If your child has been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, you are in for an interesting ride. Your child’s perspective can be frustrating at times, but if they allow you to enter their world, you will find that the world around you can take on a unique meaning. 

My name is Michael. I find the rules people put on things confusing. I don’t understand why things must be the way they are, and so I try to test out new ways of doing things. Sometimes they work, sometimes I get yelled at. My teachers might call me creative, but I have ideas flowing through my head all the time of how to do things differently, and I don’t understand that that is different to anyone else. I figure it must be, because people keep commenting on it, but that makes me feel like I’m weird. 

Sometimes those ideas get too much, and when people don’t let me try things out, it’s very frustrating. I don’t understand why people don’t want to try new things – it might be even better than the way they’ve always been done. When I get frustrated, I feel like my body starts to tense up, and I find it hard to talk to people about what’s going on in my head.

Sometimes, when people say mean things to me, or make me feel stupid, I can’t let go of it. It adds to the stream of ideas in my head, and it makes me feel very stressed. When I get stressed, my environment can become painful. It’s like there’s too much noise, but it could be from any of my senses. Trying to concentrate when everything around me is causing me pain is difficult, and sometimes it gets too much. I try to stop the sensations as best I can. Sometimes I scream as loud as I can because it makes me feel less stressed and it stops the noise. Sometimes I go into a corner and close my eyes and cover my ears. That usually helps, but sometimes people come over and keep talking at me while I’m trying to settle. 

I feel really bad when I can’t tell those people to go away without being rude, and so I let them talk, but when I see them getting frustrated, it makes it even more stressful, and I feel my brain shutting down. I can’t talk, and I forget what to say, and sometimes I lash out at people.

I don’t want to hurt people, but I don’t know how to deal with my weirdness. People make me feel strange and they don’t want to be friends with me because they don’t like the way I am. I just wish all my days could be good days, and I wouldn’t have meltdowns. Sometimes I can become less stressed through shaking my hands, or clicking, but people look at me weirdly when I do, and it just highlights to me that I am not normal.

Michael’s situation is a common experience for Autistic children. With the overwhelming message from schools, other parents and their peers being “why can’t you just be normal?”, these children are at risk of falling into emotional and social traps which can lead to self-reinforcing depression and anxiety. 

Your child with Autistic , I would argue, is not disordered, but is instead unique. Their brain is overclocked, overstressed, and it can take a lifetime to undo the damage that is caused by the impossible expectation of being normal. A far healthier view of your Autistic child is to set a goal of being able to “act normal”. This allows both you and your child to prioritise the skills that are truly important for them to have a fulfilling adult life, while not stifling their unique creativity, passion and focus.

Attention Deficit Disorder and its hyperactive cousin have many similarities but are different enough in their expression that the behaviours they produce should be treated separately under this framework.

My name is Allison. The doctors say I have Attention Deficit Disorder, but I just have a hard time getting started doing things. Sometimes I get into the “zone” and I can pay attention well, but that’s usually when I can do something I really enjoy. My teachers tell me that I have potential, and if I just tried a little harder, I could get really good grades, but it just doesn’t seem to work for me. 

I have a hard time getting out of bed, and life is pretty exhausting. There’s just so much going on that I have a hard time deciding what to focus on, and if my teachers are to be believed, it’s always on the wrong things. But the things that are interesting, they get my attention, but it’s like I don’t have any energy left for other things. Some days I just feel like sleeping, others I have a huge amount of mental energy but I don’t know what to focus on.

When I’m in class, I sometimes end up daydreaming, because I heard a noise, or saw something that caught my eye, and I make stories in my head about it. But when my teacher makes me snap back to the classroom by asking me a question, I realise I didn’t get anything that they said. It makes me feel stupid, and people think I’m lazy or ditzy, but it’s just that the distractions make my brain work so much faster and better – just not on the things other people want me to learn.

I feel like my parents are disappointed in me, just like my teachers. They tell me they know I can do so much better, but I just can’t seem to stay focused. I know they don’t understand, so I don’t really talk to them about it anymore. I just get told to work harder, but not how. I’ve tried sticky notes, flash cards, but I can’t seem to stick with one thing. Maybe I’ll just never reach the potential everyone sees in me. Or maybe I’ll just be able to work with the things I’m interested in – I don’t have issues staying focused on video games, after all.

As you can see, Allison’s issues are mostly internalised. Adjectives such as “lazy”, “ditzy” or “stupid” can affect a child’s self-esteem if they start believing they are true, and this is the case for many ADD children. Labelled “under-achievers”, these children daydream, and often go on to become compelling and charismatic story-tellers. The rich imaginative worlds that people with ADD can access, which is one of their greatest strengths, can be marred by the negative labels given to them by teachers and parents. Without access to one of their greatest strengths, people with ADD can become quietly depressed, and unwilling to talk to others about their internal world.

Your ADD child is unique, their brain like a flowing river. As things come to their attention, their mind’s flow swirls and eddies around it, like rocks in a river, but must keep moving. In this river, it is easy for plans to get swept away, and smaller rocks like chores and study to be passed by. The larger rocks, those which hold the river’s flow for a longer time, are the things that are truly interesting to your child. For your ADD child to have a fulfilling life, their extra needs must be catered to, to allow them to complete tasks that are required but not interesting. This then also allows your child to use their ability to hyperfocus on the skills and tasks that they believe are important to them, without compromising their responsibilities.  

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder shares many traits with Attention Deficit Disorder but is different enough in expression that the behaviours produced should be treated separately.

My name is Harrison. I’m having a hard time in school right now. Well, I always have. The other kids can sit still, and they just seem to be able to listen for hours, and hours, and hours. It’s not so easy for me. I get this tingling feeling in my arms and legs, and I have to move to stop it from distracting me. Sometimes I only need to do small movements, like tapping my pen, but people find that annoying, so I don’t do that as much anymore. I went through a phase of jiggling my leg when I felt it coming on, but then people said they found that annoying as well. 

My favourite time of the day at school is when I get to run around and play with my friends. It makes the feeling go away for a while, but as soon as I get bored, it starts creeping up on me again. When I was younger, I used to explode from it, needing to move my whole body to get rid of it, but now I know that’s not really cool, so I just daydream when I get bored. I feel like I “zone out” and snapping back to what’s going on around me can be disorientating. People get annoyed when I do that, but I don’t know how to stop. Sometimes I find it helps me concentrate on things I have to do if I’m doing something else, like drawing or listening to music. 

I feel like I have lots of energy, but it’s hard to direct it onto what other people want me to do. Everyone tells me I could do so much better if only I tried harder, but I just never seem to end up with enough time to do it. There’s always something else that I feel like I should be doing, nut I’m never quite sure if it’s something I’ve forgotten to do, or whether it’s just the way I am. It makes me very stressed and anxious, and I wish I could just do things the way other people seem to be able to. 

Harrison has described the process that many ADHD children go through once they realise that indulging the feelings of hyperactivity often makes them look unstable. These children, upon realising that their behaviour is frowned upon, often swing towards the ADD experience, while channelling their extra energy into socially normal expressions, such as sports, or drama. Without an outlet for this energy though, these children can become anxious or aggressive in response to the physical sensations created by their body. The energy that people with ADHD can harness is one of their greatest strengths, but many require help throughout childhood to be able to embrace and direct their energy. 

A good analogy for the way a person with ADHD’s brain works is like a bower bird. Bower birds will flutter from branch to branch, looking for blue decorations for its nest. Once it finds it, it will focus all of its attention on it, and take it back to the nest before going to find the next decoration. When thinking about a person with ADHD in the modern world, we should ask what happens to our bower bird if everything around it is blue? This produces a situation where the bird will struggle to identify which item it should target. It may find something but think that there may be bigger and better things that it just hasn’t identified, thus dividing its attention between actual and potential items. 

These children are generally classed by teachers, professionals, and unfortunately their parents as “difficult”. Behaviours like unprompted aggression, task refusal, spitefulness, defiance, vindictiveness and refusal to take responsibility for one’s actions are distressing for everyone concerned. It is debatable whether these behaviours are satisfying for the child involved and it appears that they don’t make the child happy for any length of time, though in the moment there may be an element of a sense of justification. It can be difficult for children to walk the line between applying a rule and over-applying it, and many sources of media contain messages that can reinforce the idea of justified retribution. 

These behaviours can develop from deep-seated confusion, betrayal, hurt, anxiety, or trauma, and they provide a means for the child to regain some power over their situation. Very rarely do these behaviours appear unprompted and may be best considered to be defence mechanisms – against the experience of negative feeling. Most unfortunately, with children, is that when a family is dealing with these behaviours, it is very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that nothing will make a difference. Particularly with children with ODD behaviours, traditional discipline does not generally work because at some point in their development, their trust and respect of authority figures was broken. This can then lead to increasing punitiveness towards a cycle that you cannot effectively end. 

When managing these behaviours, it is essential to maintain a positive outlook. If you don’t believe it can get better, how can your child?

Another aspect of ODD that I would like to highlight is that healing from any form of trauma takes time, and stress or other uncertainties can lead to a redevelopment of that behaviour. Consistency is key, and consequences must make sense and be proportional – otherwise you are asking your child to accept a punishment that does not fit the crime. Asking a child to do this will reinforce any sense of unfairness that exists, which can then trigger the question of why the child should act in a way that is fair, if the rules they live under are not? 

PTSD and other mental health disorders absolutely require intervention from mental health professionals. Not only can the behaviours that stem from these past events affect the child but may also lead to significant distress throughout the whole family. I have worked with families where trauma has been an exacerbating factor, and these children need supportive, positive interventions from their parents and their support team. Children who have experienced trauma can sometimes become “stuck” in their past experiences, and particularly with PTSD this may involve re-experiencing the traumatic event, with the genuine fear that was associated with it at the time. 

As parents, and your child’s primary support people, you have the power to help your child work through and move past their prior experiences. People who have successfully worked through trauma can become exceptionally resilient individuals, but without support this trauma may reappear years later. Trauma-related behaviours can be some of the most challenging to work with, as whenever your child is re-experiencing that moment, it is incredibly difficult for them to perceive the reality of what is around them.

Children who have experienced trauma may lash out at the people they care about most, may not understand why they perform the behaviours that you as their parent see as problematic and may, without support, develop oppositional behaviours as a defence mechanism, to prevent anyone from hurting them ever again. These children, above all, need effective but kind behaviour management.

Anxiety and depression often go hand in hand, and the features that define your ASD or ADHD child, from sensory overload to bodily hyperactive symptoms may increase your child’s risk of developing anxiety. Anxiety can be present in pre-schoolers, and can lead to an exacerbation of the behaviours associated with each of the different diagnostic umbrellas. Whilst tendencies towards anxious behaviour may never truly go away completely, children can learn techniques to manage their anxiousness. The key in any intervention with an anxious person is to lay their supportive framework whilst they are not anxious. Anxiety can make even the simplest task seem overwhelming, with bodily sensations which children particularly may not understand, or may be frightened by. 

As parents, you may have had certain dreams and hopes for your child even before they were born. Whether that was to have a child who would come fishing with you every weekend, or one you could take to dance lessons, or simply the wish that your child be healthy, everyone has expectations. Perhaps, as with any other condition, your child’s diagnosis has resulted in a change in those expectations. You are allowed to feel disappointed, or sad that your child will not be who you expected them to be, but it may be helpful to recognise that very few children will fully live up to their parent’s hopes and dreams, whether that be because of ability, or because they have hopes and dreams of their own.

So, if all parents are destined to feel disappointment at some point in their child’s journey to adulthood, where does that leave you? Your child has challenging behaviours that you would like to support them to fix. How do you go about that? Let’s keep in mind for the next few pages that behaviours in children (and adults) do not appear in isolation. They are a symptom of your child’s internal landscape – how they see themselves, how they feel other people see them and how they believe the world around them reacts to the behaviours they display. On their own, ASD, ADD or ADHD, even in combination, are not automatic indications that you will have to deal with challenging behaviour. These are simply different ways of seeing the world. It is the beliefs that these children develop, influenced by their unique perspective that influence their complex interactions with the world around them.

Let’s strip down your expectations, and those of most parents. If I asked what you wanted your child to be when they grew up, perhaps you would give one of the following answers:

I would like my child to get a good job

I want my child to marry and have children

I want my child to have lots of friends

I want my child to be a supportive member of the family unit

I would like my child to experience the world

But then, what if I ask you why? You might look at me as though the answer is self-evident. If we take having a “good job”, we mean one that makes a lot of money, or one where your child is satisfied with the work they do. But why do you want that? A lot of money means your child won’t have to struggle, that they will be able to lead an easy and happy life. Satisfaction with their work leads to happiness (and hopefully, a decent wage!).

The common factor, when all expectations are broken down in this way, is almost universal: happiness. More specifically, an improvement in happiness.  Parents want their children to be better off than they were, and therefore happier.

There is nothing stopping your child from achieving that expectation. 

However, if they have faced challenges up to this point (characterised by the very behaviours you are here to learn more about), then their ability to achieve that expectation needs to be supported. And who better to do that than you? You know your child the best, and hopefully armed with the perspectives above, your understanding of your child’s view has already been enriched.

Your child needs role models to be able to determine what, as judged by society, is appropriate behaviour. Because throughout history, societal norms have changed rapidly (particularly if we think about an evolutionary time frame), children have very few inbuilt instincts as to what appropriate behaviour is. If you think about children from other species, very few require childhoods anywhere near to the length of ours. This is due to two factors. Due to our large brain, children cannot develop fully in the womb without their heads becoming too large to birth, so as with kangaroos, most of our physical development occurs outside their mother’s body. 

This isn’t the only reason, and we see this other factor in other social animals. In order to keep up with changing social environments, children from social species (such as chimpanzees and elephants) tend to have longer childhoods and require more corrective influences around them to be able to develop into healthy adults. In humans, this effect can be seen in the different attitudes between generations, which is necessary when with each generation, the nature of work, relationships and social norms changes. 

Children then, are not born with inbuilt ideas of what is “good” and “bad”. They can only measure these based on what they are shown, told about, and how things make them feel. Your role as their parent is then to help them learn these values. These values provide a framework for children to enter the world as adults and can help them avoid unhealthy behaviours and relationships. 

As I mentioned before, everyone has expectations, and your child has some of you. As you read through each of these, think about how you display each of these behaviours, and perhaps how you can improve. You may be struggling with issues from your own past, or from the parenting experience that you received as a child, but the expectations below are your basic scaffold from where you can both be your healthiest self and encourage healthy behaviour in your child.

An expectation of safety is one of the most basic human needs, and potentially one of the ones that many children struggle with the most. This expectation covers the basics and can be condensed down to your child not needing to fear that they will die. This may seem very easy to ensure – you can feed your child, provide them with clean water, a stable living environment, and adequate supervision. However, for extra needs children, children who are prone to anxiety, or who have gone through trauma in the past, there are a wide range of other events that can make them feel unsafe. I’ve listed some examples below.

For children who have suffered from a major separation, being left alone can make them feel unsafe

For children who have had the concept of danger emphasised to them (which is often necessary with impulsive extra needs children), doing something they feel is dangerous without an adult can make them feel unsafe.

For children who are sensitive to textures of food, a bad experience with a food previously can make them feel unsafe when presented with a food similar.

Children are generally quite aware that they are smaller and more vulnerable than most adults, which is why the more physical discipline methods “work”. However, raised voices (particularly with children who are sensitive to noise), or physical discipline may cause children to feel unsafe within that environment, or around the person responsible.

Is this all to say that you cannot make your child feel safe if you leave them alone, attempt to feed them food, or raise your voice at them? Certainly not. Your child needs to feel safe, but this does not mean that you can’t do anything that might make them feel anxious. Instead, this is where your other values and expectations come into play. 

Have a think about what situations you have been in that might have made you feel unsafe, then attempt to see it from a child’s perspective. An example of an “unsafe” situation that most adults have been in is the walk down a dark street at night. You may be fully aware that the neighbourhood you are walking in is safe, but you internally recognise that you are in a more vulnerable position. Your internal threat response activates, and your body responds as though you may need to defend yourself at any moment. Your heart beats faster, you might start seeing threatening shadows and you might walk a little faster, all to get yourself out of that situation. Of course, if nothing does actually happen, you get back to your house, sit down and make yourself a cup of tea to calm down. If your child feels unsafe, they feel the same reactions, but their experience hasn’t built up a good picture of what this reaction actually means. So, whilst you, as an adult can rationalise that the situation is not in fact all that dangerous, your child is still developing that skill, and needs your support to help them realise that the situation is not as bad as their body is telling them, and they may even need to be taught how to calm down.

Every person, whether an adult or a child, expects a certain level of respect. That’s easy to say, but what does respect actually look like? From a parental point of view, you expect your child to respect you by listening to you, by doing what you tell them to, and by looking to you as their role model.

Your child expects you to listen to their needs and concerns, listen to their feelings and fears and try to work with them to help them develop. This by no means is saying that you should drop everything to listen to your child whenever they want, but it is worth checking in to make sure you do provide that space for them to talk about their internal world to you.

This is also an opportunity for you to encourage your child to recognise respect as they become adults. This essential skill will allow them to navigate adult relationships more smoothly and display respect to others. Another factor in this respect relationship is recognising its two-way nature. You are perfectly entitled to explain to your child that they can expect to receive in return the respect that they dish out. This has a two-fold benefit: your child as they develop into an adult will come to realise both that their relationships should be mutually respectful, and that if they are not being respected, they are within their rights to take issue with this. 

In previous generations, the idea of respect was spelled out within published guides, but being products of their time, these guides have become outdated. No longer do we expect wives to show respect for their husbands by refreshing their makeup and getting their husband’s slippers ready before they come home. We no longer expect husbands to respect their wives by providing complete financial support for the whole household. The question of what these social norms of respect have become is still in flux at the moment, and so the answer to this has become far more individual and personal.

Have a think about the ways you yourself recognise respect in your intimate (partner) relationships, in your (platonic) friendships, and in authoritative (instructor-student, managerial) relationships.  and consider how you would go about navigating a relationship where those indicators of respect were not there. 

Every relationship that you have carries some level of expectation of encouragement. Have a think about your friendships. Have you ever had a friend that was constantly negative? Perhaps you had a “great idea”, and your friend just pointed out how difficult it was going to be, how impossible it would be, or flat out just said it wasn’t a good idea. How did that make you feel?

Most people will answer this with negative adjectives such as “disheartened”, “sad”, “frustrated”, or “angry”. These emotions are valid, in both adults and children, and can be useful indicators that something isn’t quite right in your relationship. 

Your child needs encouragement that their development is going “to plan”. You can do this in a few different ways, and with extra needs kids, often this encouragement needs to be specific and explicit. Here’s a couple of common scenarios I’ve observed. Read through and think about how each scenario and its options would make you feel, as an adult.

Scenario One: You have made an artwork. You spent a lot of time picking the colours that you really liked, and making sure that the colouring is all in the lines. Your hand slipped a few times, so it’s not perfect and you know that, but you take it to your friend and show them.

Option One: Your friend takes a quick glance at it, and hands it back to you, saying “It’s very nice, but you need to work on your colouring in.”

Option Two: Your friend takes your artwork from you, looks at it for a couple of seconds and hands it back. “It’s nice.”

Option Three: Your friend takes your artwork from you, looks at it and say: “Wow, that’s a big improvement. I like the colours that you used.”

Option Four: Your friend takes your artwork from you, and looks at it for a long time. “This is the best artwork I’ve ever seen. The colouring in is exceptional!”

Scenario Two: You’re applying for a job. It’s above your current pay grade, and your experience doesn’t quite match perfectly but you think you’ve got a pretty good chance because you think that you’ve got a good handle on how to learn how to do a new job. You phone your friend for some advice on how to word your cover letter. When you tell your friend the job you’re applying for…

Option One: Your friend laughs at you and says, “Are you kidding? That’s stretching a bit isn’t it?”

Option Two: Your friend sounds doubtful as they ask: “Are you sure you’re qualified to apply for it?”

Option Three: Your friend says: “That sounds like a pretty good job for you. How are you going to cover the requirements for experience?

Option Four: Your friend says: “Oh, you’re smarter than me, you don’t need my help. You’ll smash this interview no worries!”

In my experience, most adults and children feel most satisfied with option three in both cases. Option one is very discouraging and can have effects on self-esteem. Option two, whilst not overtly discouraging, is rather dismissive. Many people would then start to question themselves, as to what was actually meant, and as a protective mechanism, may start to think the worst. In the artwork scenario, questions such as “What do they mean it’s nice? Does that mean they hate it, but they’re just trying not to hurt my feelings?” may arise. In the job scenario, option two may lead to questioning your own decision to apply for the job, regardless of how excited or positive you were about it initially. 

Option Four is over-the-top and may appear overenthusiastic to the point of no longer being genuine. In Scenario One, the flaws that you are aware of are disregarded completely, while in Scenario Two, this response implies that the reason for your phone call is unnecessary. 

Encouragement that is specific and genuine, such as that in option three in both scenarios, is the basis for fulfilling connections with other people, and your child is no different. This is not to say that your child requires constant encouragement regardless of the quality of their idea but will benefit from genuine praise of the positives. It is reasonable to tell your child that their idea will not work, if you have experience in it. A common business management technique is the “compliment sandwich”, which is quite helpful to keep in mind when discussing childhood ideas. Frame your negative statement with two surrounding positive statements. For example, if your child makes an artwork, and then declares that it should be sent to the most prestigious art museum in the country, you can encourage them without following through on their plan. Simply pick two positives. “I love how confident you’re getting with your artwork, but I think the museum might want something different. The way you’ve done the detail on these lines is really great – why don’t you work some more on that? I’d love to see what else you could come up with using that style.” In this simple sentence, you have encouraged your child, rebuffed their plan, and redirected them towards a more achievable goal.

Surely, you’ve heard the common complaint from teenagers that their parents just “don’t understand them”? Or the complaint from people in relationships that their partner just “doesn’t get it”? Often when asked if they have explained themselves to the other person, they may respond with “It’s not worth it, they’ll never understand”, or its more negative component, “Why would I? It’s not like they’ll ever care or change.”

Fulfilling relationships and connections require a certain level of understanding, but our ability to communicate to other people who we are and what we value can be influenced by our experiences. Your child desperately wants you to understand what’s going on inside their heads (partly so that you can help them translate their feelings and impulses). It is incredibly difficult for people to develop the ability to talk about their internal world without an example set for them, and proof that talking about their issues will result in discussion or change. 

Again, this understanding is not a one-way street. Your children need to recognise that the level of understanding that you give them needs to go both ways. If you spend time trying to understand someone else’s viewpoint, it is a reasonable expectation in both parent-child relationships, and those between intimate partners and friends, that this effort to understand is returned. 

Understanding essentially means building an internal framework around the reactions other people have. When you have confidence in your understanding of someone, you feel as though you can see the world from their perspective, that you understand how they react to the world around them, to stress, or to unexpected events. There are two factors that can actively harm this level of understanding: dishonesty, particularly about self, or inconsistency. 

Dishonesty comes in many forms and can be as simple as the ubiquitous “I’m fine” when you are clearly not. Your child can detect that you are stressed or angry, or sad, and if you are telling them that nothing is wrong, this can cause them to question whether their perception of your mood is accurate, or whether your mood is about them (which it may well be). Your child does not need to know all your deepest secrets, but if you are in a bad mood, there is no harm in being upfront about it. This can also provide your children with an example of how to shake a bad mood. Negative emotions can be very scary for children because it can make them feel very insecure. 

Inconsistency can have the same effect as dishonesty. If your child does not know whether you explode under stress, or go quiet, because you do both, seemingly randomly (to them), they do not know how to react most appropriately, and that can create stress. Inconsistency is part of the human condition, and the best way to combat it is to take personal ownership of your own inconsistencies, giving your child a scaffold to work with.

If you have made it this far, you know that there are a lot of two-way expectations that your child needs to develop healthy relationships with both you as their parents, but also moving forward into adulthood. It’s never too late to start talking about these expectations and values. However, one of the most basic needs a child has, is love, which is one value that does not always flow both ways. Your child expects you to love them, because they are learning what love is. The first major relationship is with you, their parent. They will mirror in future relationships what they see from you. Your attitude towards them is their first understanding of what love is, and when broken right down, the expression of love can be characterised by the values above. 

As much as your extra needs child can frustrate, annoy, or hurt you, their only framework for what love is comes from you. And as adults, they will look back on their childhood, and remember the moments where they felt that you understood them. They will appreciate the moments of honesty, kindness and vulnerability, from you, that helped them heal and become the people they will turn into. If you’re reading this, your child most likely already has challenging behaviours, but with the right framework, both you and they can appreciate life together, and move past these challenges. You may be tired, sore, or just simply worn out, but try to find one positive thing about your child. Perhaps it is their laugh, or the silly things they say. Perhaps it is their sense of humour, or the way they come to you and snuggle. Whatever your reason is, hold onto it. Long-lasting behavioural change takes time and effort, and perhaps even challenging beliefs of your own. Hold that image of your child as an adult, looking back on their childhood and saying: I respect my parents. They had a rough time with me, but I never felt like I wasn’t loved. 

Imagine your child, an adult, happy and successful, for whatever their version of success is. They would sit down with you, as adults and tell you that they love you. And you’ll know they mean it because you fought so hard for them. You are their first cheerleader, their first mentor and their muse. You can make that image a reality. 

It all starts with you. 

A child (or any person) who is secure, stable and knows they have support is a far easier person to engage with, and that is the purpose of this book: to help you achieve this. This is no quick fix, and you may even feel that it gets harder before it gets easier, but your extra needs child will thank you, as the amazing adult they will become.