Covering sucks. Nursing is hot before you have to put a sweaty blanket on, babies want to make eye contact while they’re nursing because it’s about connection and not just nourishment and in my experience, once they’re old enough to grab the cover, they’ll just throw it off their face and expose your titty anyway.

As it turns out, having my tits out publicly didn’t lead to complete societal collapse, no matter how much I hoped it would.

That’s a great point wrt: diagnosis as an adult. Many folks with ASD have learned how to mask effectively enough that they are then dismissed by psychiatrists later in life because they’re not exhibiting specific symptom.

Thanks for the youtube recommendation.

I personally think it’s valuable to have a non-parent perspective. There are too many parents who don’t make an effort to seek out the viewpoints of ND folks. I could go on about how they’re probably the same parents who expect kids to be a certain way and live up to their own expectations rather than be individual people but that’s a rant for another day.

My lo has ADHD and likely ASD (physician doesn’t think it is worth pursuing diagnosis at this time for a variety of reasons).

I was actually in the process of pursuing an ADHD diagnosis for years before my child was diagnosed - I ran into a lot of hesitation until I moved to a less conservative area (not sure why). I finally found a physician who listened to me but I think having my child diagnosed helped the doctor take me more seriously.

We’ve got an ND family counselor and they have been valuable for helping us advocate for our child at school, providing specific resources for specific challenges but mostly for continuously championing the ways our child is successful and unique. When you’re in the trenches about day to day life things, it’s nice to have a reminder to focus on the many ways your kid is amazing.

I wish there were more resources out there specifically for ND parents with ND children. While I share and can relate to a lot of the same challenges, there are definitely things that are harder for my child than for me and I wish I had better tools to help them.

I do!

I still get teased as an adult (30s) because I can’t remember phone numbers, addresses or passcodes people tell me, have a lot of trouble reading analog clocks, and constantly mix up left and right.

In school, it was frustrating because I would understand concepts much of the time but actually doing figures for math/ science problems I would switch numbers around and end up with the wrong answers. It was discouraging.

As an adult, I’ve found tricks that help me and I’ve successfully done plenty of jobs that revolved around numbers and counting. I just wish there had been more support around it when I was younger.