There’s all types of parenting out there. Permissive, Attachment, Authoritarian, Helicopter, Gentle, Calm. I’m not judging any of them or saying any of them are better than others. What I found was that all the parenting and behavioral advice I tried, it seemed to apply to neurotypical kids, and nothing I tried worked for my daughter. I had to figure it all out on my own over the years, and ultimately, what I found was that I had to start with myself.
Your emotions, mindset, triggers, coping skills and relationships are literally the biggest things influencing how you show up to effectively parent your child and deal with your day to day life. Without first addressing those, you can’t learn the proper tools and resources to best parent your child and implement them successfully.
But, we are told all kinds of BS stories about parenting that set us up for failure:
Things like:
→ If your child has a behavior problem, you need to discipline more or have more consequences
→ You need to learn how to control your child better
→ Your child just isn’t trying hard enough
→ Wait until your child is calm and then they will be able to process and learn what to do the next time they get upset, have a meltdown, etc. (this one was SO frustrating)!
→ Other parents of neurotypical kids dismissively saying: I know exactly how you feel. What you're dealing with is so normal! Everyone’s kids have meltdowns sometimes (or insert any behavior here).
....plus a ton of other really ridiculous things that are just big fat lies!