‘I think my partner and I make a great team … and yet having an autistic child makes you doubt your parenting abilities.’‘I think my partner and I make a great team … and yet having an autistic child makes you doubt your parenting abilities.’Attention deficit hyperactivity disorderhere’s something wrong with me!” my seven-year-old daughter sobbed, back in 2018. “Honestly, there isn’t,” I said, giving her a hug. “You’re just a bit sensitive, a bit anxious.
Often it feels like we’re living in an alternative reality, where we can’t be a true version of ourselves with our own kid My partner, being a complementary therapist, never wanted to go the drugs route that some of our friends went with their neurodivergent children. He changed his mind when our daughter reached 11. Watching her growing anguish and inability to cope with life became too much to bear.
In the meantime, we have learned not to make demands of her. We suggest going out for a walk, or to the cinema or to school, which she has been refusing to attend for most of this year out of sheer anxiety, but we don’t push it. We try not to react when she calls us names and swears at us. We don’t make a big thing of her self-harming . We try not to get upset when she says she wants to kill herself, or us. We do call the emergency services when she becomes violent, though.
Yet often it feels like we’re living in an alternative reality, where we can’t be a true version of ourselves with our own kid. She calls me a fucking bitch; I ask her if she fancies a piece of toast. It’s wearying to walk on eggshells for fear of arguments and abuse, and painful to listen to tortured monologues about wanting to die or self-harm. I can’t believe my ears sometimes.