What do you wish you’d taught your child earlier, now they’re a neurodiverse adult?

[Treaclebear]

I’m a mum to a young neurodiverse child and often wonder what skills or lessons will really help them later in life. For those of you whose neurodiverse children are now teenagers or adults what do you wish you’d taught or focused on earlier?

I’d love to hear what has made the biggest difference for your child’s independence, wellbeing, and happiness as they’ve grown.

I was referring to the actual wording.. Not the support if that wasn’t clear.

Following. Genuinely might enrol my child into cubs after reading through the advice so far.

You can get elastic laces, if he wants/needs to wear lace-up shoes or trainers. They come in black or white or lots of different colours.

You do them up (might take a few goes to get the right tension - they need to hold well enough onto his feet for him to walk comfortably without them slipping, but still have enough 'give' so that he can get them on and off without undoing them.). Knot the bow so that it won't come undone.

And that's it. He now has lace-up shoes which he can pull on and off.

Absolute gamechanger for my son.

I wish I could have afforded individual lessons for learning to swim, especially for DS2 who was twice the age of some in his group class his progress was so slow ( he still isn’t good). I’ve learnt that finding the right teacher ( and sometimes it’s me!) is more important for success than sheer perseverance. DS2 is now learning how to drive and decided for himself to swap in instructors when the first one didn’t get his learning style.

DS2 took ages to learn to tie his shoelaces, he still uses the bunny ears method at 24.

I suspect the fact that you care enough to ask means you're already doing a pretty good job 🙂 But neurodiverse is a pretty vague term, it very much depends on what condition they have and the severity? The lives of for instance someone with severe autism and learning disabilities and someone who is 'high functioning' for want of a better word are going to be drastically different, and helpful advice for the parent of one is often going to be at best useless or at worst deeply hurtful to the parent of another.

what a horrible comment. You seem to be minimising the struggles and challenges faced by autistic people because they are ‘not autistic enough’.
Just because some don’t ‘look’ autistic, doesn’t mean they are not struggling or masking.
Is your comment talking about autistic people with learning difficulties or communication impairments?

I am in a similar situation but my sons are slightly younger. The thing is that they are literally at capacity right now managing school and personal hygiene. Trying to teach them too many home skills is too much. I know that I am judged by people in real life for this. I am not sure if my son will ever live independently and that is hard to face and scary.

I work with adults with disabilities and I could write a list of important skills that they need. However some skills that are seen as important like cooking can be outsourced like meal delivery or are done by the workers in disability accommodation.

Likely the poster has a child diagnosed autistic who has severe additional needs and may be non verbal for example. It's very hard for such parents to read of others using the same term to describe children who can aim for independent living and it would be disingenuous to suggest the struggles are comparable.

They're probably right that differentiating terminology is required by the medical community.

However, the OP never mentioned autism so their frustration is misdirected.

1, Organisational skills, use planning charts, teach them how to use their own daily planning chart. I swear by them.
Small lists.

2, Improving executive functioning skills, the confidence to not care when their anxiety is high or they're being mocked. Haven't worked these out how yet, I'm quietly over protective as a result.

I read it as the despair of a parent of a child with what they call Autism type 3 in the USA - very high support needs often without any spoken or written language nor signing, communication through non verbal sounds and body language (perhaps leading a caregiver towards what they need or running away being the first communication that something is overwhelming) moderate to severe learning disabilities/ considerable developmental delays/ cognitive disability in adults.

It's understandable that parents caring for teenagers and older children who present in this way sometimes get fed up being told by people on the spectrum who are able to type their opinions on an internet forum and therefore whose needs and experiences are very different, that they're the enemy, they don't have their child's interests at heart and should "leave them alone" or that "not everyone on the spectrum looks autistic" - nobody "looks" autistic - it's not a genetic syndrome with distinctive facial features!

That's a disingenuous thing to post - the person you're replying to clearly already knows that and wishes it were otherwise, probably because it's so difficult for parents to make themselves clear using current terminology.

Recognising they’re ND sooner and finding the right environments for them. DC2 in particular found free flow in preschool and reception very overwhelming and went from confident at home to becoming shy and withdrawn. I wish I’d seen their need for structure and a smaller nurturing environment earlier and found a different early years setting rather than assuming the nearest outstanding school was the best. With DC1 - their sixth form college identified a processing issue and got them extra time in exams which was a a game changer - 4/5’s at gcse became A’s at a level.
Also only just starting to realise similar traits in myself and how that effects my parenting due to similar issues in my childhood.

Great thread, thanks.

Neurodiversity = everyone (including neurotypicals). Neurodivergent = autism, ADHD etc. You can't have a "neurodiverse" person. Sorry to be pedantic!

Great thread.

I have a "Level 2" autism diagnosis - my assessment was with a highly regarded UK based assessor in the past year, so I'm surprised at "levels" not being seen as widely used in the UK.

I suspect my eldest (8) is autistic too, and we are getting the ball rolling on assessment. I suppose when I reflect on her and on my own upbringing, the thing that comes to mind clearest is strategies around identifying sources of stress or anxiety and thinking about appropriate coping strategies. I would have told you I was fine as a teen, but I was self harming and pulling hair out of my body daily for hours from age 13 or so. I now see my daughter talking about non-specific tummy aches and similar, and I want to explore the possibility that she is anxious/nervous but (as I was) unable to connect the physical pain to her state of mind.

The other thing, which I hope is easier generally now, is around acceptance and not feeling pressure to fit into a particular mould in order to be accepted or popular. I certainly felt that pressure. It seems like (I guess with the internet and social media) it's ok to be into a particular sub-genre of music, or spot trains, or whatever other obsessive interest, or to dress without regard for fashion, but when I was growing up I felt this kind of pressure acutely.

I have an adult autistic sibling and also young autistic kids so this is a topic I’ve thought about a lot.

The biggest thing I wish my autistic sibling knew/could cope with is that actually the world is often stressful, for all of us. Part of life is doing things that are difficult or stressful or unpleasant and finding ways to cope with them.

Instead they have this default assumption that if something is stressful it is too difficult for them, and nobody can possibly expect it of them. Coupled with their difficulty seeing other people’s perspectives and difficulty picking up on social cues, this means they constantly expect other people to do things for them that are actually unreasonable, and that drives people away.

Every time they found something difficult they gave up, and so their life has become smaller and smaller and the demands on us as their family have become more insane. So a big part of what i teach my kids is about resilience and dealing with difficulties or stress without putting a massive burden on others.

For me personally I wish I had been taught about the different styles of learning, e.g. visual/auditory/Kinesthetic and to advocate for myself on how I learned best not what the other person preferred

Now as an adult I just say put it in an email, or with people who are say are dyslexic do a bullet point list and confirm after they've finished talking

I've also worked with ND people and no one not even them told me how to assign/handover work to them in a way that works for them. In the end the mismatch of styles and the anxiety it caused, and additional workload was a key driver in me not advancing in my job and leaving.

I wish I had had the confidence to pull back from teaching anything at all about self-regulation, and simply focused on giving him solid calm love during his crises of demand-avoidant anxiety meltdowns.

I was constantly chasing the 'strategy' that would control these meltdowns. He sensed my anxiety, my desperate lack of acceptance of his challenging behaviour. No strategy would have worked. I should have just been calm and solid, modelling love and safety.

I don't know whether that would have been possible. He was so insightful about my feelings, so caught up in his tensions, that he may well have sabotaged any such attempt . But I have a feeling that there would have been a better long-term outcome, with less depression and self-criticism on his part.

What helped you work through that and what helped you develop creating healthy boundaries in relationships, identifying real friendships, etc?

How did you improve their executive function?

There's a useful book called Smart But Scattered for executive functioning.

I just want to say thank you to everyone who’s shared on here. Reading through has brought up a lot for me.

I went through bullying all through my school years and grew up in an abusive home, and being undiagnosed has affected my whole life my relationships, self-confidence, everything. That’s why I’m here on this thread. I’m scared for my own kids having these same differences, and I’m desperate to learn what I can do now to give them the chances I didn’t have.

I’m sorry if anything I’ve written has upset anyone — I know everyone’s struggles are different and in some cases much harder. I really do mean this from a place of hope: I want my children not to carry the same shame and suffering I did. If I can lessen that in any way for them, that’s all I want.

I’m ND and have ND adult children who have all had serious mental health struggles.

Id say to focus on trying not to push round pegs into square holes is key. I kind of expected mine to get on with everything because I had and actually ended up pushing and enabling masking. Understanding that they need to follow their own individual journey that might not be linear like everybody else is key.

Most importantly I’d focus on helping them to be kind to them themselves whilst learning to listen to their mental health, sensory and difficulty needs.That and an ability to develop healthy coping strategies and an understanding of what different emotions feel like is key. Research the spoons theory and get them used to applying it.

This is beautiful to read.

That they are neurodivergent, not “neurodiverse”. Neurodiverse is a general term for a population or group of people who differ from each other. An individual is neurodivergent.

It sounds picky but it’s very frustrating when people don’t even use the right terminology to describe us!