The Emotional Rollercoaster of an Autism or ADHD Diagnosis

Mom Support Call where we talk about how to help you be more confident on your parenting journey: https://calendly.com/keirabrowncoaching/explore-coaching-call

Transcript

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Hi, and welcome back to the podcast. Today we're going to talk about something that almost every parent of a neurospicy kid goes through. Um, and that is the emotions that happen with diagnosis. Remember, there is no right or wrong way to feel, there are just a lot of different ways you might feel. So let's go over those and talk about something that doesn't get talked about very often. Welcome to the Autism Diagnosis to Confident Mom podcast with Kira from Kira Brown Coaching. I'm a mom of Neurospicy Kids and a life coach. I'm here to share real tips and support to help you feel confident as a parent. Today, let's talk about some emotions you feel when your child is first diagnosed with autism and/or ADHD. Um, you might feel relief. You finally have answers, or you think you have answers, you might realize that your gut feeling was right, that there was something different about your child. Um you might start understanding your child's behaviors through a different lens, and you can stop blaming yourself for uh being a bad parent and start understanding the diagnosis, but relief is rarely the only emotion, and it's not bad to feel relief, it's not bad to feel any of these emotions. In fact, all of these emotions are valid, so just keep that in mind. Um, another emotion you might feel when your child is first diagnosed is grief, and grief isn't about loving your child less, so make sure you understand that. Don't beat yourself up for that, don't go into guilt because you think you love your child less. It's about the expectations that you had for your child. From the time you knew you were expecting your child, or even the time you were planning to have children, you had this expectation of what life would look like, and most everybody's expectations are neurotypical, right? They don't expect their child to be autistic or have ADHD, excuse me. Um, and so you're realizing that life is not gonna go as you expected it to go, and it's okay to grieve that loss of expectations. Um, you're grieving the uncertainty of what's gonna happen, what will they look like as adults? What will it look like raising them? How will things look differently, etc.? Um, and it's grieving the idea that your child might face difficulties that other children don't face, that it might not be as easy for them to play a team sport, or it might not be easy for them to go to Disneyland as a family, whatever your expectations were, right? The they might have some challenges, they might have some challenges in school, they might not, but um you're just remember you're not grieving your child, you're grieving the life you imagined they would have, and it's still a loss, it's still very real, so feel that grief. Um, you might feel some fear. What is their future gonna look like? Will they have friends? Will they be independent? Will people understand them? Will people judge them? Will people be rude to them? Okay, all of these things are fear, and fear is okay to feel too, it's valid, and then you might move into overwhelm. At first, you might have felt a little bit of relief, you're gonna have some answers, and then you realize oh, all of these answers are really just more questions for me to figure out, or at least that's how I felt. So you're gonna feel overwhelmed. There's evaluations and therapies and school meetings and dealing with insurance and doing all the research, reading the books, and listening to the podcasts, and um, everyone has an opinion on how to do it. You thought, uh, parenting regular children, neurotypical children with people's opinions was hard. And now people have even more opinions. You need to be more strict, you need to be more lenient, you need to look at their sensory, you need to, you need to, you need to, you need to. You get dirty looks from people at the grocery store. It's overwhelming, and it's okay to feel overwhelming. You can feel like all of a sudden you're supposed to become an expert overnight on your child, and it doesn't happen overnight, it takes time, and that's okay. Just feel some overwhelm. You might feel guilt. Things like, did I miss the signs of this earlier? Did I cause this? Should I have done something sooner? Would his life be better if I had sought an evaluation sooner? I just want you to remember that autism and ADHD are not caused, they are neurodevelopmental conditions. You did not cause your child's condition. Their brain is just wired differently. Let's think about um somebody who lives in the city and somebody who lives in the middle of nowhere, like I do. We have a different view, right? I find peace in the stars at night and the quiet, where somebody in the city finds comfort in other people being around. I drive 60 miles for a gallon of milk where somebody in the city walks a block to buy a gallon of milk. If I forget something in town, I go without. If somebody in town forgets something, they go back to the store. They just have a different perspective of how life goes, and that's okay, right? It's totally fine to have different perspectives, totally fine, and that's the way it is with a neurodiverse brain, they just see the world a little differently than the rest of us, and that's okay, there's nothing wrong with it, it's just two different views of the world, okay? So, um just just know that you didn't cause this, and it's not a problem. It's not a problem. Don't beat yourself up, okay. Eventually, after you felt all these emotions, the relief, the guilt, the grief, the fear, the overwhelm, hope will start to sneak in. And it is really lovely when it does. Um, you'll realize that your child isn't broken. You realize that the child that your child simply experiences the world differently, like we talked about, and you'll realize that this diagnosis is not a label, but it's more like a roadmap. It's gonna help you know where you're going and how to get there. Um, you'll off you'll go from thinking, what's wrong with my child, to what does my child need to thrive? How can I help my child? You'll start advocating, you'll start seeing their strengths, you'll start finding a community, and that community might look different than you thought. That might be something you have to grieve is the community you thought you would have, but you'll find community, I promise. Even I have found a community in the middle of nowhere, so you'll find people, it might look different. Some of my community I reached to out for Marco Polo, which is like video messages back and forth texting, but with video messages. Um, and you'll find that you become more confident. Now, if you find yourself at the beginning of this journey where you're feeling grief and pain and fear and overwhelm, maybe a little relief, but you're really pretty feeling pretty overwhelmed, and you want to feel more confident as a parent to this neuro spicy kiddo, that's what I do in my program. So if you're interested in that, jump on and we'll do a free 30-minute Zoom call and we'll we'll chat about your life and how's it going and um get you some help. Okay um, you don't have to buy, it's a totally free. You don't even have to give me a credit card number. You just hop on and we'll chat for 30 minutes. Um I'll leave that link in the show notes. It's gonna be called a support mom call. It's all about helping you, mom, become more confident as you parent on this journey. But just remember, if your child is newly diagnosed, or maybe you've gotten a diagnosis too, um, it's okay to have conflicting emotions. You can feel grief and relief at the same time, you can feel hopeful and scared at the same time. Every emotion is valid. Just feel it, don't push it away. Pushing them away makes them harder to deal with in the end. So, um, just remember a diagnosis didn't change who your child is. They're still the same child, it just gives you a better roadmap for the journey that you're already on. And while this may be unexpected, it can still be full of joy, growth, connection, and beautiful surprises. You're doing great, mama. You are a good mama because you are here trying to figure this out. Keep up the good work. Thanks so much for listening to Autism Diagnosis to Confident Mom. If this episode helped you feel a little more seen or supported, please take a moment to like, follow, or subscribe to the podcast. And if you know another parent who needs to hear this, share it with them too. We're all in this together. You're doing better than you think, Mama. You've got this.