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Growth Happens in the Rest — A Year After My Late Autism Diagnosis
A year after my late autism diagnosis, one person knows. What the year gave me, what it didn’t, and what training taught me about rest.
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A Trail of Small Questions — How Our Son With Selective Mutism Found His Voice
For over a year our son did not speak a word at school. This is the small, unglamorous work, over two and a half years, that slowly helped him find his voice.
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The Morning He Wouldn’t Let Go: When Your Child Cries Every Morning Before School
The night before a school day, the question always comes. What the crying at the bus door was really telling me, and what slowly helped.
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Autistic Burnout or Depression? A Lifetime of Not Knowing
For years I couldn’t tell whether I was depressed or simply spent past what rest could reach. Here’s how I learnt to ask the difference.
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The Long Way to the Room — Getting Assessed for Autism and ADHD as an Adult, from the First Doubt to the Day After
What the adult autism and ADHD assessment is really like: how to find an assessor, what it costs in money, time and energy, how to prepare, and the day after.
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Co-Regulation Is Not a Conversation: Why You Can’t Talk a Neurodivergent Child Out of a Meltdown
Co-regulation isn’t something you talk your way into. What actually calms a neurodivergent child mid-meltdown, from a mother who learnt presence beside the dying.
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The Faults That Were Never Faults
My eldest would rub at a mistake until the page wore through. I had spent forty years calling the same thing in myself a flaw.
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After-School Restraint Collapse: Why Your Child Melts Down at Home
He held it together all day, then fell apart the moment he got home. What I learnt about after-school restraint collapse, and why the collapse is proof of safety, not failure.
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The First 90 Seconds of a Meltdown: What I Had to Stop Doing
We took our masks off in the entryway. What I did in the ninety seconds that followed decided the afternoon, and for years I got them wrong.
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The Disclosure Dilemma: When Telling a School Your Child Is Gifted Feels Like Boasting
My twice-exceptional son was driving in the slow lane. What changed when I told the school there was a race-car engine under the ordinary.
Essays
Personal essays on late diagnosis and neurodivergent parenting, in one place.
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