4 What Your Daughter Deserves: Love, Safety, and the Truth

Kassiane Asasumasu

She needs love from her parents, not yet another person she can’t quite please.

PARENTS OF AUTISTIC GIRLS, obviously you want to do right by your daughter, or you’d not be reading this. Here are things my parents would have needed to know to make my life easier. They didn’t know, but you do. This is my gift to you and to your child.

Most overarchingly, know that our self-esteem is fragile. No one likes being exasperating, and we know we are perceived that way. Most children want to please adults and want other children to like, or at least not hate, them. Autistic children are still children, and this pattern holds for us. We were plopped into a world where everyone and everything tells us we’re wrong for completely incomprehensible reasons. This gets exhausting very quickly and it breaks us down faster than you can imagine.

The evil twin to our fragile self-esteem? We learn very early on that what we are isn’t what you wanted when you became a parent. You can readjust your dreams, hopes, and expectations, and you can love us fiercely, but we know we’re not what you really desired. Please don’t tell your child that she’s all you ever dreamed of in one moment and send her to hours of coercive, damaging therapy meant to change who she is in the next. These do not add up. We know these don’t add up.

To take these things into account, you need to pick and choose any therapies with the utmost care. So many therapy options seek to change us into the child you did want at any cost. They won’t succeed at this. There is no therapy that can make us the effortlessly socially adept, smiley, precocious child that everyone dreams of. These are therapies that will drive home that this is our failure. They will make us anxious, acutely aware of our endless failure to meet expectations, and teach us that to be okay we need to do anything and everything we’re told. This is a profoundly dangerous message.

Hold your daughter dear. Do not allow anyone to teach her that unquestioning compliance is what is expected of her. If you raise her to believe she has no right to say no, she will take you at your word. Not everyone is a predator, but predators can sense women whose boundary-setting skills were systematically demolished from ten miles away. Add to that a lack of self-esteem from a lifetime of being what was not wanted.

No, you want better for her. She’s young now; adulthood seems so far away. But every day of childhood is practice for adulthood. We’re vulnerable. We need extra boundary-setting practice. We need to learn this skill with people who would never hurt us, so when we need to stand up to those who would, we know how. And we need to know that we deserve to be safe. You’re charged with teaching your daughter that. If she learns nothing else, make sure she learns that her body is her own, that she deserves to be safe, and that if someone hurts or scares her, they are the one at fault.

So many other things you need to know come right back to these two core concepts: Your daughter is an amazing human being and she has a right to boundaries and safety. You need to know that if she wants friends, she wants friends—equals. Many young autistic girls find themselves a “project” of their age peers. Please don’t let this be her only social interaction. Don’t act like the popular girl who wants to “fix” your daughter is the bee’s knees. This dumps a lot of salt into the “not the child you hoped for” wound. That other girl is not your child, and your child is so much more than a project. Being “worked on” is demeaning. It is not equal. This is a terrifying boundary to draw when you know it will disappoint your parents and likely have negative social repercussions as well. Encourage peer relationships that are equal and mutually beneficial. Your girl doesn’t need to be a mimic of her “queen bee” peers. She needs to be the best damn her she can be.

All girls—indeed all children—need role models. They need adults they can look up to and aspire to be like. Most little girls meet a number of women and older girls they can successfully emulate. Many autistic girls . . . don’t. Your daughter needs to see adults like her. She may never be like her teachers, her auntie, her babysitter, her neighbors, or any of the women who she is around very much. The skills and interests demonstrated by and encouraged for girls are often incompatible with our disabilities.

Make friends with autistic women. Your little girl needs to see adults she can be like. She needs to know adults who are profoundly joyful at minutia, who have executive functioning difficulties, who stim, who don’t play the social games in the standard way. She needs to know adults like her exist. She needs us as a guide. And she needs to know that her parents like the kind of person she will grow up to be. Thinking your family would avoid you if they weren’t stuck with you? It aches. That “not the child my parents wanted” thing? It’s easier to believe your mother when she tells you that you’re exactly what she dreamed of when her friends get you and are on your wavelength.

And your daughter, she needs someone in her life who understands effortlessly. You can be exploding with love for her, and she can reciprocate, think you are the best parents on earth, but that doesn’t mean you can do all she needs. And that is okay. Children need communities. Help her connect to other adults. It is an act of love to help her meet and bond with adults of her neurology. To know someone who has been there is a gift. To not feel alone is more precious than diamonds. We so often feel alone. The diagnosis rates of autism in girls still lag, and we’re usually not particularly like Autistic boys. We’re so often alone, but we don’t have to be. Our people are out there. Help your girl find hers before she resigns herself to never being understood.

I’m sure you’re trying to understand her, but there are things allistic1 parents can’t instinctively wrap their heads around. She needs you to try. Her needs are real. She’s doing the best she can with what she has. She’s trying at least as hard as a non-Autistic child.

She may have you convinced she understands things she doesn’t. We’re good at that, we Autistic girls. Our masking mechanisms are often successful enough to fool our parents. If your daughter is good at words, she may have you convinced that she understands school or people, things that she doesn’t. If she’s like me in this regard, she may even think she has a clear understanding of things that she doesn’t have: fiction, how to write a term paper, metaphors. She may not actually know what she thinks she knows. This is a hard realization. When she figures this out, she may be upset. Finding out you misunderstand so much is harsh and painful. She needs you—and she needs mentors—to be there for her, to help her understand without making her feel like she fails for just not knowing.

Some days are going to be hard. Some days she may have fewer skills than others. This is more distressing for her than it is for you. Do not lose sight of this. It sucks to not know what your own capabilities are from day to day. It will not help her to fall into “woe” mode. It is not about you. She isn’t trying to upset you. It is harder to experience this than to watch someone experience it. Keep sight of who this is actually about—your daughter. Stay calm when you can and go into the next room or even for a drive when you can’t. Love her. She needs love from her parents, not yet another person she can’t quite please, not yet another therapist. Do your best to understand and internalize that her inconsistent skills are not personal, and that they’re bothering and inconveniencing her far more than you. If this is inaccurate, if they’re bothering you more, you really need to take a step back. Do not appropriate her challenges but help her move through them.

Her needs are real, even if they are inconsistent. If she is stimming, it is a need. She needs that input. If she does better with visual supports, honor that. She trusts you and wants to please you. Be worthy of this honor. Do not abuse this trust with expectations that she do things that are impossible for her. Don’t ask her to do things that take more energy from her than they are worth. Honor her needs. There is no great virtue in sitting still or remembering to do everything without visuals or in being able to be spontaneous. Do not violate her trust by convincing her there is. She deserves the truth, and the truth is that meeting her needs matters more than the performance of normal. There are no “grown-up police” who will go around making sure no one uses more than five sticky notes a week. Teach her that her needs matter more than the arbitrary “shoulds” from others.

I want you to know that you have been given an amazing gift in the form of your daughter, and a stunning responsibility. Life trusts you with a unique, beautiful soul. Your challenge is to raise her to know herself and her needs and to feel worthy of having her needs met. These are daunting tasks. I don’t believe that special people are preordained to have special kids; that’s about seven kinds of insulting-to-everyone nonsense. I do believe, however, that our parents can choose to become extraordinary.

Your girl deserves extraordinary. Break the mold. Make the decision that she is exactly the child you always dreamed of. Fiercely fight for her right to be an Autistic person. Love her dearly exactly as she is and raise her to know that she is perfect and that her needs are her rights. Be amazed at all the expectations an Autistic girl who already knows she pleases the most important adults in her life can shatter.

When the basic need to secure her parents’ love is accomplished? She is free to take risks of failure, and so amaze you when she succeeds. Choose her. Allow her to shine. You won’t regret it.