My husband and I wanted to raise our daughter differently than how we were raised. I was following a sweet parenting influencer who was having regular meltdowns when she was little. I realized that the techniques that worked for neurotypical kids didn’t work for my neurodivergent child.
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I grew up with an authoritarian parenting style. My husband’s upbringing was strict and he often punished me. I distinctly remember that he frequently told me, “Stop crying, or I’ll give you something to cry about.”
From personal experience, fear-based, punitive parenting does not lead to healthy adults who are in control of their emotions. That’s why respectful, empathetic, gentle parenting that acknowledges a child’s feelings was really appealing to me.
I researched gentle parenting.
Early on in my daughter’s life, I started following gentle parenting influences. That included Big Little Feelings, which debuted on Instagram just as we were entering the difficult early years. Although I had years of experience working with children, my daughter’s meltdowns felt overwhelming and unmanageable. I didn’t like the concept of timeouts. I also didn’t like how her explosive reactions irritated me.
I purchased Big Little Feeling’s “Winning in Early Childhood” course. Because, as they say, I wanted to find the magic words to quell my daughter’s tantrums. I hoped that learning the scripts they provided would transform my daughter into a more cooperative toddler and me into a calmer, more patient mother. But after watching all the videos and trying to implement the advice, most of it didn’t seem to work for my daughter. And after a while, it started to feel silly to be OK with her feelings.
The next most influential person whose advice I tried to follow was Dr. Becky. I waited for months for her book to become available at the library. I ended up buying the audiobook because the waiting list was long. I spent hours listening to techniques I tried (and failed) to implement on my daughter, some of which seemed to upset her even more. I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong.
By the end of the book, Dr. Becky admitted that the behavioral techniques discussed in the book were ineffective with neurodivergent children. I wasted 8 hours (and a lot of bops by a dysregulated, angry child) reading a book that wasn’t even written for her. I was pissed.
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I thought the problem was
After years of trying to be a kind parent in the style of influencers like Big Little Feelings and Dr. Becky, I was beginning to believe that I was the problem. If their expert advice didn’t work, then clearly I was just a bad mother. In the end, I found out it was because my daughter was autistic. As a result, advice developed for neurotypical children was usually not appropriate for her.
What’s frustrating is that these influencers seem to be selling one-size-fits-all behavioral techniques, especially to neurodivergent children, when no such thing exists. Even in neurotypical children, there is no one-size-fits-all method for dealing with difficult behaviors. Its strictness seems reminiscent of the strict parenting style my husband and I grew up with, refusing to acknowledge that every child is an individual.
I changed the way I raised her. My daughter values consistency and is very particular about schedules and time, so we try to keep things as structured as possible for her and recently introduced visual schedules and timers. It means to. It can be very frustrating, but we also have to be flexible because she may not react to something the same way she did yesterday.
I don’t know what label to label my parenting style these days. It’s probably mostly authoritative, a parenting style that focuses on setting boundaries but still being responsive and cooperative. Sometimes it feels like throwing things at a wall and seeing what sticks.
But I’m done following kind parenting experts and taking their advice on how to raise my kids. The parenting choices I make are customized to my daughter’s own specific needs and struggles. And as my daughter grows and changes, my parenting methods are constantly evolving.
