He was maybe three days old the first time I saw it. A little scrunch of the fist and a grouchy groan, like something about the world had already annoyed him. My mother was staying with us to help out after the birth, and I remember pointing it out to her. He’s six now. He still does it.
He was my first biological child, but not my first child — I’d been raising three stepsons for years by then, and autism and ADHD were already in our house. So when the other things started showing up that first year, I didn’t dismiss them. The tapping. The lining up. The way he didn’t turn when I said his name. He wasn’t silent; he made plenty of noise. He just never once tried to talk to me.
My pediatrician was good. He noticed around nine months and referred us to early intervention.
Then it was 2021, and everything was still closed. They told us to wait.
I called again at eighteen months. They apologized for not taking him the first time.
He was diagnosed at three and a half.
I’m Sanya
Five sons, ages 4 to 19. Three of them are autistic. Two are nonverbal. There’s ADHD in the rest of us, including me.
Two are mine biologically. Three I’ve raised for more than a decade. All five are mine.
We rent. I can’t knock out a wall to build a sensory room and I wouldn’t have the money if I could.
Why this blog exists
Because when I was looking for help, almost everything I found was written by someone with one autistic kid, a house they owned, and a budget I didn’t have.
The advice assumed things about my life that weren’t true. Build a calm-down corner in the spare room. We don’t have a spare room. Reduce noise in the home. I have five boys.
And then there’s the stuff. There is an endless supply of products promising to help your autistic child, and no way to know which ones will work for yours. Every one of them costs money. Nobody tells you where to start, so you either guess and lose the money, or you don’t try anything at all. Both of those felt terrible.
Most of what I found also stopped at about age ten. My oldest is nineteen. Nobody was writing about what comes after.
So I started writing it down myself.
What makes this different
I’m in three stages at once. A nineteen-year-old, a six-year-old, and a four-year-old, all autistic. When I write about the teen years, I’m not researching — I’m in it. When I write about a newly diagnosed toddler, I’m in that too. Most autism blogs cover a slice of childhood and then go quiet. Mine can’t.
I rent, and money is tight. Everything I write has to work in a house I can’t modify, on a budget that doesn’t stretch. If it requires a renovation or a few hundred dollars, it doesn’t go on this site.
Two of my kids don’t talk. So when I write about communication, AAC, visual supports, or reading a child who has no words — that’s not theory. That’s Tuesday.
I’m not going to pretend it’s beautiful. Some days are. Some days I’m crying in whatever room doesn’t already have someone in it. Both of those are true and I’m not interested in only writing about one of them.
What I believe
Autistic people deserve respect, not fixing. I don’t write about cures, recovery, or treatments that claim to reverse autism. I won’t link to them, review them, or run ads for them.
Good advice has to be affordable. If only families with money can use it, it isn’t good advice. It’s a product pitch.
Hard days are allowed. You can love your kid completely and still find this exhausting. Anyone who tells you those two things conflict has never done it.
Autistic adults know things I don’t. I listen to them. So should every autism parent.
You know your kid better than I do. Nothing here is instructions. It’s one mother’s experience, offered in case it’s useful.
What I’m not
Not a doctor, therapist, behavior analyst, attorney, or financial advisor. I have no credentials in anything I write about.
Not an expert on your child. I’m barely an expert on mine, and there are five of them.
Not here to sell you a dream. I’m here to tell you what actually happened in my house and let you decide if it’s worth trying in yours.
Where to go next
New here? Start Here will point you to the stage you’re actually in.
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