Quick Thought: Parenting A Neurodivergent Kid Can Be Hard, Too
Can we simultaneously celebrate neurodiversity and validate how it can be hard for the people who love us?
I wrote this reply to someone the other day. They had highlighted a line I’d written about embracing the neurodiversity paradigm and rejecting the idea that autistic brains are pathological. I do stand by that idea—but I also think that, in our celebration of neurodiversity, we can sometimes—hopefully unintentionally—invalidate the (many) hard experiences that can come with loving or caring for a person with an atypical neurotype.
Here’s what I wrote:
“I wrestle with this, because I absolutely know lovely humans who embrace the neurodiversity paradigm AND who’ve had their lives turned upside down by trying to cope with the very intense needs of their autistic kids. It can feel like those ideas are in tension — the idea that all minds are beautiful and worthy of respect and validation, AND the idea that parents of autistic kids sometimes experience very real pain and loss as they try to meet the needs of their neurodivergent kids while also taking care of themselves and living the lives *they* want to live.
“I guess what I’m saying here is that I do think it’s important to move away from a pathology paradigm — but I think it’s critical that we do it while validating that embracing a loved one’s neurodiversity can be a complicated, messy business, especially when you’re doing it in spite of the broader culture, which pushes all of us to conform to neurotypical expectations.”
Food for thought. ❤
