar situatio how do you manage? Taking leave from motherhood is not an option.
Thank you for reading. Afer many deep dives on google I think here is my best chance of finding some help.
Emma
Hello this organisation may be of use:
https://www.autisticparentsuk.org/
I hope this helps.
I am autistic and the parent of two, now adult, children the elder has ADHD, the younger is autistic. I would say that both were always relatively well-behaved in public, but we had problems with tantrums (pre-school age) with the elder, and food pickiness, anxiety/attachment issues and poor sleeping (did not sleep through the night until 4 years old) with the younger. Both are bright academically.
My wife is neurotypical. When we married, my wife earned a bigger wage than me and continued working while our eldest was young. I would take them to the nursery attached to the university I worked at. However, when our younger child was born her lack of sleeping and over-attachment to my wife persuaded her to stop work. When our youngest started school my wife retrained as a teacher which helped with looking after the kids after school and in the holidays. Luckily, I had a job that was very autism-friendly, biomedical researcher, so I never had a problem with burn-out. Having children changed my wife's priorities away from a career towards bringing them up. I became the sole breadwinner for a number of years and the major breadwinner thereafter. We solved our problems by reverting to the old stereotype, I'm afraid.
Hi there. You may find that you get more responses if you also post in the Autistic Adults section. :-) I don't know of how many of us look in this section regularly.
I am autistic and a parent. I am further on than you and have found that things do get better. Mine are 20 and 14 now.
I survived those times you are going through in a couple of ways:
- I used nursery until they were school age while I was at work, even though this meant that I earned basically nothing.
- I have a partner who gave me huge amounts of support - he cooks and cleans.
Looking back I think I would have avoided some things:
- I found mother and toddler groups and children's parties incredibly stressful and think I would have done them less. I was lucky to make 2 friends from that time but I think most people just didn't get me.
PM me if I can help in any way.
Michelle