Why, child? Just why.

There are a few!

Some are my deepest secrets, so please be kind, okay?

You can, however, raise a shitty adult if you fail to teach them by the time they're grown that other people's needs and wants also matter. Not matter "more" than their own - but matter. The same as their own needs and wants matter.

A lot of people seem to think that these are two sides of the same coin, but they are absolutely not.

A child raised with abundant kindness is more likely to show that kindness to others, in my experience.

It might take time. More than has already passed, but it will get better.

than has already passed, but

it will get better.

Young kids are also a lot more socially aware than people give them credit for. Young children are perfectly aware that adults don't take them seriously. They know when their parents don't actually like them. They listen and remember when adults talk about them while they're in the room. Kids will develop basic abilities to charm etc. from babyhood and will begin experimenting with social norms and concepts of deception, appropriate information, and acceptable language and attitudes in toddlerhood. By the time a kid is five or six, they have solid social strategies for relating to adults and separate ones fr relating to their peers, that they'll continue to refine for the rest of their lives. They will also say completely off the wall shit because they don't have the context to know what is and isn't considered super fucked up yet.

By the time a kid is eight or nine, their main difference from adults is in experience, interests, and ability for long-term focus. An eight year old can think as intelligently and coherently as a thirty year old, they just have less experience and information to draw from, and are likely interested in very different things. They're also likely still slightly hamstrung by vocabulary and literacy, though much less so than a younger kid.

Your best resource is gonna be other autistic people! Seriously, don't fall victim to "autism mommies" who make it their whole personality- he's still just your son his brain just works a lil different than most kids!

Talk to other autistic people whenever you can- be open and honest about wanting to learn how his brain works.

There were only so many times I could say, "Jeeze, this kid is me, but with thirty fewer years of coping mechanisms" and "he's definitely autistic" before the lightbulb went on, lol.

I had a lot of respect and trust for my mother when I was small. Now, obviously I can only remember back to being maybe 4-5 and can’t extrapolate earlier than that, but if my mom said “STOP” or “NO” I can’t remember ever sincerely believing “I should stop because my Mother Demands It,” but rather “I should stop because Mom Knows Things and tells me to stop when There Is a Reason.” The older I got, the more opportunities my mom had to model this by showing trust and respect back to me by giving me responsibilities or letting me make some decisions.

Kids only have so many years of childhood, and then they have to be adults for the rest of it. I don't want adulthood to come as a nasty shock. So we talk about what's coming and how what I am asking of them (eg chores) will help them prepare (ie by teaching them how to do household tasks, how to organize their responsibilities, how to balance work and play, etc).

the kid who replaced his hard G sounds with soft ones, leaving me incapable of thinking of glasses as anything other than jlasses

kid who would holler "DID" any time she finished her work no matter how many times we told her to just raise her hand

kid who began her scary stories with "once a time" and her friend who began his with "paw time"

middle schooler i had during student teaching who pronounced magritte as "mah-gritty"

the kid who said "i got boogies comin out my nose" while sobbing and the kid who said "theres his puddle of cry" while describing a drawing, both of whom i think of when im crying

kid who said that if he was 80 he would get big and turn grandpa

kid who, for no reason in particular, would just say "like a little feet" as a standalone phrase in relation to nothing

he's rude, crude annoying and just an asshole. BLATANTLY!!

and while i've never punched him in the jaw for it like he may or may not deserve, holy fucking moly. i have wanted to. but my mom and dad are just like "oh he's just doing it for your reaction." and IT IS FRUSTRATING.

i want to punt his ass across the room because he wants a reaction, i'd give it to him.

I wish I'd realized she was lonely and craving my attention, and the ONLY way she could get it was by trying to get a reaction. ANY reaction. And now I've witnessed it in my own kids. The younger ones just want to be accepted and loved and have their older siblings attention and affection, and if they can't get it in a good way, they will settle for negative attention over none.

well TBF the first trimester of pregnancy is SHIT. it’s where you probably feel absolutely awful, but you don’t get a seat on public transportation because you don’t have a visible bump, so people won’t give you one. And if you take one then a lady with a cane looks at you pointedly and probably goes home and writes a thinkpiece about entitled millennials and you’re like “I’m pregnant,” defensively, head spinning, except you’re not supposed to tell anyone yet.

I mean, yeah, that sucks hard. It might get better. If it doesn’t, I have faith in you. If it gets to a point you can’t handle then trust your instincts, and get whatever partner(s) you have to help you, and get yourself to a medical institution of some sort and scream.

Many people have an experience where the first trimester is a challenge because of the hormonal and physiological and immunological fighting, but they have a nice experience in the second and/or third trimesters. Apparently one may get a “burst of energy” and the fabled “glow.” It’s when some birthgivers claim to become particularly interested in sex, and take photos of their cute little bumps, and take up pregnancy yoga or a childbirth class or some other thing that makes them feel excited/expectant/proud. I can’t promise you’ll feel any of that, but hopefully that’s something for you to feel curious about.

As for the end result, having the baby will be an entirely different country, but once you have it, you’ll be in that country! And before then, you can’t control it! So you may cultivate some serenity, or you may panic, or you may quietly arrange for paid help to come to your house for the first few weeks after the baby is born, to take care of you.

If you have the money I do recommend doing that. I didn’t have the money, but I had really planned to do it, because I didn’t have a scrap of family or anyone to come round and help, and I didn’t think I could do it. But the baby came early and I didn’t have the money but it turned out I could do it so it all worked out. I also had a very good birth partner in Dr Glass, who cooked me a steak that I still think about today.

If I’d had the money I would also have hired a doula. A doula is an experienced person, usually a woman, whose job is to be calm and comforting and wise and supportive for you during pregnancy and labor.

There are also many books on the topic, written by Actual Authorities on pregnancy and childbirth. They are authorities and I am not. “What to expect when you’re expecting” is a classic, and surprisingly, when you open it, it doesn’t just say “sickness pain, unending horribleness and pain and grim shit, THAT is what to expect, fuck off.” It’s actually an entire book about what you might expect! And it says things like “you may have a burst of energy.” So that can be nice. That book is like an antidote to Parenting Hyenas and their General Uselessness (“Expect to feel awful! Forever! Hahahaha”), although it is just full of Heterosexual Humor and stupid wordplay that made me feel violent. There are also books that get into the Science of Pregnancy, and they can be comforting.

I don’t know if you find The Science of Pregnancy comforting, but here is some to explain what you may be feeling, but there is a content warning for Pregnancy Loss. So if that feels too sensitive, then please stop here, and go with my best wishes. Send me another ask in a few months and tell me how it’s going, ok?

DO YOU KNOW ONE REASON WHY YOU PROBABLY FEEL SHIT, it’s because your body is at war with the fetus, testing it for weakness. If the fetus wins the fight, then it gets to develop. If it doesn’t, the pregnancy ends. Your body quite naturally has a tendency to regard the fetus as a foreign body, and the uterus is actually a harsh and unforgiving place, designed to flush out impurities (including flawed embryos) in a monthly blood sacrifice. The fetus, meanwhile, is fighting back hard. “There is literally a foreign body inside us,” says your immune system suspiciously.

“Fuck offfff,” says the fetus, disabling any system that looks at it funny.The sperm donor’s DNA is roiling and boiling and fighting hard: “KEEP MY DNA ALIVE AND INSIDE YOU,” it roars at your body.

Your own DNA contribution to the fetus is going “Calm down, body, this is one of ours, it’s totally part of us! Also, fetus, let’s not grow too big or too fast - we don’t want to harm the birthgiver.”“GROW BIG AS FAST AS POSSIBLE TO MAKE IT SAFELY PAST THE FIRST TRIMESTER,” says the sperm donor DNA inside the fetus.The sperm donor DNA is invested in the survival of the fetus, hoping to shape the best possible fetus. The birthgiver DNA is invested in the survival of the birthgiver. The birthgiver’s body will terminate threats if it identifies them in time. Somehow, in this competition, a human fetus is prepared. The first trimester - the window in which most pregnancies are lost - is a battleground.The fetus and your own body are dashing about flipping switches. Your body is running a checklist of checks and balances to protect you from wasting investment in carrying a “flawed” fetus, or allowing the parasite to deplete your resources too much. The fetus is running about trying to flip all the switches back, trying to pass every test, and redirect all of the life support systems to itself.Morning sickness is associated with stronger fetuses that are less likely to miscarry. By destroying your appetite, the fetus protects itself; you won’t be eating any bitter herbs or dangerous shellfish if you’re too sick to eat.“But we can’t destroy our health,” your body shouts, fighting it. “We need food to live.”“Live on your fat stores,” the fetus says sweetly, if it’s a powerful fetus, doing a manual override if it’s REALLY powerful, and preventing you from being anywhere near any form of meat. “That’s what they’re for. Me.”“That’s not sustainable,” your body says, taking systems abruptly off autopilot and frantically trying to put passwords on them, so that you feel like shit and catch a horrible cold.“It doesn’t matter if it’s sustainable,” says the fetus, “All that matters is my survival. I don’t NEED siblings,” it adds, changing the password for your immune system.“What I DO need is all of your blood,” it goes on, politely putting in a request for increased blood supplies, with your own signature forged on it. The bureaucracy of your body glances at it and signs it off. You feel extremely faint, and take a seat on public transportation without actually meaning to, because it is already occupied. The lady with a cane sneers at you pointedly. And maybe you write to me. If it is of any comfort whatsoever: you are host to a battleground, at the beginning of a war. It is a war all of your foremothers - and you - won. Most gloriously.

I explained all this to my therapist, because I didn't know if this was more related to my then-unnoticed autism, or to my relationship with my parents at the time (we had issues less/unrelated to neurodivergency). She told me something interesting.

In children's autism assessments, a common test is to give them a straightforward task that they cannot reasonably perform, like opening an overtight jar. The "real" test is to see, when they realize that they cannot do it on their own, if they approach a caregiver for help. Children that do not seek help are more likely to be autistic than those that do.

This aligns with the compulsory independence I've noticed to be common in autistic adults, particularly articulated by those with lower support needs and/or who were evaluated later in life. It just genuinely does not occur to us to ask for help, to the point that we abandon many tasks that we could easily perform with minor assistance. I had assumed it was due to a shared common social trauma (ie bad experiences with asking for help in the past), but the fact that this trait is a childhood test metric hints at something deeper.

My therapist told me that the extremely pathologizing main theory is that this has something to do with theory of mind, that is doesn't occur to us that other people may have skills that we do not. I can't speak for my early childhood self, or for all autistic people, but I don't buy this. Even if I'm aware that someone else has knowledge that I do not (as with my parents understanding of our TV), asking for help still doesn't present itself as an option. Why?

My best guess, using only myself as a model, is due to the static wall of a communication barrier. I struggle a lot to make myself understood, to articulate the thing in my brain well enough that it will appear identically (or at least close enough) in somebody else's brain. I need to be actively aware of myself and my audience. I need to know the correct words, the correct sentence structure, and a close-enough tone, cadence, and body language. I need draft scripts to react to possible responses, because if I get caught too off guard, I may need several minutes to construct an appropriate response. In simple day-to-day interactions, I can get by okay. In a few very specific situations, I can excel. When given the opportunity, I can write more clearly than I am ever capable of speaking.

When I'm in a situation where I need help, I don't have many of my components of communication. I don't always know what my audience knows. I don't have sufficient vocabulary to explain what I need. I don't know what information is relevant to convey, and the order in which I should convey it. I don't often understand the degree of help I need, so I can come across inappropriately urgent or overly relaxed. I have no ability to preplan scripts because I don't even know the basic plot of the situation.

I can stumble though with one or two deficiencies, but if I'm missing too much, me and the potential helper become mutually unintelligible. I have learned the limits of what I can expect from myself, and it is conceptualized as a real and physical barrier. I am not a runner, so running a 5k tomorrow does not present itself as an option to me. In the same way, if I have subconscious knowledge that an interaction is beyond my capability, it does not present itself as an option to me. It's the minimum communication requirements that prevent me from asking for help, not anything to do with the concept of help itself.

For me personally, it's a combination of a few factors.

-Absolutely the communication barrier. People do not tend to have the patience to let me finish sentences under the best of circumstances. I have a hard time getting people to listen to me well enough to even understand what's wrong.

Now extrapolate to how much more of a problem this is for a barely-speaking child.

-A pattern of experiences that started very early that inculcated that seeking adult help was not likely to actually get me effective help.

-Some degree of shame that I couldn't do things that I did know I was supposed to be able to. And asking for help was so much more likely to get me grilled about why I couldn't do something myself than to get me help.

-Something that set in more as I got older... If help isn't absolutely, consistently reliable, then I'm better off not relying on it. Help from someone who I wind up always having to remind, for instance, is more stressful than just not having it. Never knowing whether the help is actually going to be there or whether the chances are 50/50 that I'll have to find some last-minute workaround is more stressful than just knowing I'm going to have to rely on myself.