Chapter 1, It's all About Connection. My anxiety as a parent prevented me from seeing it. My name is Sarah. I have a 23-year-old and a 15-year-old.

My 15-year-old was diagnosed with ASD, and in the beginning, we were pretty desperate. It got really bad. We're talking about near hospitalization, therapeutic schools, lots of trauma. Day-to-day life was just nearly impossible.

When my daughter was 11, it was really bad. There were lots of meltdowns and frustration, and I was in a constant state of anxiety. It didn't feel like anxiety. It felt like anger and frustration and desperation, but I didn't realize that it was my anxieties that were fueling my inability to see it for what it was. I wasn't understanding, and neither were the therapists or the people who were trying to help.

We're in a district where our school is fantastic. They tried so hard to help. I was a pretty strong personality. I came into the IEP saying, this is what I want, and this is how it's going to be.

I think the bigger issue was that it took me a while to understand that they didn't have the tools, the resources, or the understanding to truly help. They were working on an old and outdated behavioral model that really wasn't about my child's behavior. For them, they thought it was about her behavior, but in the end, through Asperger Experts, I learned it wasn't the behavior that was the problem. It was what was triggering the behavior.

I feel like, if somebody would have knocked on my head, hit me in the head with a brick, and said, listen up, we're missing the point, then that would have been great. So I'm trying to do that now with the reader. I find other people with kids who are struggling and trying to get the help they need, and they get frustrated and say, my kid spends all their time playing video games, or my kid refuses to do x, y, or z. Or my kid has a meltdown over this, or I'm worried that my kid isn't socializing enough.

They're looking at the behavior. They don't realize it, but they're looking at the behavior, and then their anxiety starts to amp up. And now, they're worried about their kid's behavior, and then they start to panic. And they start making demands of their child that the child just is simply not capable of fulfilling because of the underlying problem of the parent being in defense mode.

A great example of this, for instance, is that right now I'm trying to learn how to speak French. That way, I can speak it with a few friends who are already fluent. They've tried to talk to me in French, and what happens? I immediately panic, and I can't remember even how to say, hello, how are you? All of a sudden, it's gone.

So that's an oversimplified version of what's going on with a kid who's shut down or melting down or refusing to do what they're being asked to do. I've had to explain this to family members and friends who say, why don't you make her do it? Just take away the internet, or just take her devices away, or refuse to let her do x, y, or z. They don't understand.

That would work, if she felt safe and secure and grounded, but she doesn't. And even then, I don't know if that's the best way to handle it. It's a great way to destroy relationships.

To put it in the most extreme example, I saw a news article recently that said the FDA has banned shock therapy in schools. Obviously, that's horrific, but there were some parents that were angry, because it worked and provided treatment. I'm thinking to myself, well, of course, it would work. If you have a kid who's freaked out, and you say, do what I say, or I'm going to give you a painful electric shock, well, then they're going to do what you say. It worked in the sense of it got you the result that you want, but you aren't looking at the bigger picture to see that it destroyed any sense of them having any trust in humanity ever again.

So when you're looking at a kid, and you're saying, well, he's just refusing, he's being manipulative, or he's being whatever, remember, it's for a reason. They don't feel safe. They don't feel grounded. They don't feel secure.

We don't have to get into the reasons why that may be, because there's just so many of them. The point is, as a parent, your opportunity is to get in there and connect with that child. Make them feel safe. Make them feel grounded. Help them to feel like this is a safe space for them, and say, I'm not going to punish you, because you can't. I'm not going to reprimand you, because you're, at the moment, incapable.

Well, some people say, well, he did it yesterday. Well, yeah, yesterday, he wasn't as anxious. So he was able to access that part of the brain that can help him do the thing that you're asking. That defies the very concept of what Asperger Experts teaches and what Holly Bridges talks about when she talks about the polyvagal theory and getting grounded and getting reconnected and feeling safe. What you want to do is connect with them where they're at and in a way they're capable of doing.

The connection piece for kids is the piece I kept missing in the beginning. It was the piece I wasn't getting. So I read, and I thought, OK, I got this. Right? I got this. I get this.

I see other parents, oftentimes, making the same mistake I did. They read, they listened, and they didn't go in for the connection piece. They did all the other stuff. So they might just wash their hands of the demands, because the child is really highly anxious, and they step back. But then they don't go in for the connection.

You have to do both. You have to connect. You have to meet that child where he is, when he's comfortable, for as long as he can sustain. You don't push.

Controlling or stepping away. I want to go back to the topic of parents either wanting to control or step away. I'm a type A personality. So I lean more toward control. It was out of fear, and your anxiety is apparent.

It's complex, but what I really want to say about that is, if you have a child on the spectrum or with any neurodiversity, there's a high likelihood that you, the parent, are on the spectrum too. You may not know what it is. I'm 54 years old and just found out I'm dyslexic, I have ADHD, and I'm gifted. I didn't know these things, and by the way, just for anybody who might roll their eyes when they hear the word gifted, it doesn't mean what people think it means. It means that we're going to have challenges that other people don't have, because we tend to run higher in anxiety, and the world just doesn't fit our logic.

My point is just that I had a tremendous amount of anxiety as a parent. I had a tremendous amount of anxiety before I was a parent, and then my child had struggles, which of course, raises anybody's anxiety. And now, my anxiety is feeding their anxiety, and we're caught in a cycle.

And I'm making demands and have expectations, because my anxiety says, well, what if she's not socializing enough? Or he's not studying math enough, or what if he fails this class? That anxiety is not helpful. All it does is feed the kid's anxiety. When you bring your own anxiety down, you could start asking the questions you need to help them figure out what's wrong.

This comes back to the connection piece. When you're in there and connecting with your kid, these conversations will open up organically, and then you can learn about what your kid does and doesn't need. One of my kids has slightly higher social needs than the other, but neither one of them have very high social needs.

Whereas, I'm a person who has pretty high social needs. I can't project that onto my children. Just because I feel like, oh my God, you haven't talked to anybody in three days, for me, that would be stressful, and it would be uncomfortable.

For them, they're like, yeah, I'm good. I'm talking to my friends online. I've got my family I'm connecting with and talking to, and we had a meal together, and we went on a road trip together. But that comes back again to the connection piece and bringing down your anxiety, so you can be present. Be present in the practical reality of what is, not what you think should be.

As a parent, we oftentimes project what we think is going on with our children onto them. I might say, oh, you've been very quiet today. Are you upset about something? And you're projecting, and the kid, a lot of times, will then look at you like, no, I never even thought there might be a problem. But now that you mention it, thanks.

I see a lot of parents talking to their kids about whatever label they've been given, whether it's autism or whatever you want to call it. Up until now, the kid hasn't been thinking about it. They haven't been thinking about how they're different, or they haven't been thinking about what labels they have and how people reflect them. Then, the parent comes and says, so I want to talk about how you're concerned about how you're different, because you have social issues and anxiety and so forth. And the kid goes, well, crap.

Listen, I'm a pretty emotional person, and I'm pretty gregarious and outgoing. But I'm also very intense. So when my child is having an intense experience, I feel it, and then I react to it. So I have to pull myself away and say, don't take action. Don't go in there and try to fix it or try to talk it out or resolve it right now.

Take a moment. Be with my emotion. See how it feels. Just be present with it. Don't take action, until you feel your emotions come down, until you feel yourself regulate a little bit.

It's hard to do, but with practice, it does get easier. Anxious parenting, fearful parenting, parenting from a perspective of, oh my God, what's wrong with my child? How will he ever-- how will she ever-- what will happen if-- oh, that kind of thinking is the first sign that you should be stopping and checking in with yourself. Because you are now putting that all on your child, and it's been my experience that kids on the spectrum tend to be actually more sensitive to that. They tend to be more perceptive of somebody else's stress.

As our kids get older, the more you can talk about emotions. My older one, who's 23 now, he's come around. He's matured, and we can talk about his overwhelm. And I can say, you seem like you're a little upset. Is everything OK? And he can talk to me.

My 15-year-old, if I said that, the first thing she's going to do is say, I'm fine. And I can't blame her, because that's a normal 15-year-old reaction. As an anxious parent, sometimes, I forget that, in teenagers, there's a natural rebellion, a natural desire for autonomy, a natural anxiety, a natural amping up of peer pressure and social expectations. So to some degree, we don't have to pathologize everything our children do. But I say natural in the sense of normal, not natural in the sense of healthy.

For example, peer pressure. That's not healthy. Is it regular? Yes.

Unschooling my kids. I forgot to mention this earlier, but I radically unschool my daughter. My son went through regular high school. When I say the word radical, I mean it's a radical choice.

The difference, for us, for her, was that I was able to fully immerse ourselves into the defense mode concept from Asperger Experts and connect with her more deeply. I know some people think that in unschooling that you just let your child do whatever. No, there's a constant of going in and trying to reconnect and meet them where they are. I constantly get told by my daughter, oh, you've got to see this mom, or you're not going to believe what so-and-so did, or why do people say stuff like that? Not having that external pressure that was causing anxiety for my daughter has allowed her to step back and gain some perspective on how people behave and why they behave the way they do.

Look at the research for all of five seconds, and it'll show you that the worst thing that you can do for a kid's anxiety is to have to have your own anxiety. Because they need somebody else to ground them and calm down. The way you learn to calm down yourself is by having other people calm you down.

I have a favorite Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, and in it, Calvin says, never in the history of calming down has anybody ever calmed down because they were told to calm down. My 23-year-old son, on the other hand, is going to school for graphic arts, programming, and game design. He's also gifted, and he's thriving. Pretty much what he did with most of his teen years in all of his free time was play video games.

His knowledge is so complex and so diverse. What he has learned is now feeding a career with a huge demand. Something a lot of parents don't know is that IT, the tech industry, and programming are so huge, and the future in it is enormous. And that would be a whole different conversation, but they need to understand that the world in the future is online.

I think a lot of parents think it's temporary. You know? I think a lot of parents think it's a fad. I think that's our children's future.

That it's their world. It already is, but it's becoming more so. And to remove them and tell them that they can't have this technology, for whatever reason, is also not healthy. But again, my parental anxiety shows up and says, oh my God, my kid's on YouTube all the time, or my kid's playing a video game all the time.

My 15-year-old daughter has days and times when she struggles with it and other times where she's able to self-regulate. What I've done is have conversations with her. I say things like, this is why it's important to self-regulate. This is why I'm concerned. This is where my concerns are coming from.

Sometimes, she says, prove it, mom, and I'll say, OK, this is what happens when you're on for too long. You need to take a break every now and then. And so now, at 15 already, she's starting to self-regulate, but again, that comes with maturity and brain development and practice.

Support and inform, that's what I have to keep telling myself. I'm here to support her, not control her. I'm here to inform her, not regulate her. Because if I do that for her, she's never going to learn it, and that will deteriorate the relationship. Because it creates resentment, it creates frustration, and it amps up anxiety, again.

I have to keep reminding myself, she's really stressed out, and say it over and over and over. Speaking for myself, having a brain that's wired a little differently, I see the world differently. And when things don't fit or line up the way I expect them to, it creates stress for me, and that stress amps up my anxiety. Now, imagine that it's happening constantly, and one thing is building on another, until you reach the point where you're just so overwhelmed that you can't even think straight. And you don't know if you want to cry, scream, run, hide, or go to sleep, because your brain is so overwhelmed.

Imagine living that every day. That's not the same thing as going to work and being busy and getting a lot of phone calls. That's hard. I've been there, done that.

It's just a complete overload, way too much, not like they're kind of, moderately stressed and have had a hard day. Like they're freaking out stressed so bad that their body is literally deteriorating. It can be reversed, but it takes a long time and a lot of patience.

If I were to sum up my message, I would say, look at the child's anxiety. Look at your anxiety. Know that the behaviors are coming from a need to feel safe or an inability to feel safe, and as a parent, you have the opportunity to go in there and change that. But you've got to start with yourself, before you can help them, and you've got to change the way you're looking at them and thinking about how they're behaving and why they're behaving.