“Wait I’m Autistic?” Owen asked, confusion on his face.

“Yes! We’ve talked about this before. Your brain works differently than many other people,” I replied. We were 3.5 miles into a hike on Sunday. The kids were tired, and our conversation had suddenly veered from “What superpower would you like to have?” to Owen’s brain.

“So if I’m Autistic, does that mean I’m in the Special Day Class at school?” he continued.

“Nope!” I cheerfully replied, as the realization set in that Owen hadn’t really internalized any of the conversations we’d had in the past about Autism. “You’re in Gen Ed! With your friends! Just like last year!”

Fake enthusiasm. Lots of reassurance. Trying not to dwell on the fact that something I thought we had settled on (multiple times!) with Owen was still not something he really understood about himself.

When we got home, I pulled Dan into a room and relayed this conversation. “He just doesn’t seem to get it,” I mused. Dan was more direct. “I really thought we had had this conversation and he understood.”

Owen got his ASD diagnosis when he was 4. At that time, we didn’t tell him because we didn’t trust that he had the “cognitive cartilage”. By that I mean, Owen is plenty smart and does well in school, but we didn’t think he’d really understand what a diagnosis meant. So we said nothing. We’d explain what a given appointment was for— “Your speech therapist is helping you practice playing with friends so it’s a little easier!”— and punt actually telling him to a later.

If you lurk long enough in spaces for Autistic people, you’ll start to read stories from teens and people in their 20s who are only finding out now that they are autistic; their parents didn’t tell them for one reason or another. Often the sentiment in these posts is “I wish my parents had told me, I spent so long thinking something was wrong with me.”

So I knew we didn’t want to keep this from Owen. And at the same time, I didn’t really know how to broach it. How do you explain to someone who typically only engages on topics he’s specifically interested in and tunes everything else out, that he has a lifelong disability and everything that comes with it? I asked other friends what they had done and learned of books and other resources.

None of it felt 100% right, so we started with generalities over labels and then moved into more specific vocabulary in the last year.

Kindergarten version:

“Owen, your brain works a little bit differently than some of your friends. Some people’s eyes work differently and they need glasses. Your brain works differently which means sometimes you need extra support, like speech therapy.”

First grade version:

“Owen, your school is celebrating Inclusive Schools Week this week! That’s when we celebrate and recognize that there are many different kinds of kids at school. One way your school is inclusive is by supporting kids who are neurodivergent — that’s you. You’re neurodivergent. Your brain works differently.”

Second grade version:

“You know how we’ve talked about your brain working differently? The name for it is Autism. Owen, you’re Autistic. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you; it just means your brain works differently.”

We’ve had this conversation a number of times in the past year. We don’t dwell on it, because 1) Owen doesn’t seem to want to and 2) there isn’t more to say than that.

But clearly we should have been dwelling a bit more—because on the eve of third grade starting, I’m realizing his understanding of Autism falls into one of two buckets:

1. Does not apply to himself/has not been internalized

2. Is connected to a more profound version of the diagnosis, that he sees in the SDC at school

It’s the second one that’s more concerning to me. At 8, he’s already internalized “Autism is … those kids” — the nonverbal, high-support kids he sees in the halls. The challenges of a broad spectrum are well documented, but my job as a parent is to help Owen understand that while he has this diagnosis, it doesn’t define him. It just means his brain works differently (I’ve typed that phrase so many times in this post), and there may be aspects of life that feel harder for him than they do to other people.

And so with school starting next week, it’s time to have the conversation with Owen one more time. To help him know himself. And to give him the language of understanding who he is, just a little bit more. This time, I want to make sure our conversation includes an emphasis on the larger spectrum he sits on, so that he can not only internalize his own diagnosis, but understand how it shows up in the community around him.

If you’ve had these conversations, what worked for you and your kiddos?

Recommendations:

To make: I ate at Kismet Rotisserie in LA a few years ago and then was gifted the delightful Kismet cookbook by my sister. And then the NYT published this article about salads that define what California cooking is today. Of course, there was a Kismet spoon salad in the piece which looked amazing. I was ogling the recipe when I realized I actually owned the cookbook the recipe was from. Off to the farmers market! The melon is phenomenal right now and I loved the tone-on-tone look of the all-green chopped spoon salad.

To read: I can’t stop talking about this article in the NYT Magazine from this weekend. Without going into too much specifics (just read it, please), I’ve never read such a robust poop description in the hallowed pages of the Gray Lady:

At one point in our conversation he pulled up the Bristol Stool Chart, which ranges from Type 1 (“separate, hard pellets”) to Type 7 (“watery, no solid pieces”). O’Mara is consistently delivering Type 4 (“smooth, soft, like a snake”), with pointed ends, indicative of healthy rectal function, he told me. “When you start eating healthy, you don’t need toilet paper,” he claimed. “Animals in the wild have no residual stool on their anus.” He described a proper bowel movement to me this way: odorless, wipe-free, over in three to seven seconds and “nearly orgasmic.”

If you have ever had a poop like this, I am desperate to hear about it! Tell me!

To buy: The worst/best feeling in shopping is when you lust/long over something that’s expensive, debate it, sit on it, muse over it, and then ultimately pull the trigger on it and discover that you actually love it. Why is this the worst? Because I then know there’s actually a better version out there I could have been using the whole time! To celebrate my new job, I sprung for an Alex Mill monogrammed Weekday tote. I wanted to stop carrying around a branded Patagonia backpack and feel a bit more adult. Unfortunately, it’s as awesome as I hoped it would be. I put my initials on it and it holds my laptop, lunch, outer layer, purse and anything else I need. Highly recommend if you need a bag for commuting and other purse++ needs.

We’re on the 5th week of summer. We have five more weeks to go. Each, with a summer camp. Each, with new counselors, new friends (or “friends”), each with its own letter delivered before camp, explaining who Owen is, and how to support him. We’re doing… OK this summer. Not amazing, but we’re hanging in. In honor of our “hanging in” summer, here are some of the tips, tricks and tools that have been keeping our family sane.

Banning YouTube

An early Facebook engineer famously quipped “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads.” Today, I’d argue the best minds are building AI models. And the second best minds? They are figuring out how to optimize the YouTube algorithm.

We have had a bit of a journey with YouTube and Owen. First, there was no YouTube allowed. Then, we loosened the reigns, giving him access to Mark Rober, and others we were familiar with. But that quickly became a slippery slope into AI slop, video game viewing, and more. The more Owen watched, the more he wanted to watch. And the more he watched, the more ornery he became, demanding more and more time. The algorithm was working.

We scaled it back. Built a YouTube Kids portal for him with whitelisted videos. But every day, he’d beg for just one more video or one more channel to be added. Frequently we’d give in on the weekend and once again, the algorithm would win, he’d end up watching for way longer than intended, and be totally dis-regulated at the end. And so, we decided to ban it — all of it. Like all withdrawals, the first few days were torture. Constant asking, begging and crying. But now, it feels much better at home. Like we can exhale. And like we aren’t in a constant negotiation over a deal we never even wanted.

I don’t think screen-time is the enemy. But YouTube — YouTube is not a good fit for us. People have asked me “How did you get rid of it?” So far it’s simply just that it’s been articulated that it’s not allowed (the app is still on our Apple TV, where Owen typically watches TV). But if need be, we can ban it at the network level, too.

Figuring out the Yoto Player

My mom and dad gifted Owen a Yoto player a few years ago and I was so excited for it. It was a hit for a few weeks, and then was stashed in a cabinet. It just didn’t click with him; he wasn’t interested in the cards we had amassed, even though I knew there was a there-there. And then, this summer, I figured it out.

We needed to lean way in to the things Owen is interested and then go hard on them. This summer, it’s Greek and Norse gods. So instead of giving him a binder of Yoto cards and hoping he’ll find something he’s interested in, I’ve been buying specific audio books on his niche interests and linking them to a make-your-own card. My exact steps:

• Buy from Libro.fm — unlike Audible, Libro.fm allows you to download the MP3. Plus, it allows you to support a local bookstore.

• Download the MP3.

• Link to a make-your-own card

• Give to child, enjoy relative calm at home

One of the blockers for me was that it felt crazy to be buying content. Surely there was a way to get books for free on the Yoto. Nope, there was not. Libby, stealing from the Internet, none of it was really an option. So buying it is!

When we play our [Yoto] cards right, Owen will listen for hours, engrossed in the stories of Odysseus, Hades, and the rest of the crew.

Interestingly, there was an article about the Yoto player in the NYT last week. Double fun; the CEO of Common Sense Media, where I’m now working, was quoted in it.

“Just add water”

I read this for the first time in Cup of Jo and they recently posted a round up of the best ways to “just add water”. If you aren’t familiar, it is, what it sounds like. When in a tough space, add some water — drink some water, have a cry, take a shower, etc. For us, this looks like:

1. Finding more ways to get Owen in the water regularly. This week he’s at YMCA swimming camp. Last weekend when he wasn’t happy on a family trip, I told him we were heading to the ocean to splash around. The weekend before we jumped in the freezing cold SF Bay while bike-packing on Angel Island.

2. Lots of time in a deep bubble bath at the end of the day, where it’s easy to slip into a calmer, more regulated space.

So many [extremely easy] snacks

Before the summer started, we went to Costco. “Pick out whatever snacks you want for camp,” I told Eli and Owen. And we came home with what seemed like 300 bags of Cheez-its and Skinny Pop. Plus two 5-pound bags of Cosmic Crisps apples.

As a result, while I am packing lunches (something I am blessed to not do during the school year) I am no longer thinking about snacks. When either kid wants a snack, they can grab it. As much as it pains my SF liberal heart to have pre-packaged snacks (the trash!!!), it’s one more thing that isn’t on my plate.

When the kids can feed themselves, we all are able to stay a little more on top of our feelings, avoiding the dreaded hangry meltdown^tm.

Building independence

Starting at the beginning of 6th grade, Eli’s school allows them to check themselves out of school (versus needing a parent or other adult to check themselves out). This week we have been testing out the route, as Eli commutes home from a summer tech project at school that gets out at three. And he’s doing it! He takes the bus and then connects to the MUNI train (we’re skipping BART for now, which is technically more convenient, but is also much sketchier on a number of fronts). He’s doing it — navigating the city like the capable, competent kid that he is.

When he was born, a friend who was a few years ahead of me told me “kids will rise to meet your expectations.” This week’s commute success is a good reminder of that; we gave him the tools, taught him out to do it, and now he’s handling it all on his own.

AND, neither me, nor Dan, nor a sitter, needs to be responsible for picking him up at 3pm. We all win.

What’s next for us this summer? More Valkyries games, finding more places to swim where it’s actually warm, more finding ways to create ease — wherever and whenever we can find it.

What’s making your summer a little easier?

Recommendations

To support: I am once again riding in the Michael J. Fox Foundation’s Tour de Fox to raise money for Parkinson’s research and I would love your support for my ride. My mom was diagnosed with Parkinson’s more than 18 years ago; since that time there have been discoveries in the research community that give me hope that she will continue to live a long and active life. And also, there’s no cure for Parkinson’s. The current treatments only temporarily mask symptoms while the disease continues to progress. I’m continually impressed by mom, Elaine. At 73, she bikes, does yoga, teaches classes and bakes so many cookies for her kids and grandkids. We are so lucky to have her in our lives.

Since then, startups have been my thing. Join, scale, exit — one or two successful, most not — and then do it again.

Twice, I’ve been the first mom to take maternity leave at a startup. At InstaEDU, Eli was born two months after we were acquired by Chegg. At Quizlet, Owen was born a few years into my tenure. Both times, I was the test case for the team. Twenty-something office managers or HR coordinators would carefully read the parental leave policy and explain what I was entitled to. I would nod along, knowing that my experience—as both an employee and a leader—was about to change.

As I’ve written about before, these babies appeared on the scene in the age of Lean In.

I could work, parent, work out, spend time with my husband, be a great friend, develop a personal brand. I could have it all, I was sure of it. And I never questioned it. Not when I felt my upward trajectory slowing. Not when hiring managers told me, “This isn’t a 40-hour-a-week type of role, you know that, right?” I had internalized that tech wasn’t really a place for moms, but I would be different. I would buck the trend. I would prove them wrong, even while feeling like I didn’t quite fit in anymore. Like I was too old, too distracted by home, too focused on things other than “the mission.” (The mission, if you have to ask, is always making money—no matter what a startup says.)

And then... Last week, I started a new role leading marketing for Common Sense Media’s education org. “We protect and prepare kids for an always-on world,” it says on the about page. Kids—as a topic, as an audience, and yes, even our own kids—are everywhere. As a nonprofit, its mission is decidely different than the mission-driven startups I’ve spent time at in the past decade+.

For the first time in 12+ years, I don’t feel like an outlier. I’m not a liability because I have kids. I’m not too old, too female, too mom; I’m just part of a team dedicated to improving the lives of kids through our product. Most of my colleagues have kids, or so it seems. No one blinks an eye if someone has a late-start school day and can’t get in until 9:30, or an early camp pickup at 4. There are no sideways glances if a kid situation comes up and someone needs to work from home for a week. It’s normal to be a parent and for kids to be part of our lives. A feeling I hadn’t even known I was missing.

At Common Sense Media, there’s no exit in sight. No IPO, no acquisition. But there’s something else I’m coming to value: an environment where I can show up and do my best work without apologizing or hiding who I am, and what my life looks like outside the 9-to-5. That seems worth something, too.

I started writing Know One a little over a year ago. At the time, I was exploring different ideas for what I wanted to spend my time on — one of them was starting a company focused on supporting parents of autistic kids. That idea is on pause now (see above, and new job with Common Sense Media), but I’m still interested in exploring my own experience of being a parent to an autistic kid, understanding what other parents are going through, and finding the connective tissue between all of us on this unexpected journey.

Thanks for being here with me.

Recommendations

To buy: The injustice of summer camp! In addition to everything else that makes summer camp challenging, we have to pack lunch for both kids (they both get lunch normally at school). Two options that have been summarily vetoed that are the easiest to produce: Bagel and cream-cheese (too hard) and sunbutter and jelly (too yucky, which I agree with, sunbutter is gross). Enter: The onigiri maker. We batch-make rice and then all week can pop out perfectly compact onigiri with whatever little leftovers we have on hand — some tuna from last night’s dinner, the end of a cucumber, etc. In general I don’t love single serving kitchen tools, but this one is perfect for the summer lunch rush.

To buy: I’m not a backpacking person. I don’t think I’m ever going to be a backpacking person. I am a car camping and glamping person. So after 14 years (!) of sleeping on backpacking sleeping mats in car-camping adventures, I upgraded our set up to these REI “self inflating” beds. I did the inaugural trip with them a few weeks ago and I actually slept through the night in my tent. A camping miracle!

To read/To listen: As a former camp person (attended and then worked at the same camp from age 10-18), I compulsively listened to the Culture Study podcast episode on Camp Mystic and camp culture. It made me realize 1) how different my own camp experience was from the capital C Camps that East Coasters and Texans go to (at least as how they are portrayed in this story). And 2) it caused me to go back and read the fantastically and lyrically reported New York Magazine story about Camp Mystic and the utter failure of the camp’s owners to protect the campers during the July 4 storm last year that ultimately killed 27 of the camp’s youngest campers.

It’s such a human desire to be wanted. To be included. To feel like you have a place, a crew, a niche in the world where you perfectly fit.

And inclusion is the name of the game for many kids on the autism spectrum. They don’t have the specific presentation or traits of disability that would place them in a special day classroom, so they end up in an inclusion environment — in San Francisco, where we live, it’s simply called “gen ed.”

But being in a gen ed classroom under the inclusion moniker doesn’t mean you are, actually, included. Yes, you may be included at the table for group work — but not at recess, when it’s time to pick teams. Yes, you may be included for a joint math project — but not for imaginary play on the athletic field.

The inclusion that exists in the classroom works well for helping kids like Owen reach their academic goals. Thanks to a combination of IEP evaluations and standardized testing, I have a cache of data showing that Owen is… doing great academically. I’m so proud of him — not only for the results, but because I know the hard work behind them.

And yet, there are days when the struggle to be included feels like too much to bear. “I don’t have any friends,” he’ll confess when he’s in bed, unguarded and unmasked. “No one wants to play with me.”

That duality — being smart enough and observant enough to recognize what friendship is, but not being able to figure out how to create it — is so hard to hold as a mom. Because I can’t fix it for him. I can teach him skills. We can go to speech therapy with a dyad. I can help him role-play at home. But it’s a challenge. And it’s always going to be a challenge.

There’s inclusion in the academic sense, and it feels like we’ve unlocked that and are cruising. But the more holistic inclusion? It feels elusive. Out of reach, for now.

At Eli’s school, there’s a yearly talent show. At Owen’s school, they have a variety show. “No talent needed!” I joked with Ms. Dotan, the teacher who organizes it.

Owen came home buzzing a few weeks ago. “For the variety show, I’m going to forge an axe on stage and then set it on fire.”

Aside from the small issue of Owen having no blacksmithing skills, this also felt like a fire hazard. After a few rounds of back-and-forth, we landed on a different act: singing “Modern Major General” from The Pirates of Penzance. The song had made the rounds in our house a few years ago when Eli wanted to learn it, and now Owen was up for the challenge.

@roundaboutnycDavid Hyde Pierce is the very model of a modern Major-General ⚜️ 🎥: PIRATES! THE PENZANCE MUSICAL, on Broadway through July 27 only. #PiratesBway #Broadway #Theatre #Frasier

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

He practiced. And practiced some more. He went to three rehearsals. He also realized that to keep up with the music, he wanted to read off an iPad rather than printed lyrics. Ms. Dotan messaged me to ask if it needed to be his specific iPad — it didn’t — and she worked with him to get it set up so he could perform with confidence.

On the day of the variety show, Owen wore a suit jacket to school. He was ready.

And he crushed it.

My favorite part is the arm raise at the end — so proud, so held by the audience, so happy to have done exactly what he wanted to do.

This felt like the inclusion he's been wanting. To be part of the ruckus and camaraderie of his school. Ms. Dotan did such a good job caring for Owen and giving him the tools and support to show up the way he wanted to. As we wrap up second grade, I'm hopeful. He found a place on stage to be included at the end of the year — maybe the start of third grade will bring him a spot where he can be included, just as he is.

Recommendations

To read: I’m starting a new job soon (returning to my edtech roots) and so I was fascinated to see two articles in the NYT this past Sunday that summed up the challenges — and opportunities — that exist with AI in the education realm. First, this deep dive into Khan Academy’s Khanmigo tutoring bot, created in partnership with OpenAI. And second, this article from a graduating Stanford senior, on what the experience of going to Stanford over the past four years has been like, as AI has gone from “what can this do?” to omnipresent.

To listen: My friend Margaret recently recommended the Crosstalk podcast to me, after I told her about my burgeoning constructing practice. Constructing is such a solitary, personal activity, so I’ve loved hearing how others approach constructing and what they look for in a puzzle. And of course, as someone who has had many puzzles rejected, it’s heartening to hear that even the greats get rejections all the time.

A text from Owen’s principal at 10:30 in the morning. My stomach drops. My assumption is that this is not a good thing to be receiving. And I’m proven right when I quickly call her and hear about an altercation at recess that ended with Owen punching a friend in the stomach.

“We’re seeing more and more violent behavior from him,” she noted, as we talked about how we could partner. Both to mitigate the behavior and to have some consistency in language and consequences, from home to school and back. The chosen consequence? Owen loses recess time at school (honestly, a win for him — he hates recess) and loses screen time at home post-school (a huge loss for him and for us, as we now lose the hour of relative calm that comes when he’s playing a favorite game or watching a preferred show).

“Why do you send me to that horrible place? Why can’t I be home schooled?”

“I hate that school. Everyone there is mean to me. I don’t have any friends.”

“Is there a different school I can go to? My school is the worst.”

“You’re the worst mom for sending me there.”

And on an on. There are good days, and then days that end more like this. Days with a smile and delight, and then days that feel darker. A list of grievances repeated over and over. Quick to anger, and when he’s not angry, I can sense it coming, simmering just under the surface.

“There are six weeks of school left,” I think to myself when he starts talking like this. “Can you please just hold it together?”

I’m reminded by some friends who also have kids on the spectrum, that what’s waiting on the other side of school may not be much better.

Is this what autistic burnout feels like? Autistic burnout. It’s one of those phrases that parents toss around that hasn’t ever felt applicable to my life, but maybe I just didn’t know what I was looking at and instead tried to push on through. Because what is parenting a child on the spectrum if not persevering?

Here’s how researchers describe it:

Autistic burnout is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic life stress and a mismatch of expectations and abilities without adequate supports. It is characterized by pervasive, long-term (typically 3+ months) exhaustion, loss of function, and reduced tolerance to stimulus.

We’re here, with just six weeks left in the school year. Owen has, for the most part, had a good school year. He’s doing well in school. He has a few friends. And has even been invited to hangout with others a few times. He works really hard to keep it together and do what he knows he’s supposed to do.

And yet, I can feel the cracks start to form. The exhaustion seep in. He knows that he’s not supposed to hit a friend or he’ll lose TV time when he get home. “I can’t help it",” he tearfully tells me last night as we’re trying to go over for the 10th time, what exactly went down at school, who played which role, and how we can support Owen so it doesn’t happen again.

As I look at this chart below, I think to myself, “Why yes, we ask Owen to do all these things, in addition to traveling with him and asking him to wait in lines, navigate crowds, handle jet lag and then plop back into school with no rest in between. No wonder he’s at his wits end.”

Recovering from autistic burnout looks like reduced demands. Less masking. Less pressure to conform to the rules and expectations of others. Reduced sensory overload. Frequent breaks.

All things that are hard to do when you’re in an inclusion class in a large public school.

And all things that I, candidly, don’t feel like doing. I don’t want to give him more time with TV and video games so he can relax with preferred activities. I don’t want to reduce demands on him — I feel like we were just getting to a place where he could make his own breakfast, for example. I don’t want to engage with him on the terms he wants — going round and round in discussion on favorite Marvel characters or Greek gods, or listening to Smashmouth (yes, Smashmouth) on repeat in the car. I simply don’t want to operate on his terms.

Because, I’m mad. I’m mad that it’s still so hard. I’m mad that just when it feels like we’re getting to a good place, there’s a new challenge. I’m mad that it’s always one more thing and not in the fun Steve Jobs kind of way.

Or maybe it’s more than being mad. Maybe I’m burnt out, too. But how do we reduce the demands on me (or Dan) the way we try to for Owen? The parenting continues. Dan’s work continues. My job search continues. The workouts (nothing more important for women in their 40s than strength training, apparently) continue. The healthy eating. The cutting back on drinking. The showing up for others and attempting to be a good person. Being a parent to our other child, who also needs our love and attention and affection.

So what should we do, when we’re all just… over it?

If you’ve navigated these challenging waters, I’d love to hear how you got through, to the other side.

Awkward transition time to things that have been bringing me joy and levity over the past few weeks.

Recommendations:

To read: No one does nonfiction like Patrick Radden Keefe. London Falling, his new book, is just as compulsive and deeply researched as Say Nothing and Empire of Pain. The experience of reading it was the experience of tumbling through it, anxious to get to the next chapter, to see what he’s uncovered and to go a layer deeper.

To subscribe: A few weeks ago I changed our NYT subscription from the all-access digital option to Sunday delivery of the actual paper (which also comes with all-access digital). I liked the idea of having the physical paper at home and exposing our kids to slow consumption of content. A few wins from this experiment/change:

1. I’m finding myself reading articles that I never would have read online. The siren-call of switching to a new tab, checking email, or getting distracted by a mid-article link out — I fall victim to them all! But when the article is in front of me in newsprint, I’m more committed to seeing it through. Two unexpected reads for me from last week: John Carreyrou’s Satoshi unmasking and considering the importance of an straight person representing the Stonewall area in NYC.

2. Eli picks up the paper! He solved the midi puzzle, and also read the Satoshi story. I can’t wait to hear all his thoughts on Bitcoin over the coming weeks.

To buy: Everyone loves their Adidas Sambas. But if you’re looking for something a little fresh and a little different, I just picked up these Taekowndo Mei sneakers for summer strolls and casual dinners. Not sure I can pull off the ribbon x ballet slipper look, but so far I am happy to have something more supportive than ballet flats/birks and more fun than sneakers.

Back in the fall, we decided to go to Europe over Spring Break: pooled our miles, grabbed flights, and committed — without knowing what season of parenting we’d be in.

I was apprehensive — about the sleeping and jet lag, the flight, the food and restaurants, the crowds, the schedule disruption, and yes, whether I'd actually get to do things I enjoyed and not just things the kids enjoyed.

Lots of worry. Lots of planning. Lots of refining the perfect itinerary with Claude. And then reality on the ground. Below, the highlights and lowlights of our week in Europe. A little of this is specific to traveling with a kid on the spectrum, but most (I hope) is more general for traveling with elementary school kids, no matter what season of parenting you’re in.

What worked

Plentiful screen time

It’s just not possible to spend all day doing touristy things with kids. They won’t stand for it. And honestly it’s not that fun for the adults either to go-go-go nonstop. So we’d typically structure our days around a big adventure in the AM that led into lunch, a return to our Airbnb for veg out time, and then a smaller adventure in the afternoon. The hour or two of TV/video games in the middle of the day helped the kids relax and reset. Good for parents, too!

Headphones/podcasts

Not everything was enjoyed by Owen. We arrived at the Picasso Museum in Paris on Day 6 of our trip and Owen sat down in the lobby. “I’m not interested in this,” he said, stating his opinion and preference for how the AM would go. He was not interested in the museum; I was not interested in getting into a loud, English fight with my child in the middle of a mansion-cum-museum in Paris. So, I pivoted.

“Do you want to listen to Greeking Out?” I asked. He nodded. Problem solved.

Dan went off with Eli and an audio tour. I popped my headphones onto Owen and let him pick the podcast episode he wanted. He listened to a story about the Odyssey. I thought about cubism and Guernica. We both had a good morning.

The win sometimes is not “We all enjoyed the museum!”. The win is “We got through the museum and everyone got what they needed.”

Pre-booking things

This feels specific to Paris/London; it wasn’t needed when we were in Vancouver a few years ago or NYC last year in the same way. This goes a bit to what didn’t work but both Paris and London were packed. So busy. So many people. So many queues. Pre-book anything you can to avoid waiting around. Example: British Museum, Westminster Abbey, Tower of London, Notre Dame, D’Orsay — all had pre-booking options and many required it.

It felt magical to be able to walk past lines of people waiting in stanchions to saunter into a spot and I feel fairly confident that spending 45 minutes in a line at a given site would not have set us up for a great visit.

Thinking about what they’d actually enjoy

I would very much enjoy an afternoon in the Marais, leisurely shopping at only-in-Paris stores. The kids? Not so much. While we could have split up (and had friends in Paris at the same time as us who did just this, smarties!) we chose to mostly stick together. So, goodbye D’Orsay museum morning and Marais shopping afternoon. Not going to happen with this crew. Instead, we leaned into what they already were into. For our family, that looked like:

• Greek mythology → A visit to the British Museum to look at the marbles from the Parthenon

• Mayhem/violence → A visit to the Tower of London with special attention paid to the torture room and armory

• Video games → Leaning into the magic of the space invaders all over Paris. One of my favorite mornings was doing this Airbnb experience which leveraged the invaders to create a puzzle-game for the kids, with enough history and Paris behind-the-scenes for adults.

Asking them what they wanted

Related to the above. By the second half of our trip, I could see that we were starting to fray a bit. Lack of schedule/structure, unfamiliar foods, not speaking the language — it adds up! So I asked Owen: “Would you like to eat inside our Airbnb tonight instead of going out?” “Yes.” Easy and done. We ended up doing three nights of dinners in our apartment in Paris versus going to restaurants. This helped give the kids something expected (no navigating menus) and also gave them more space to wind-down and relax.

What didn’t work

Restaurants

I mean, they worked for me. What’s not to love about Ottolenghi or Dishoom? But it was too much for the kids to do that nightly. (See above about dining in once we got to Paris). At Ottolenghi, Owen ate two bread plates for dinner and Eli stared at the menu as if it was written in another language, attempting to decipher what he might actually enjoy eating (garlic labne dip and lamb kofta, were the answers, in case you were curious).

I’m glad we stayed in Airbnbs over hotels and if we do this again, I would try to shift the balance to more dinners at home over restaurants.

Being in Europe during Spring Break/Easter more generally

We can’t control when Spring Break is but it was packed in Europe, especially in London where crowds were so thick at times we had to turn around. I didn’t anticipate just how crowded it would be.

On Saturday I mistakenly suggested we visit Harrods (forgetting, of course, that while department stores loom large in my childhood brain, my kids have no idea what a department store is, nor do the care).

We came up from the tube into the middle of (this is not a joke): A Roma Easter gathering for teenagers, where the girls show up in faux Chanel and so much make-up and high heels, and the boys all look like Jamie Tartt from Ted Lasso.

@pmlegendGypsies travelers in London Harrods today. #london #londonlife

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

In Paris, I nabbed the last open spot for Notre Dame (which allowed us to skip the queue!) on Friday and we walked into the middle of a full Good Friday service complete with latin, kneeling and people being blessed. Later that day we went up to Montmartre to see the views and encountered an overflowing Sacré-Cœur. So many people to navigate, everywhere we went.

Flying back on Sunday

This one we should have known better. We flew back on Sunday and in a shock to no one, everyone was up at 3 am on Monday. Next time I would fly back on Saturday to give us one more day to acclimate. This is what we typically do on our trips, but I wanted to squeeze as much as I could into our Europe trip and so I didn’t take my own advice. Don’t be like me! Come back a day early so you can start getting on the right time zone, get groceries, do laundry and have a second to breathe.

All in all? Owen did great — he called London "Paradise City," thanks to the amazing sushi spot we discovered in Islington, and I feel like bigger trips are something we can do more of in the future.

Where should we go next? Owen’s pick is China because “I love dumplings” (as he says) but I’m not sure that’s my pick. Where have you been and loved for this season of life?

Recommendations

Special Europe edition! Some things I loved on our trip.

To shop: The only store I spent much time in for me on our trip was Parisian concept store Merci in the Marais. I walked out with this chess scarf and this cheeky “non merci” hat. I could live there.

To eat: Favorite restaurants/eats:

• London: Ottolenghi (I’m basic, what can I say), Dishoom (no less than three people recommended this to me before we went!) and Booking Office 1869.

• Paris: Rotisserie Seger (best takeaway rotisserie chicken and potatoes dripping in chicken fat), Maison Bretonne ( I was trying to take us to Breizh Café but got mixed up, no matter) and La Maison d'Isabelle for daily pastries.

To watch: We re-watched Shang-Chi as a family and I forgot how amazing the fight scene on the bus is in the opening minutes of the film.

And then, two months later, my fractional role ended. No full-time conversion for me. Just wasn’t the right time for someone of my experience, the cofounder said, in a brisk and efficient conversation. They wanted someone scrappier. Less structured.

A few days later, my doorbell rang. And this was delivered.

“What does it mean?” I texted a few friends, trying to make sense of the delivery. “Why would they send this to me?”

Because I am me, I was still spinning on this flower delivery a few days later when I met with my therapist. “Well,” she prompted. “What do you think it means? Why did they send it?”

I paused for a second to actually gather my thoughts.

“Maybe they really wanted to thank me for all my hard work? Or maybe they don’t want to lose me as a customer [of this service], and this is a weird attempt at retaining me? Or maybe they want to keep the relationship strong and so if there’s a right time to reach back out to me for work, I’m interested? Or… I’m really not sure,” I trailed off. I could think of so many scenarios, some cynical, some heart-felt, and some neutral. For whatever reason, taking the flowers at their base — as a thank you — felt too straightforward. And so I spun.

Understanding why anyone does anything is a challenge; we all have our own motivations and what we communicate externally may actually have nothing to do with the internal why behind our actions.

The flowers were beautiful. In the SF heat-wave we were experiencing last week, the scent of lily was everywhere in my house. I’d walk in and immediately be hit with the fragrance and start to ruminate again. A few days later, I gave them to a friend who would be able to enjoy them for what they were, no spinning required.

A stereotypic autistic trait is not making eye contact. And along with that, is not seeing people’s facial expressions and not recognizing emotions.

To help support Owen and his communication needs, we’ve gone through prompting and worksheets many times over the years.

“Does this boy look happy or sad?”

“Do you think the mom is upset or excited?”

“What emotion does the little girl have?

And then in real life, I often find myself saying:

“Look at my face. What emotion am I feeling?”

I coach, I correct, and we do it again. Trying to help Owen understand the feelings of others, where they’re coming from, and how to react. A lifelong endeavor, really.

We’re supposed to encourage our kids to share. “Share your toys,” we say, when another child is over and wants to use a LEGO structure that’s been ignored for months, but is now suddenly coveted item #1. Having a friend over can be fraught, as kids navigate their dual desires to be friends but also keep their toys for themselves.

If a friend asked for the book I was reading because they wanted to “share it”, I wouldn’t give it to them. If they asked for my phone, there’s no way. I also wouldn’t share my clothes (though I’m happy to lend if needed).

We expect so much more from our kids than we’re willing to give of ourselves. I don’t really want to share my stuff. And I’m often mystified as to the motivations of others. I need to remember that the next time I ask Owen: “What do you think they’re thinking?” Because we really, ultimately, have no idea.

Recommendations

To visit: Last week the Monet in Venice exhibit opened at the De Young. I took Eli and his friend Max on a whim; they were off from school and we have a membership after being shocked at the price for a family of four to go to the Legion of Honor over Winter Break. I loved the way the curator placed both Venice and Monet in context — Venice’s role in being an inspiration to artists, and Monet’s fascination with light and water, and how his time in Venice allowed him to return to his favorite and most well-known subject, the water lilies. Being a member meant we could visit and then leave after 45 minutes, which feels like the right amount of time to keep spirits and motivation high for two 5th graders.

To clean: I read this article about spring cleaning earlier this week in the NYT and one key takeaway from the expert on her approach: “I start in the bathroom because people don’t tend to have an emotional attachment to their expired NyQuil. Once they get used to saying “toss it,” and they’ve started to build a purging muscle, we move on to harder things.” Reader, I started in the bathroom. Bear oil for a beard that doesn’t exist. Hydrocortisone cream that expired in 2023. So satisfying. And no, I did not move on to all the other rooms, but this one room on its own definitely scratched an itch.

This was more than unusual. It was the first time he’d ever made a plan with friends and then asked me to help make it happen. And it occurred to me that maybe I had missed a nuance in understanding him. I had assumed that he didn’t want to hang out with friends on the weekend — that he was happiest solo or with his family. But now I think otherwise: he actually didn’t know he could ask friends to hang out. It was a skill that needed to be learned — like taking turns in games, brushing teeth, or tying shoelaces. Something that comes naturally to many, but needs to be taught to others.

Since then, Owen has been on a roll. Each weekend he has ideas for friends he wants to see and proposals for what they should do together. Sometimes these ideas are perfectly normal (“Let’s go to the movies”) and sometimes they are wonderfully unhinged (“Let’s build a time machine and go back to ancient Greece…”), but even just knowing he wants to see other kids is a win.

What doesn’t work is an unstructured playdate. The stakes are too high for Owen to invite another kid over and just let things unfold. For that to work, Owen would need to:

• Be okay with another kid playing with his toys

• Engage another kid in imaginative play

• Tolerate watching a friend struggle at a co-op video game

• Etc, etc.

These are skills that need to be learned and developed — not for all kids, but for many kids on the spectrum, none of the above comes easily. So here’s what’s been working for us over the past month to build the infrastructure for successful friend hangouts.

Movie date

The kickoff for Owen’s newfound appreciation for friend hangs. This one only works if your kid doesn’t have sensory issues with sound, and is open to seeing something new. We usually watch the trailer a few times before committing to anything on the big screen. Owen is generally game for movies — with the exception of Wicked: For Good, which was so long that at the two-hour mark he said, out loud, in the theater: "Is this movie almost over?" I love this option because it gives him shared vocabulary for the days that follow — favorite parts, funny lines, previews for movies they both want to see.

Swimming session

There are no bargains in San Francisco. None. Except for the public pools, which are a mere $2 per child for family swim. I like taking Owen and a friend and giving them an hour to splash around and jabber at each other. The pool is the entertainment — which means the pressure to sustain conversation, share toys, or navigate play is basically lifted. The water does the heavy lifting.

People hear “public pool in San Francisco” and picture something grim. My experience has been the opposite: clean, well-maintained, with enough lifeguards that I’m not white-knuckling it the whole time. Our favorite is Balboa pool, but I’ve also been to Sava, Mission and Rossi — all good.

Biking adventure

Since Owen unlocked biking as a skill, we’ve been spending a lot of time on two wheels. He has a KOA camping trip with his class coming up in April and is very focused on being ready to "bike up the hill" he remembers from last year’s trip.

A biking hangout works the same way as a swimming one: the activity carries the social weight, so neither kid has to work that hard at the friendship part. The bikes do the work.

Knowing how to make friends — and keep them — is a skill. For me, it’s always come naturally; I’m still close with friends from high school and college. For others, it doesn’t work that way. So like any skill worth building, it helps to have support, a game plan, and a little infrastructure along the way.

Recommendations

To work out: I have been a longtime Peloton person. Like many, I got a Peloton in 2021. Unlike many, I still use it — across cycling and strength, primarily. But after 5 years of near-daily engagement, I’ve felt my allegiance wavering. My biggest complaint is the lack of structure for strength training; there isn’t an easy way to 1) track progress and 2) focus on a progressive overload approach. And it feels like they should support this — weight tracking in-app is a no brainer and progressive overload is the goal of almost all structured strength training programs I’ve looked into. All of which has led me to Ladder, which I started a few weeks ago and have been enjoying. I told the app my goals, and they suggested a plan for me and so far I’ve been really enjoying the structure and tracking. TBD on the results. I’ll report back.

To AI: We are headed to London and Paris (lucky us!) for Spring Break. Our trip isn’t so complicated, but we do have a flight, a train ride through the Chunnel, two airbnbs, and a stay in a hotel right before we fly out. I created a project in Claude, gave it everything I had, told it a little bit of info about our family and asked it to plan our trip. It hasn’t been perfect (what is?) but it’s been really fun to iterate with a personal travel advisor. I told it all about our family (Eli is afraid of heights! Owen doesn’t like crowds and loud noises! I like bike riding! We all like croissants and Ottolenghi!) and it’s built a just-for-us itinerary. How fun.

I listed off a number of mundane things happening in our world (when I do this it always reminds me of Will Ferrel in Old School) and then added, “Oh, and we got Owen a bike lesson for this weekend, too.”

“Oh,” she said. “Is that like… how people in SF teach their kids to bike?”

I could hear the question behind the question. Are people in SF so ridiculous that they don’t know how to teach their kids to bike and instead hire it out to the pros? Is this just another example of us using self-driving cars to shuttle our kids around or paying $1m over asking for a Noe Valley home? Typical SF insanity?

But no, not really. This was different.

I’ve been trying to get Owen to ride a bike for years. My family is big into biking. I commute by bike most days. My parents are weekend warriors. I own a Peloton, a road bike, and an e-bike. Bikes are everywhere.

And Owen couldn’t figure it out. He wanted to — but my teaching wasn’t working and he was scared. Because he was scared, he didn’t want to practice. And not practicing meant not making progress. We were stuck. The more I pushed (or “gently suggested,” as I prefer to think of it) that we practice on weekends, the more he dug in and refused.

So I hired a pro from Wheel Kids, and Owen geared up for his one-hour lesson.

“Are there going to be other kids there?” he asked. “Nope!” I said. There was no way I was putting him in a situation where he’d watch everyone else ride off while he teetered around.

“Is the teacher going to yell at me?” “Nope.”

Fears slightly assuaged, he agreed to do it — a victory in itself.

One lesson later, we were cruising! A few extra days of practice and what had seemed like it would never happen was happening. Evidence below.

(Big thanks to the Slow Hearst crew, so nice to have a slow street a block from our place for ongoing practice).

It struck me that we’d wasted a lot of time being stuck. Me insisting I could teach him. Owen insisting he did not want to do the thing I was trying to teach him. We both dug in.

Then the pressure lifted. I asked for help, paid for it, and it worked.

Most parents I know struggle to ask for help. And parents of kids on the spectrum? I think we feel this even more acutely. Knowing how to support them, how to keep them regulated, when to push and when to back off — that’s hard even for a parent who knows their kid intimately. The idea of sending Owen off with an unknown parent supervising, or asking a neighbor to watch him for a few hours, can feel like too much to hope for. I don’t want to burden someone with something that’s honestly challenging for me on a daily basis.

But what I’ve been learning is this: when I get the help I need, I’m a better parent, and our family is better supported.

Some recent examples beyond the bike lesson:

• Free help: Owen has a speech therapy appointment at 4pm on a weekday. That’s a tough time to make work for working families. So I asked my [retired/local] parents if they could get him there and bring him home. And, they said yes — problem solved.

• Free help: During the SFUSD teacher strike, I asked my wonderful sister to watch Owen for the day so I could go to work. She is an absolute angel, and somehow managed to take a TK, Kinder, first grader, and second grader to the zoo — all on her own. I will not be sharing the text messages we received throughout the day. She is a saint.

• Paid help: We are still in the midst of getting the insurance payouts from our car accident resolved. Our car insurance made us whole, but getting the other driver's insurance to cover our medical bills has been a fifteen-month odyssey. This week, I finally hired a personal injury law firm to sort it out. I am good at many things. This was not one of them, and it was making me feel unhinged.

• Free help: Dan and I came down with Strep a few weeks ago. (I did not know that was something adults could get, but we can, and it is awful.) My friend Lulu texted to ask if we wanted dinner. Dan's instinct was "Oh, that's okay!" — the default: don't be a burden, don't ask for anything. I quickly followed up with "We would love dinner, thank you so much!" because we both felt like death and doing anything beyond drinking tea was not in the cards. Voilà — dinner arrived. Including a healing soup with turmeric and greens for the adults AND crispy chicken cutlets for the kids, because Lulu is a gem.

Free help, paid help — it’s all good. Ask for what you need, pay for what you need, and trust that the people in your life won’t offer more than they’re able to give.

What’s something you’ve asked for help with recently?

Recommendations

To wear: Even though our winters in the Bay Area are pretty mild, gloves are a must when cycling. Our local cycling brand, Ornot, makes the best gloves. They are merino wool, the stay warm even when they’re a little damp, they dry quickly, and you can still use your phone’s touch screen. My favorite!

To read: I grabbed A Marriage at Sea on Valentine’s Day and read it in three days. What an ordeal! What a marriage! I loved this slim non-fiction re-telling of the ordeal of Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, a British couple who were shipwrecked when a whale capsized their boat, and then spend four months alone at sea on a dingy and raft.

• The school district focuses on his education

• Health insurance covers medical care

• The regional center is how you access government services

The centers aren’t just for kids on the spectrum—they support people with all types of developmental disabilities. But in my cohort, they’re a hot topic, both because of what they can unlock (services you don’t pay for! respite care!) and how frustrating and tedious it can be to actually access them. For example, Owen qualified for services last fall, but I haven’t been able to use them yet. The social skills groups our regional center contracts with are an hour+ away.

I was recently talking with a mom who was lamenting that her IHSS (In-Home Supportive Services) hours had been cut by the regional center. Her son had “done too well” on their most recent assessment. One of the weird parts—or maybe benefits—of regional center support is that as a parent, you can get paid by the regional center to provide care for your own child. There’s bureaucracy to navigate, of course, but if you’re willing to figure it out, you can get paid to take care of your own disabled kid. It feels both totally wild and insanely sensible at the same time.

This mom who had just lost her hours said something that stuck with me: “Getting paid for the hours I spent with him made it somehow feel… worth it?”

When I worked at Quizlet, I led our women’s group. As part of that we did a twice-yearly book club. Perhaps reflective of the general mood a year or so into COVID, we selected as a group Work Won’t Love You Back by Sarah Jaffe. It wasn’t an easy book to get through (especially during COVID) but one part that stuck with me was the section on domestic work and how we (women) are supposed to love being at home with our families, and also to do the work of home (and love) for free. Jaffe writes:

As economist Nancy Folbre wrote, echoing [Wages for Housework] , “if two single mothers, each with two children under the age of five, exchanged babysitting services, swapping children for eight hours a day, five days a week, and paying one another the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, they could both take full advantage of the Earned Income Tax Credit, receiving a total of more than $10,000 for providing essentially the same services they would provide for their own children.” The women of Wages for Housework noted that the state pays foster parents, and that courts had granted damages to men whose wives had been injured to pay for “lack of services.”

What makes all this care we provide “worth it”? Is it monetary compensation? That’s certainly a very concrete way to feel worth. Is it seeing your child “improve” or “thrive” or some other amorphous way of measuring progress?

I’m reminded of a conversation I had with a friend whose child has a rare genetic disorder. He said it fills him with rage when people ask, “I don’t know how you do it?” in regards to the level of care and commitment he provides to his son. Of course he does it! What else would he do? Not care for his kid? Not take him to the doctor or arrange for interventions?

I don’t get paid for the time I care for Owen. And caring for him has certainly cost me—lots of cash, lots of time, and a big impact on my career. We’re not supposed to need payment to make it “worth it.” We’re supposed to be fulfilled by the work itself, by our children’s progress, by… something as banal as the love of a parent for their child. And maybe some parents are.

But for others? It’s not so simple. When the outcomes aren’t good, when the interventions don’t work, when it’s just really, really hard? How do we make the work have meaning then?

Recommendations

To subscribe: I’m loathe to say it but Peacock is finally, really, really good. I am a huge Olympics person and for years have subscribed to various services to get access to all the competition. In past years it’s been impossible to watch a full feed of a competition and you were forced to “enjoy” the various NBC produced segments. But now you can simply pull up whatever event you want and watch the entire thing. Relevant today: I cannot stop turning over the drama surrounding everything related to Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron’s partnership and win last night. The definition of living rent-free in my head. Also I adored Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier’s free dance last night and found myself tearing up at the end. Despite my best efforts, ice dancing got me this year! It got me good!

To make: Related to the above, I threw my bi-annual Olympic Opening Ceremonies party last week. This involved cooking the food of the host country and requiring friends to wear various medals that Dan and I had won from slogging our way through 5Ks in our 20s (me) and 30s (him). I was shocked at how good risotto milanese is in the Instant Pot. I used this recipe from The Kitchn but I’m now excited to expand from here and see if I can get risotto into the category of “foods my kids will eat.” I did not take any pictures of said risotto but I did take a picture of the insane amount of beef I accidentally bought to make osso bucco. Yikes! (I think this ended up being good but since I don’t typically cook or eat red meat, I don’t think I know what osso bucco is supposed to taste like. It tasted… beefy).

There’s the standard (”I like daddy more than I like you”), the banal (”you’re the worst mom in the entire world”), and the horrific (you can insert your own horrible sentiment here, pulling from your own parenting experience or from observing the lovable rugrats in your life).

Many parents I know who have kids on the spectrum are living this not just during temper tantrums, but on a regular basis. Owen, for example, doesn’t always have the social awareness to realize that when he says something upsetting, it might upset someone else. It’s true to how he’s feeling, so he says it.

He and Dan have been playing a fair amount of video games together recently. They’ll play Hogwarts Legacy, LEGO Avengers, Portal… and it’s a great way to spend time doing something they both love, together.

I will play Mario Kart. And if it’s 2009 and I’ve had a couple of drinks, I’ll also play Guitar Hero. But I don’t play the games Owen loves and wants to play day in and day out. So when Owen calmly says, “Daddy is my favorite person at the table right now,” he isn’t saying it to be mean to me, and he doesn’t even realize it is mean—it’s just true to him and how he’s feeling. (Inside, when he said that, I was thinking “honestly, he’s sort of my favorite at the table right now, too.”)

More recently, Owen has been saying things that are worse—about himself, toward us, and toward other people. And as his mom, it’s really, really hard not to immediately react and either 1) tell him he can’t say that because it’s not nice or will scare people, or 2) get my own emotions hijacked and get upset.

But last week, our developmental pediatrician gave us advice that has changed my approach. She said:

Focus on the emotion, not the words.

When Owen says something that shocks or upsets me, I now take a minute and try to think, “What is he feeling right now?” The words that come out of his mouth might sound angry or cruel, but often the emotion driving them is something more banal—frustration or boredom.

Here’s a real-world example:

We went to my parents’ house last weekend to celebrate Owen’s 8th birthday. After housing half of a homemade pizza, Owen turned to me and said, “OK, can I go play video games?”

I tried our normal framework: “Is it expected or unexpected that you’d play video games after dinner?” Owen did not care if it was unexpected. He wanted video games and he wanted them now, at an increasingly anxious and shrill tone.

So I stopped and thought: What’s the emotion here?

And what I guessed was that:

• He was in a semi-unfamiliar spot (my parents’ house, where he is pretty regularly, but it’s still not his) and feeling a little unsure of what activities he could do after dinner

• He was excited about eating a chocolate cake he’d seen and wanted to get to dessert ASAP

• He was a little bored and understimulated, as Dan and I had decamped to chat with my parents upon arrival, and he’d been glued to video games for the hour prior to dinner

So instead of matching his demand with my own demand to “GO READ A BOOK” or “DO SOMETHING ELSE,” I thought: “Perhaps he just needs me to lean in right now and help engage him since he doesn’t know what to do with himself.”

So I proposed that we play a prank. And this immediately piqued his interest. We’ve been watching The Magic Prank Show (not recommended, it’s actually pretty mean-spirited), so I knew he would be into the idea of pranking people. And with this idea planted, it immediately changed the tone and tenor of our communication. Gone was the incessant and demanding video game talk. Instead, there were ideas of how we might prank my parents.

This pivot required me to leave the table and my adult conversation. But it also helped Owen be engaged and excited about being with our family instead of off to the side. And it also resulted in this photo, which I love. (The prank was a combo of dressing like my mom—the robe—and wearing this blonde wig, which has been a staple at my childhood home for 2+ decades.)

This example didn’t start with Owen saying something awful. But frequently our escalations do. Learning how to take a step back and focus on the feeling over the specific words has helped me:

• Better support Owen and his needs, as we work on identifying emotions and how to respond when uncomfortable emotions arise, and

• Feel less panicked about some of the things he says. He still says mean and hurtful things, but when I focus on what he’s feeling instead of what he’s saying, it helps me better regulate my own emotions and avoid the amygdala hijack that I can find myself in.

Recommendations

To watch: Like everyone else, I’ve been binging Heated Rivalry. I won’t say much more about this because my parents read this, but if you are the type of person who thinks they might like a show about gay hockey players who have a LOT of hot sex, you probably would.

To try out: In 2025 it was impossible to ignore the icky phrase “Vibe Coding”. But in 2026, here I am, endorsing it! My family is doing a recipe challenge in 2026 where each week we cook a new recipe and then report back to our group how it went. Initially we were tracking in a spreadsheet and I thought to myself “We can do better than this,” so I quickly spun up an app on Lovable. You can see we still have some kinks to work out (those .heic images are tricky!) but overall this was shockingly easy.

To read: Anil Dash’s How the Hell Are You Supposed to Have a Career in Tech. I’ve been struggling (with my own career, with what I want to do in tech, how to actually find a job, #allthethings) and this was what I needed to read.

The time between the end of school and post-New Years return is long, and as a parent, there’s no winning.

If you work, you feel bad for putting your kid in a camp or scrambling to figure out childcare in some form (or worse, letting YouTube be the childcare).

If you don’t work, the two weeks are an endless stretch of “what should we do today?” and “no you can’t have more cookies” and “does anyone want to play a board game?” and “yes, we really do need to go outside today.”

Dan and I are both off right now and our plans are minimal: no flights to break up the time, little to do from an obligation perspective during the day. We’re unmoored, moving from room to room in the house, trying to both stay out of each other’s way a bit, while also wanting to connect with each other and “make this time valuable.” Eli and Owen seem totally content to be in the house, eating snacks when they get hungry—a bowl filled to the brim with Honey Nut Cheerios for Eli, a giant Cosmic Crisp apple for Owen. The apple cores and milk-slicked bowls never quite make it to the compost or dishwasher post-snack.

Owen thrives on routine, so the daily “wait, what do I have to do now?” is taxing. Absent are the normal markers we all rely on to structure our time and anticipate what the day will look like. Things that seem insignificant to me—a short hike, a trip to the library, a stop at a store to pick up a specialty ingredient—are opportunities for digging in his heels. And so I’ll leave him in the car for a few minutes while I’m at the grocery store, or barter that if he goes to the museum, he can get sushi lunch after, or whatever the compromise/negotiation is.

It’s in this unmoored time that we offered Owen an “Owen’s day”—a day where he could pick what the entire day looked like. We didn’t provide any guidelines on what could or couldn’t be in his day. Perhaps a lack of imagination or a bit of autistic burnout is what prevented him from selecting Six Flags or the Great Wolf Lodge (yikes!). Instead, what he chose was this:

• Video games in the morning

• Ramen for lunch

• Video games in the afternoon

• End the day with a Star Wars movie

As Owen settled into his dream day, it occurred to me that this day was also, due to the way he had designed it, a day free of active parenting for me and Dan. There was no encouragement to read a book or timers set to alert when video game time was coming to an end. There wasn’t a plan for how to get the kids to take a hike or go on a manufactured adventure. We didn’t need to model what “good parenting” looked like, or perform for each other. Instead, we all just… exhaled.

Owen getting what he wanted all day meant I wasn’t on high alert. I wasn’t trying to anticipate his next need or mentally diffuse the imaginary next fight. He was happy, and that made it easier for the rest of us to let our guard down.

I read. I worked out. I played chess.

And I made no demands of Owen on his day. I just let him dictate what he wanted and needed. As his nervous system reset, so did the rest of ours.

I originally pitched the idea of getting to design a day over break to everyone in our family. But so far, only Owen has actually picked a day and run with it. The rest of us have struggled to identify what, exactly, we’d do with our day. Or maybe we have some anxiety that what we want to do wouldn’t be enjoyable for the rest of the family. Owen had no such qualms. And that’s what made this day work for all of us.

I hope whatever you’re doing during this in-between time gives you time to reset, whatever that means for you and your family. If you try giving your kid their dream day, I’d love to hear how it worked out for you.

Recommendations

To read: I must have put The Wedding People on hold at the library and then let it lapse three or four times before finally starting it. The title, perhaps, made me think it was going to be a romance novel à la Jasmine Guillory. I finally read it this week and it was as full of heart and surprisingly lovely as everyone had said. Without giving away too much, I came away thinking a lot about which parts of our lives we simply fall into and let inertia do its thing versus where we can (and should) be more active participants, making choices even if they feel selfish or risky.

To play: I’ve always shied away from playing chess. I like to win and I like to know I can win (my nightmare game is Cranium, that early aughts game where everyone had a way of playing that favored their unique strength—yuck!). Chess has such a steep learning curve and the people who are into it are so smug and intellectual. Well, it turns out those people are the people in my family, and this December I got Dan a chess set as a gift and he got the rest of us Chess.com subscriptions. Here’s what I’m loving:

• I’m seeing progress in my skill level rapidly—always a win to realize you can get better at something you thought you were bad at.

• Playing chess on my phone feels much better than doom scrolling on Instagram or the NYT.

• Eli is better at it than I am, and so now that we’re playing, I get the humbling thrill of him explaining to me where I went wrong.

• Something we can all do together; even Owen is learning, and as we play I can see a glimmer of this being something we do as a family in the future.

I’m writing this post in the middle of Chanukah. I always think that it’s no coincidence that this holiday comes in deep December, when the days are short and we are most in need of the light of the candles to buoy our spirits. Each night we incrementally add another candle, and the night gets a little brighter. I hope wherever you are and whatever you celebrate, you’re finding some light this month.

Parenting/kids

Television: I’ve been trying to reclaim “screen time” from something the kids do solo on their own devices to something we can do together to wind down. It’s been much more fun to do this now that our crew is a little older. Some favorites from this year: LEGO Masters (of course), The Great British Bake Off (of course) and old Saturday Night Live skits (your mileage may vary and some of them that I remember as hysterical don’t age particularly well).

Math: I learned about Art of Problem Solving when Quizlet’s founder Andrew Sutherland announced he was joining as CPO. After Eli had a strong showing in Math Olympiad in 4th grade and set himself a goal of doing even better in 5th, I signed him up for Beast Academy, which is AoPS’s curriculum for younger kids. And then I signed Owen up as well. I’ve been so impressed at how it’s gotten both kids interested in pushing their mathematic thinking. Eli is doing exponents in 5th grade (!) and Owen is just really motivated to earn more stars and advance to the next level (it will feel familiar to anyone who has ever gotten hooked on Duolingo).

Tech: We bought Eli an Apple Watch this summer so he can navigate around the city solo with confidence. I love that he can walk a mile or two over to a friend’s house now and know if he gets lost he can pull up directions or text/call for help if needed. There are so many cautionary tales about kids and tech but this overall was a win for our family. Plus texting with an 11-year-old is forcing me to up my meme game!

Culture/Consumption

Books: Favorite books I read this year: The Safekeep, Heart the Lover, Conform (love a new romantacy series), The Correspondent (as good as everyone says), Wild Dark Shore, Atmosphere, Trust and True Biz. Dan and Eli both loved the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, but I haven’t yet started.

Recipes: Favorite recipes I cooked this year: Beef and sweet potato flautas from What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking (the cookbook); Coconut Miso Salmon Curry from NYT Cooking; Ice cream cake from Alison Roman’s Sweet Enough; Marcella Hazan’s tomato butter pasta sauce (always and forever the best); Pastrami Roast Chicken from Molly Baz (I don’t own the cookbook, I grab the recipe here. Note that watching the YouTube is pretty sad because her house and this gorgeous kitchen burned last January in the LA fires). We also cooked a ton of roasted tofu using the recipe from Dinner, A Love Story and ate so much chili crisp. Our favorite is Kari Kari, which I’ve mentioned before.

House: New sheets from Brooklinen after our old ones went threadbare; my sister bought me this Flamingo Estate soap and if you like mint, you will also like this! I also loved using the app Casa (in Beta, only in SF) which is a personal property manager for single family homes that comes with 90 minutes/month of a handyman’s time. It’s made it really straightforward to finish all of the annoying house projects we stare at each weekend and don’t do (i.e. mount a mirror, patch holes in the wall that have been there for years). Feel free to message me for an invite.

Personal/Misc

Working: I spent the first half of the year spinning professionally, but was pleased to start a consulting project with Enrich in June. It was a great reminder for me that even though the market is tough/weird right now, I actually do know what I’m doing and I’m pretty good at being a working person.

Power Zone Pack: I’ve been using a Peloton bike since January 2021. It can get… old (how many times can you hear Robin say “put on your crown”?). My former coworker Meredith turned me onto Power Zone Pack, which provides structured PZ workouts that train you up to improve your output and increase your FTP. PZ training is boring, and the worst part about it is that it works. Recommend if you 1) have Peloton and are bored with it and 2) want to get better at cycling outside.

Crossword puzzles: In March I got my first crossword puzzle published in a major publication. You can check it out here in the Wall Street Journal. I’ve since created many more, and they are all either rejected or being reviewed. But it’s been so fun to learn how to do a new thing and then be humbled by it. Plus, I made a friend in the comment section of the Culture Study classifieds and now I have a constructing friend to collaborate with. Good things can still come from the Internet.

This Substack: Thanks for being here and reading. Every time I send this out many hundreds of people click through and read — I appreciate you being here! I also had the thrill of meeting a reader in the wild last month, something that made me feel like a real influencer (!). I originally started writing to flush out some of my ideas related to a company I was thinking of starting. I haven’t yet started that company but I’m still grateful for this space… and for you.

Here’s to a better 2026 for all of us.

“But I don’t want to clear the table!”

“But I don’t want to go to bed!”

“But I don’t want to do my homework!”

Typically my response is something like, “I understand, but…” and then I’ll explain why we have to do things that aren’t that fun (see also: being an adult and having a job), but that it won’t take too much time. And oh by the way, you can put another marble in the jar when you accomplish your task and look, wouldn’t you know, the marble jar is almost full and wow, you’ve nearly won yourself a trip to the robot sushi place in the mall.

And yet, I continue to struggle with navigating what good parenting is with Owen. So frequently there’s something he doesn’t want to do that I really want him (or us, as a family) to do. And I don’t know how to tell:

What’s the difference between not wanting to do something and not being able to do it because of a disability?

What is teaching grit and perseverance, and what is just punishing to a kid’s sensory system?

How do I balance what I want or expect with what Owen needs on any given day?

Wednesdays are a challenging day. Owen goes to an early-start school (7:50!) which means school ends at 12:50. Then he’s at YMCA care for three hours before I pick him up at 4pm for speech therapy. After that, he goes to a piano lesson. It’s a lot for a little guy who is working hard to keep it all together.

The week before Thanksgiving, Owen had a tough session with his wonderful SLP, Traci. They were working on writing a story together, and Owen suggested a plot line that veered into violence (we’re in a deep Avengers/Loki/Thor phase). Traci said no. Owen got upset, eventually calmed down, went back to working on the story, suggested a violent plot line (again), Traci said no (again), and Owen got upset (again).

After she left, I tried to give Owen the space he needed to feel better, but eventually it was time to go to music class.

And then he broke down. “I have too much to do. I have to go to school and speech therapy and piano, and I have too much to do and I don’t want to go to piano and it’s too much.” The anxiety level in both of us was rising. Him, because of everything he was carrying and how much he was feeling. And me, because I was (like the type A person I am) looking at the clock, thinking about how long it would take to diffuse the situation, how long it would take to drive to piano, and how I was going to make it all happen in the way I had mentally mapped it out.

And then I took a pause.

“Do you want to skip piano and stay here?” I asked him. “Read a book on the couch?”

He nodded.

I tucked him in on the couch with a Hilo book, and that was that. My desire to check the box of going to piano and accomplishing what I had mentally mapped out for the day—traded for a deep breath and some moments of calm.

Later on, I texted a friend who also has a child on the spectrum about what had gone down, and she responded:

“He was able to communicate his overwhelm and felt seen, heard and supported by him mom and not like he’s wrong or should be different. That is GOLD.”

Thanksgiving is a major holiday in my family. I’m lucky enough to live 30 minutes from my parents’ house, and we have a rich tradition of being together, trying out new foods and enjoying each other’s company (I’m also lucky enough to really like my family!).

So many of the reasons I love Thanksgiving are reasons that Owen does not.

Lots of people to catch up with.

Different and unusual food (this year I made an Alison Roman green bean dish that was good but not quite right).

A lazy cadence, turning a typical 30-minute meal into something that takes hours.

I was happy. Owen was not. His Thanksgiving was a short trip out from a bedroom to eat some turkey and a robust round of homemade cheesecake bars. For the rest of the time, he was either watching TV or playing video games, away from the cacophony of a house full of people (many of whom are strangers).

Is there a win in making him sit and chat while we’re eating appetizers? Should I require him to say what he’s grateful for as we move around the 16-person group? I don’t know. Here, the win felt like me (and the rest of our family) not needing to fight. But I also hate the feeling of ceding all expectations and doing what feels like “giving in.”

The day after Thanksgiving, we have a second tradition of getting together with dear family friends for night two. We combine our various leftovers and do it all again. Frequently night two is actually bigger than night one, as our two multi-generation families come together.

I looked at Owen on Friday and suggested to Dan: “Maybe you and he skip night two.” I tried to picture how the night might go down, and all I could see was more hiding out in a random bedroom, more TV, more picking at a few bites of turkey, and more of the same. Him not having a good time. And either Dan or I needing to run interference.

So we opted out. No grit. No perseverance. No pushing through. Just me with one kid, eating one dinner, and Dan with another in a different location.

There isn’t a right answer or rubric I can follow. There’s just seeing what Owen needs and seeing what our family needs. And knowing that sometimes what I need (getting my money’s worth from swimming/piano/whatever! Social interaction with family and friends!) needs to come second to what he needs. Maybe that’s what good parenting is, after all.

Recommendations

To cuddle with: A few weeks ago we ended up at Crate & Barrel looking for a new couch and we came home without a new couch, but with a new blanket for our old couch. As we tested couch after couch, Owen was building a personal relationship with this plush faux fur throw. Now it’s the blanket we all fight to cuddle under when watching TV or reading. It’s heavy but not so heavy it feels weighted. And warm but no so warm it feels sweaty. It was on sale when we bought it and I would bet it goes on sale again before Christmas.

To make: We picked the new Samin Nosrat cookbook Good Things for the second installment of Cookbook Club™ and my friend Liz made her miso onion labne dip as her contribution. It was nostalgic, giving the best of Lipton’s onion soup dip, while also feeling very contemporary thanks to the umami hit of miso and brightness of the sherry vinegar added at the end. I made it for our Thanksgiving and spent the two hours before guests showed up telling my family “don’t eat all the dip before guests show up!”. It’s that good. Just know your house will smell like onions for two days after the hour+ caramelization process.

I feel really lucky for the preschool we went to. Eli went there, and then the week after he left, Owen started—so there was a six-year period where we were there every day. I don’t want to be overly sentimental, but it’s possible I cried a lot on our last day there.

We started Owen at 2.5 because Eli was doing Zoom school from home with a buddy, and we wanted to reduce our germ exposure during that fretful time. His buddy’s little sisters were starting school, so we figured we would do that, too. As we settled into school, things were different with Owen than they had been with Eli, but it was fall 2020, so of course things were different.

One way they were different was that Owen developed deep connections with his teachers. More than connecting with other students, he focused on the educators in his classroom. One, in particular, was Miss Lana. As he struggled in the classroom, she was his go-to. And because it was the pandemic and we weren’t bringing people into our home, she also became our occasional (and only) babysitter. Known to Owen, already mixing with our family’s germs, and happy to help support our family.

After we moved on to kindergarten, we continued to ask Miss Lana to watch our kids when we needed extra hands. She would call Owen “Sassy Pants” because he would be cranky with her in his very Owen way, knowing he could get away with it since he had known her for so long.

Miss Lana loved to bring Owen little gifts and teach him Russian. We would come home and he would have learned how to count to ten in Russian. Once she brought him a book, My First Russian Words, so he could beef up his vocabulary. Another time she gave him a book he loved at school that she wanted him to have: Bear Alert. We would read this book over and over again, marveling at the obtuse newscasters with their breaking news, our house filling with giggles at the absurdity unfolding on the pages. On my birthday one year, she gave me a vintage jewelry box she had found. For someone who didn’t have a ton, Lana was very generous with our family when she could be.

We found out on Sunday that Lana died on Friday. I don’t know the details of what happened; news quickly moved through the text threads that moms who are in the same preschool classes keep, long after preschool ends. I last saw her in late July when she doted on the boys for a night while Dan and I went out to dinner.

Taking care of Owen is not easy. It especially wasn’t easy when he was in preschool, when we didn’t yet understand how his brain worked, how he related to others, or why he did the things he did. Lana loved him for all of his obstinate, idiosyncratic ways, and we are so grateful she was part of our life—both during those dark COVID days and in the years after.

May her memory be a blessing.

It feels weird to transition into recommendations after the above, so I’ll keep it short, sweet and specific. If your kid is a chewer (IYKYK) you may have turned to chew necklaces to try and save the collars and sleeves of his or her clothes. With Owen, we had been ordering chew necklaces from Amazon and each day he would chew through the necklace like clockwork, coming home from school with a mangled mess of an necklace. It occurred to me that 1) I’m trying to wean myself from Amazon and 2) that made-in-China chew necklaces may not be the best for my kid (I have been avoiding googling “what happens if you swallow food-grade silicon.”). So I searched and found Ark, which sells made-in-America chew necklaces. Each one is $16. That is 16 times more than the old ones we were using, so I was very skeptical. BUT! They last! Owen particularly liked the ring option they have. Now we’re going through one necklace every few weeks, I’m off Amazon (for this one purchase) and I worry less about what might be ingested along the way.

What’s one Amazon purchase you’ve swapped recently?

I was thinking about this because we just got a notice that it’s time for Owen’s triennial IEP assessment. Every three years, the district kicks off a new evaluation to make sure he’s qualified under the right diagnosis and is eligible for services at school—and our number is up this year. This is coming in hot on the heels of qualification and the various assessments needed in order to work with the GGRC to unlock services from the government. And in addition to the assessments he gets at school (standardized tests) and with various providers we work with, each speech and occupational therapist we work with wants to kick off with an assessment.

There’s a time component to these evaluations: taking off from work, trekking across town, the post-evaluation readout from the agency or person administering it.

But there’s also an emotional impact on me.

9th percentile. 37th percentile. Below a typical range. 27th percentile. Ahead of grade level. Not approaching grade level.

I attempt to receive these reports stoically each time. It’s just information we can use to figure out how to better support our child.

And it’s also not just information. It’s a black-and-white report on where he isn’t enough, where I’m not doing enough, where we’ll never be enough. Or never be typical. Never be in that desired “typical range.”

I don’t have the answer because I understand that if we don’t know where Owen starts from, we can’t figure out where to support him—and what’s working. At the same time, I don’t always know if there’s a way to quantify what works anyway.

ABA is the most prescribed treatment or set of services for autistic kids. Why? Because the data shows it works. And it was a fail for our family.

Meanwhile, we’ve had dedicated professionals work with us who get Owen in ways that make me hopeful. Last week his speech therapist met us at Glen Park to explore playing with other kids and making friends in a natural environment—that’s way more useful to him than a speech therapist focused on articulation drills to address his slight lisp (those pesky snake sounds, “hssssss!”).

The evaluations and assessments are part of a larger medical system. The things that can be measured can be improved. Sometimes the goals read like they were written by someone who has never interacted with a child who is neurotypical or neurodivergent.

“In 3 of 5 opportunities, Owen will appropriately share his desired toy with another child when the other child wants it.”

And yet, the very numerically based evaluations and diagnostics continue. Insurance, school, and all the other various systems we interact with demand these numbers printed in black and white and signed with my approval. I don’t think there’s a way to escape them.

I can only try to escape my own reaction to reading them, this week, this month, and this year. Because no matter what the number or range says, Owen is still Owen. And he’s wonderful, even if in 2 of 5 opportunities he told me he would never, ever let me play with his favorite toy, and he said that adamantly, and with the slightest lisp, only barely detectable to a careful listener like me.

Recommendations

To watch: We have been trying to find movies that our whole family can watch together. It’s so easy to let each child skulk off into a different room, with a different screen, to watch their own show. And much harder to find something we all want to watch together, as if we’re some 1950s family all tuning into live TV as a group.

Last weekend I decided we should watch Pitch Perfect which I love and remember as a mostly heartwarming lovable losers movie with a LOT of acapella.

Aca-scuze me? This movie is rated PG13, 50% of the dialogue is them calling each other bitches and sluts and it definitely took some warming up for Owen and Eli to be into it. Owen, in particularly, was not feeling it, when the movie kicked off and he was told we were committed to it, and not switching to Mark Rober or video games.

But then they settled in and — surprise! — both loved it. Owen woke me up the next day asking for Pitch Perfect 2 and we’ve been listening to the soundtrack nonstop.

To make: One of the parts of my world that is slowly but steadily improving is that Eli and Owen are both more open to eating more food beyond carbs-cheese-meat-cherry-tomatoes. In particular, Owen has been big into soup; udon, ramen, and matzo ball are all big hits with him. Dan made ‘s Chicken Tortilla Soup earlier this week and it was amazing — the perfect combination of “not-too-hard-to-make” and “feels-special”. There was minor complaining about the black beans (“I don’t like beans, you know that!”) but otherwise was slurped up. My only complaint is that I think the recipe serves three people for real, not four actually hungry people. Will double next time!

Throughout the pendulum swing, I’ve always had an inkling that there has to be an expert out there. Someone who gets me—who gets what it’s like to have an autistic child—and who can just tell me what to do. It occurred to me that maybe that person is a parenting coach. I’ve worked with an executive coach (helpful! I learned that I wanted to move from marketing to product). I’ve worked with a career coach (mostly helpful! I learned that I needed to approach my recent job search from a place of what I wanted and my own values, not from a place of desperation and waiting to be chosen). Maybe a parenting coach could be a similar unlock.

Luckily I have such a friend in my neighborhood — Clio Tilton. I met Clio through my neighborhood parent listserv (Glen Park is still going strong with a good old-fashioned email group) and I love reading her Substack, as I always learn new tools for my toolkit. One recent favorite:

Clio’s Substack

Three Words That Have Been Saving Me Recently

Recently, when one of my kids gets upset or is in the middle of a meltdown, they often ask me to do, buy, or promise things. In the heat of the moment, I know that saying “no” outright will escalate the situation. So instead, I’ve been relying heavily on a short but powerful phrase…

Read more

a year ago · 3 likes · Clio Tilton

Here’s what I learned when we chatted.

Tell me a little bit about you and your family.
My husband and I are raising two sons, ages 4 and 7. Our oldest is autistic. Parenting has been both one of the greatest joys of our lives and also one of the greatest challenges. Our kids are very different form each other. They both have sensory processing differences, but sometimes their needs are quite different. They often trigger each other in various ways.

How did you arrive at a diagnosis for your son?
My son was almost 2 when the COVID-19 pandemic started, so many of the signs of autism were hard to see during the most locked-down months. His speech was clearly delayed, so he began speech therapy at age 2, but other signs weren’t as obvious, and he didn’t get flagged by his pediatrician or SLP.

When he started preschool at age 3, I began noticing differences in his social skills and comfort with other kids. In our carpool, for example, he was completely silent when the other parent drove, and at school his speech was limited, even though at home he spoke in full sentences. After a particularly stressful visit with extended family, where I saw his dysregulation very clearly, my mother-in-law suggested seeking more support or talking to a therapist.

I reached out to a therapist who had previously helped us with potty training, and she pointed us toward an autism assessment. Once I found the right list of “early signs of autism,” things clicked—even though he didn’t show some of the most typical traits like avoiding eye contact or lining up cars. At 3½, we completed an assessment, which resulted in a formal autism diagnosis.

How did you end up becoming a parenting coach? What was the journey to get there?
I started getting into coaching in 2022 when I was out of work during the pandemic (one of the other hats I wear is as a professional viola player!). The pandemic made me realize how much I missed working with people, especially adults. I decided to pursue coach training, and as my parenting path began to diverge from that of many of my friends, I felt drawn to shift my coaching focus toward parents like me.

Raising a neurodivergent child can feel profoundly isolating, especially when social gatherings, team sports, and many of the traditional ways parents find community are less accessible. I wanted to create space and connection for parents walking a similar path. That led me to pursue training as a Neurodiverse Family Coach, as well as training in group coaching.

And… what does a parenting coach actually do?
Great question! There are all kinds of parenting coaches, many of whom specialize in particular populations or issues (sleep, toddlers, teens, etc.). I work with families raising neurodivergent kids ages 0–10, supporting them across all aspects of parenting.

I offer 1:1 and group coaching that provides resources, guidance, and a supportive space to unravel challenges. My approach is client-led and built on the belief that each parent is resourceful, competent, and whole. Parents know their child and family best. My role is not to come in as the “expert” with quick fixes, but to help parents discover strategies and solutions that work for their unique family. I am neurodiversity-affirming in my approach, meaning my approach is about building understanding, compassion, and workable, collaborative solutions in neurodiverse families.

Common topics include: managing behavioral issues, sibling conflict, supporting a child’s social life, staying regulated as a parent, meeting sensory needs at home and beyond, school fit and advocacy, and more. I love working with parents who are at the beginning of the diagnosis or assessment process, as it can be a uniquely challenging time.

What do you wish you knew a few years ago that you know now about parenting a child on the spectrum? Any recent “unlocks”?

Looking back to the early days of my son’s diagnosis, I can see how stressed I was—largely because of stigma, misconceptions, scary statistics, and pressure around early intervention. It’s a lot for any parent to take in.

What I would tell that parent now is: your child is the same child they were a month ago. Take time to connect. Become an expert in your child—that’s the true power that parents have and the key to finding the right supports. Trust your gut when something doesn’t feel right. And seek support for yourself, even if it means shifting your community or friend group.

For us, a recent unlock has been exploring PDA (pathological demand avoidance) as part of my son’s profile. PDA-informed approaches have been very helpful. Predictable, comforting routines make a big difference—even something as simple as a daily drawing session in the morning, or “Taco Tuesday.” These rhythms help, as does focusing on the truly essential demands and being able to offer flexibility in many areas.

Where do you go for support? What fills your cup these days?
For support, I have a monthly dinner group with other parents of autistic and neurodivergent kids. I’ve been in therapy at various points over the past few years, and I grateful for close friends who show up with love and curiosity, even if they’re not on the same path. I’ve also connected with other parents at my son’s school whose kids have similar profiles, and I’m part of the TILT Parenting community, which has been a great resource.

Filling my own cup often looks like exercise or yoga, and I recently switched from driving to using an e-bike for much of my transportation—it’s made me enjoy my San Francisco city living in a new way.

Anything else to add?
I think it’s always worth reminding parents: you are not alone, even if it feels that way. I think it’s always important to remind people that you are not alone in this, even if it sometimes feels that way. And showing up well-regulated and well-resourced as a parent can make ALL the difference. I know we’ve all heard this for years — put on your own oxygen mask first, etc. It can be easy to tune out, but it matters. We are dealing with a lot of tricky stuff right now and I am surprised over and over again by how my kids pick up on our own energy and feelings from a mile away.

Thank you Clio! Do I still want someone just to tell me what to do? 100%. Is parent coaching that? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t helpful and a great addition to add to their ASD support team.

Have you ever worked with a parenting coach? How did it work for you and your family?

Recommendations

To host: I threw a cookbook club two weekends ago! We all brought one recipe from Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem and it was so good! and it was so good. That cookbook drives me crazy because it’s very delicious but it’s also so much chopping, so many herbs, and all the spices. This was the perfect way to get to try many dishes I never would have cooked, including a new favorite: a watercress and spinach soup with rose water.

If you’re thinking “hrmm, I don’t know, this sounds like a lot of work,” the answer is that it was not—you just need to be okay with being a somewhat thirsty friend/organizer. I did not follow any guides or instructions on how to do it. I just picked a cookbook and sent out an email with a date. My only real advice is to skip the work to find a date that works for everyone (can someone please make a better Doodle!?!) and to simply pick a date that works for YOU, knowing people can come to your next event if they can’t make this one.

To read: It seems like this fall is about two things: Samin Nosrat’s Good Things and Lily King’s Heart the Lover. Everywhere I turn, someone is singing the praises of these two works. Happy to say I have both and while Samin’s cookbook looks great, Heart the Lover is absolutely as phenomenal as all the reviews say. I read Euphoria years ago; it’s a fictionalized take on the life of Margaret Mead and charts a love triangle between three anthropologists. Heart the Lover similarly has a love triangle, but that’s where the similarities end (to me). This evoked the best parts of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, with the story originating with three friends in college. King deftly captures the urgency of college intellectualism; how sexy it is to know things, to be able to write about things, to be able to challenge and one-up your fellow classmates. And then, the book follows the three characters in two additional timeframes, charting how they come to be in each other’s lives, and the important roles they play. I can’t wait to reread it and be smitten all over again.

My response:

How much time do you have?

wish the administration was as focused on supporting autistic people and the services they need and depend on as they are on “finding a cause.”

The pseudoscience feels so gross (and also dangerous) to me.

The administration seems obsessed with autism as an epidemic. Rates are going up, but much of that has to do with increased diagnoses resulting from better awareness. (Girls can be autistic! Autism doesn’t mean non-verbal! Etc., etc.) As I’ve mentioned before, I think that having such a wide spectrum of autism does a disservice to both sides—the profoundly/non-verbal autistic and the more high-functioning/equipped for self-advocacy.

The Tylenol thing is just blaming moms—the oldest trick in the book for men in power. See all of Freud. If we think about kids who are overweight or people diagnosed with anxiety or schizophrenia, so much of the standard discourse blames the mom. This feels like a continuation of that old and tired trope.

I loved Virginia Sole-Smith’s impassioned responses here.

Burnt Toast by Virginia Sole-Smith

On Tylenol and Toughing It Out

This piece is free to read because this kind of rage needs to be collective. If it resonates with you, please click the heart and share this link widely with your people. And as always, the best way to support my work is with a paid subscription…

Read more

a year ago · 513 likes · 42 comments · Virginia Sole-Smith

She writes:

I want a government that stops looking for a “cure” we don’t need, and stops pushing sketchy, under-researched medical treatments and supplements. Instead, I want a government that doesn’t cut food assistance for hungry families. I want a government that protects 504 plans and IEPs from the legal onslaught to undermine them. I want neuropsych evaluations and occupational therapy, feeding therapy, play therapy—every goddamn kind of therapy—fully covered by insurance and Medicaid. And then, once that’s all sorted, I want a government that asks, “Hey, what else can we do to support autistic kids and their families?”

But she also writes:

I want these men to spend even five minutes with autistic people, to understand the spectacular gifts of neurodivergence.

Here is where I take pause. Because the very large spectrum of autism includes a percentage of people who are suffering in serious ways, as are their parents and caregivers. The brilliance of the autistic genius who invents a computer or an electric car or a new way of understanding animal slaughterhouses is very different from the day-to-day burden of caring for a child who can’t communicate, can’t self-advocate, and can’t take care of themselves in any way. (I’m thinking here of things as mundane as toileting and as large as living independently.) Being able to participate in a capitalist society is not the measure of value of a human. And yet, as a society, we do hope to relieve suffering where it exists—which is why we do things like ban pesticides that cause birth defects, try to fix things like cleft palates, and attempt to eradicate diseases like polio.

I can’t speak for autistic people. And I definitely don’t think any person—any son/daughter/parent/friend—should be thought of as an epidemic. But if I can get past my immediate “absolutely not” response to anything coming out of anyone’s mouth that’s part of the Trump administration, am I curious that maybe we might learn something? Or make some progress?

Just like I don’t believe you can be pro-life but not pro-social-safety-net, I don’t think you can claim to be advocating for autism and looking for solutions, cures, or causes without being pro-services and pro-government-investment in those services. This isn’t just politics—it’s a question of basic fairness.

An aside: One of my favorite assignments when I was in college was reading John Rawls’ Justice as Fairness. In it, Rawls posits that a just society is one where people might operate behind a “veil of ignorance.” In that world, you would make decisions for society without knowing your own place in it—whether you were rich or poor; Black, white, brown, or some other color; male or female; on the spectrum vs. neurotypical, etc. And so, you would make decisions based on creating a just society for those with the least advantage, because you yourself would not know which group you might fall into. Rawls wrote: “A just society is a society that if you knew everything about it, you’d be willing to enter it in a random place.”

I don’t think many of us would choose, if given the choice, to wind up as profoundly non-speaking autistic. Because, of course, it’s harder—certainly for caregivers and most likely for the autistic person. To me, that means we, as a society, need to do more for those for whom life is harder or more unfair.

I don’t think that means banning Tylenol or telling women to tough it out. I don’t think it means fast-tracking drugs for a “cure” that haven’t been tested. I think it means we need to critically think about how we take care of those with the least advantage and resources. And we’re very far from that right now.

On that note, Owen isn’t an epidemic. I’m very glad he’s here. One reason is because he makes me laugh really hard at the most random times. And because so much of all this discourse can feel so shitty, I thought I’d share some sweet moments from our home in recent weeks.

On thinking about the future:

Owen: I don’t know. What if I want to have two jobs when I grow up?

Me: What two jobs are you thinking?

Owen: What if I want to be an astronaut and a dad?

On adopting fish:

Me: Just so you know, fish can sometimes… die. And it can be really sad. I just want to let you know that before we get our aquarium.

Owen: What happens when they die? Where do we put them?

Me: We can bury them in the backyard.

Owen: No!

Me: We can flush them down the toilet?

Owen: Ew, no.

[pause]

Owen: Can we eat them?1

Recommendations

To fuel: My parents brought back a few Garuka Bars from a recent trip to New England; I believe my flavor was coffee-forward “Double Shot”. I liked them so much that I bought a 12-pack to have more on hand. My default when I’m cycling is a Gu pack, but Gu is disgusting. And I’m definitely not a pro-cyclist, so there’s no reason I need to focused on housing calories as quickly as possible. Love supporting a small business, finding something delicious, and making longer rides more effective for me.

A Question/Recommendation combo:

To sleep?: In August we went to Portland and stayed in an amazing Airbnb. Dan and I both slept in deeper, longer ways than it felt like we had in years at home. We asked the owners what the mattress we were dozing on and they said it was a Leesa Legend Hybrid. I have been close to pulling the trigger several times since then to get this mattress into our home but buying a mattress feels 1) high stakes because sleep is SO important and 2) still so skeezy. What’s the right mattress? When is the right time to buy it? How do you get a deal? Etc etc.

So I’m curious: Does anyone have this mattress and recommend is? Thank you!

When Owen was first diagnosed we were inundated with suggestions of things to “consider” and one of those was attending support groups. I suppose in the same way I saw nonprofit services like SF Autism Society or government services like the GGRC as something for “other people” or “people who needed it more”, I had an immediate “this is not something I need” in reaction to meeting other parents. Too online. To clinical. Too detached. Too needy!

But of course, the joke is on me—supporting a kid on the spectrum is challenging and it can be lonely. I've naturally found myself gravitating toward parents in the same boat. Having someone who "gets it" a text away is a lifesaver in hard moments. We all want to be seen and have our challenges acknowledged.

Which brings me back to attending this support group for the first time. I walked in and noted the group:

Moms. All moms. Dads mysteriously absent—some from their kids' lives, as I found out, but also from the physical space, from the day-to-day emotional and logistical management of their neurodivergent kids.

Exhaustion. People looked weary. They were present, phones away, but they were tired. This is not the room anyone really wants to end up in, if they had their choice.

Openness. It's a no-judgment space. I'm welcomed in, welcomed to share what's going on with me. The baseline is that there's something tough going on. But the moms share what's happening, what they're struggling with, and we're all there to listen and support. The only rule is "you get to talk for five minutes before anyone jumps in with advice or their thoughts."

I also noticed that the women there were a bit older than me, on average. Maybe 10 years. And because of that, logically, the kids they were raising were also older. At this point I realized how much of my experience supporting Owen is framed around his elementary school age. I know many parents who have elementary school kids, and I frequently chat with parents who have kids who are even younger. The little ones who are newly diagnosed or potentially on the precipice of some diagnostic unlock.

But the parents of teenagers? Or young adults? They aren't frequently in my orbit.

Speaking to these parents, hearing what was going on with their families, hit home for me the adage: Little kids, little problems; big kids, big problems. I heard about drug use, about kids who won't attend high school, about kids whose gen-ed "integrated" classrooms are wholesale failing them educationally. I heard about self-harm, about absent partners, about moms who have to do it all.

And I'm not ready to confront those problems or even think about what it means to be addressing them. Sitting in this group, listening to these moms, made me realize that there's still a kernel of hope that somehow I'll unlock the secret of what Owen needs to settle into this world. And if that happens, it would open up a life that feels a little easier for me, and a lot easier for him.

I know there's no cure for autism. And I know the services and support we've had through the years aren't there to "fix" him—they're there to make life easier for him in a world that isn't designed for autistic people's needs and environments. But hearing about what life is like for an autistic 17-year-old hit home for me: there isn't a light at the end of the tunnel. It's just another tunnel, connected to another tunnel. My job is to figure out how to create a little more light inside, to make the journey a little less burdensome.

When my mom was initially diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, I remember talking to her about an initial support group she went to. "It was all old men," she told me. "No one was doing well." Seeing that reflected back at her as a peer wasn't encouraging or supportive. So she didn't go back.

I want to connect with other parents. And I want other parents to be a resource. But I think the support I want right now may need to be right-sized for where I am, and where Owen is.

Recommendations

To buy: I’ve been excited about Dusen Dusen since discovering them via Claire and Erica/Of a Kind (RIP!). I snagged a linen tank a few years ago via Garmentory and then Dusen Dusen moved more into housewares and away from clothing. Good for our houses, bad for our personal sense of style. So I was thrilled to see a Hanna Andersson x Dusen Dusen collaboration live this week (Instagram targeting knows me well!). With the kids moving from kid world to tween world, it feels like the right time to invest in some pajamas for wearing around the house. And I’m not opposed to transitioning these into “cool PJ look for outside weekend adventures” if the opportunity arises.

To listen: I was gutted this week listening to The Daily’s Trapped in a ChatGPT Spiral. [TW: Suicide] The episode dives into how people are going deep with ChatGPT — so deep that they start developing delusions of expertise, of new discoveries, of different dimensions, and sadly, that ChatGPT is the only one who cares about them/ChatGPT is their best friend. The episode focuses, in the second half, on a teen boy who took his own life earlier this year. It occurred to me that Eli today has free reign over ChatGPT on his computer. I think he mostly uses to help him build Minecraft mods and servers, and small coding projects. But I have no idea. A must-listen for parents who need to understand some of the emerging risks with AI.

To give: On Saturday I’m riding 44 miles with my mom, dad and sister as part of Team Tandemonium in the Michael J. Fox Foundation Tour de Fox. I am proud to be one of the top fundraisers this year — nearly $10k — and would love your support for my ride.

I love this advice for both parenting, and everything else. I interpret this advice as:

1. Parenting is full of battles large and small, so it’s best to figure out what you care about and ignore the rest OR

2. If you care about everything, you care about nothing

For a long time, I would proudly proclaim to anyone who would listen that we only really had three rules in our house:

1. You eat what we say you eat (or you can choose not to eat)

2. You sleep when we say we sleep

3. You have to be kind/respectful to adults

I felt pretty smug initially, just as I had with sleep training — “other people are just bad at this,” I thought to myself, as my first child would toddle off to bed calmly every night at 7:30, and I fielded texts from friends whose two year olds were up til 10. TEN!

Of course, nothing is more humbling than having a second child and realizing that your excellent parenting was maybe less deterministic than your child being who he or she innately is. All of which is to say, the above three “rules” are very much a work in progress in my 2025 house, where parenting ideals meet on-ground-reality.

This past three-day weekend had some bright spots — namely a rare beach day in San Francisco, where the average temp this summer seemed to hover around 58 degrees — but also felt like a struggle. Things felt/feel hard, a constant struggle against giving in to demands versus holding onto what little structure or control we as parents would like to have.

A provider we were working with once described Owen as “impressively persistent” and we ran head first into that dynamic, over and over again. My desire to do things a “normal” family can do met Owen’s needs — and his inability to grasp the social dynamics of a larger group.

Here are some snapshots of our weekend:

Bike time

We go to my parents house. It’s 90 degrees outside. Owen has been told we can go on a bike ride, but when we get there, it’s 1) 90 degrees outside and 2) my dad has just returned from his own bike ride and is not yet ready to go out again. We pivot to heading to the community pool for a swim (it was 90 degrees outside) but Owen insists that he ride bikes first and not after swimming. This results in three adults with college degrees brainstorming different permutations of how we can both ride bikes and get to the pool, without actually “going on a bike ride”. (Think explorations of where to lock up a bike, which bike is actually set up for Owen to ride with, etc).

The tone becomes more adamant. The adults become more flustered. The temp rises to 91 degrees. As the tension escalates, my mom finally IDs the correct solution — she and I will leave 10 minutes early and walk to the pool, and my tired dad will bike with Owen and meet us there as we arrive from our walk.

Drawing time

We are due at our friends for brunch at 11. At 10:50, Owen decides he needs to draw a specific character from a specific Marvel show. But he needs a picture to reference. Actually he needs to watch a guided drawing video on YouTube RIGHT NOW. The video needs to be paused frequently so that his drawing can catch up to the YouTuber’s drawing speed. We’re drawing in pen, and make mistakes. This makes the drawing take longer, as we need to then cut tiny pieces of white paper out of another piece of paper, and tape them over the mistakes.

Roughly 25 minutes later, the drawing is done and we leave to go to brunch, arriving a half hour late.

Karaoke time

We are invited to our neighbor’s house for karaoke and a Labor Day bbq. We are late (again) because it is inconceivable to Owen that we leave before he’s finished a movie he’s watching — it cannot happen. We arrive and Owen is immediate and adamant with his assessment of this party.

“I hate this and I don’t want to hear anyone else sing.”

Dan volunteers to take him home while Eli sings “I can’t stop this feeling” on full blast. We, the parents, confer. It’s not 90 degrees but it feels like it to me, as I try to navigate my own needs (social time with friends) and Owen’s increasingly urgent needs (not being at this party/hearing anyone sing). Dan sets him up with a phone in another room where he can watch TV by himself; exactly what he was doing at our house before the party.

These examples may feel mundane, but each of them is illustrative of the dynamic we have. Owen needs something or wants something, and we, as parents, have to decide where we’re OK giving in, and where we want to hold the line. I don’t want to give in all the time. And yet, not giving in often time makes everything worse; escalations of volume, more adamancy, and an increase in tension in our house (something felt by me, Dan and Eli).

What is really challenging to me is there are the things I can/should anticipate — of course a kid on the spectrum with sensory issues is going to lose it at an off-tune karaoke party that’s turned up to 11, how did I not see that coming — but it’s the unanticipated demands (that are of equal importance to Owen) that take me by surprise. Where to give in? Where to give up? What does being a good parent to a kid on the spectrum look like, when you also need to be a good parent to his brother?

I don’t have the answers; I wish I did. I’d love to be posting on Instagram with “Three things I did to deescalate the tension and demands in my neurodivergent family.” But that’s not real for us right now. We’re figuring it out, one flare up at a time, and hopefully getting just a little better as we go.

Recommendations

To read/listen: Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Atmosphere. I’ve read a few of her other books and liked them, but not been captivated by them, but this came highly recommended by my mom-group-chat. I discovered recently that my Spotify subscription comes with audiobooks, and so while I was waiting for it to be ready at the library, I started listening. And then I couldn’t stop listening.

A brief summary: The book follows two parallel timelines:

1. Joan Goodwin, a scientist who joins NASA as an astronaut in the early 1980s. We follow her as she joins the corps, builds relationships with her fellow astronauts, and comes into her own.

2. Joan is the voice on the radio up to a mission up in space that goes awry (this happens early on, not a spoiler) and she has to help many of her friends figure out how to return to earth.

The audiobook completely destroyed me. I loved how the two main characters were voiced by two different narrators in their chapters; I was completely immersed in the best way, and sobbed like a baby in the final chapters. Could not recommend more.

To make: My favorite party trick this year is to make an ice cream cake. It’s nostalgic, it’s delicious and it’s surprisingly easy.

My biggest challenge is finding the space in my freezer. I follow the basic outline from Alison Roman’s Sweet Enough, which she has also shared on her website here. If you follow her recipe, you start with an entire chocolate sheet cake, of which you only need a 10-inch round. This has the added benefit of giving you an emergency backup cake you can store for later use in your freezer! Here are some of my recent flavor combos; mint is not a universally loved flavor in my house, so while I love making this with Mitchell’s Grasshopper Pie ice cream, it’s not my go-to.

• Chocolate base, salted peanuts, chocolate chip ice cream, more salted peanuts, peanut butter whipped cream.

• Chocolate base, Oreo cookie ice cream, whipped cream, rainbow sprinkles