⚠️WARNING! Though there are no explicit descriptions of trauma, I do discuss generalized depictions of childhood trauma with a tone that could trigger someone dealing with their own issues. Read at your own discretion.⚠️
When the past creeps into the present — and the ache of two childhoods collides.
One of the hardest things about parenting my autistic son right now isn’t the sleepless nights or the aggressive meltdowns.
It’s what raising him drags out of me.
Memories I’ve buried. Parts of my past I never wanted to revisit.
But here they are — swelling with each teen birthday, every milestone missed, every year he grows into an age I remember all too well.
He’s 14 now.
And that number hits like a brick.
Because where he is — tender, protected, completely dependent — is worlds away from where I was at 14.
And honestly, I don’t even know if I’d call what I had back then a childhood at all.
When 14 Meets 14
In the place where I grew up, being 14 — especially as a girl — meant you were already an adult.
You cooked. Cleaned. Watched younger siblings, cousins, etc…Took care of the house.
Responsibility wasn’t optional.
But even before then, I was already on my own most of the time.
My dad had left — which honestly felt more like relief than loss, but that’s a story for another day.
My older siblings were gone too. It was just me, my mom, and my baby sister.
And my mom… she was getting really sick by then.
The kind of sick that dims the light in a house slowly, until one day, there’s just not enough to go around.
She had heart failure. Would eventually die young from it.
But in those years, she gave what little strength she had to my sister and there wasn’t much left over.
So I did what I had to do- and what I wanted to.
I clung to my friends like a second family.
I stayed at their houses after school. Slept over on weekends.
In summer, we were inseparable — because home was a place of poverty, illness, memories of abuse.
Then came 14.
The year it all got rough.
Not “teen drama” rough. Growing up fast rough.
The Streets Raised Me
I was never a “bad” kid.
But I was unsupervised. Unparented. And out in the world with no map.
I drank. I partied — even on school nights.
I crossed the border into Mexico when I wasn’t supposed to.
I stayed out late. I walked four, five miles alone at night to get back from parties I shouldn’t have been at in the first place.
That same year, I met the man I would marry.
We started dating at 14, married by 18.
When I wasn’t with my friends, I was with him. I was always with someone. Because being alone felt like too much.
We didn’t have cars.
We didn’t have nice clothes.
We didn’t have anything but each other and whatever cash we could scrounge for bus fare or cheap snacks.
And my mom? She didn’t see me as a kid anymore.
Whatever I was up to — she thought I was old enough, maybe smart enough to figure it out.
I grew up rough.
And fast.
And without a net.
Now I Parent an autistic 14-Year-Old Who Still Cuddles Teddy Bears
And that’s what guts me.
Because when I look at my son — at his softness, his silence, his need for comfort — I don’t just see who he is.
I see the ghost of who I was.
He still crawls into bed with us at night. We move him back to his own bed when he’s deep asleep.
He doesn’t know how to use a fork properly.
He can’t say his name clearly to another kid.
He asks for Barney party supplies — for a party no one will be coming to.
At 14, I was drinking on street corners and learning to survive adult men.
He’s still learning to tolerate loud sounds in arcades.
And the ache of it all is indescribable.
Double Grief
I feel grief for the girl I was — forced to act grown when I was anything but.
I feel grief for the boy I’m raising — a teenager in body, a much younger soul in spirit.
And somewhere between those two aching timelines… we find each other.
I look for the kind of 14-year-old he wants to be.
If he has even a shred of the rebellious, social, curious teenager I was —
he must be dying inside.
And so am I.
Because I can feel how much more he is than what he can show us.
It’s a grief that sits in the bones, a raw burning heat somewhere deep inside.
Reimagining Who He Could Be
So I try.
I look at him — how chill he is, how funny — and I ask:
Who might he have been, if this world made sense to him?
I think… he’d be a skater.
He likes music with feeling. Longish hair. Movement. Wind.
So I take him out to jump off stuff. Let the wind hit his face.
We listen to skate-punk. We sit under trees. We move our bodies.
He might never ride a board.
But he can feel free. He can be inside the motion of this one life he has to live.
And that’s what matters. It has to because this is what he has- we have.
This Is Trauma-Informed Parenting in Real Time
I don’t know if I’m getting any of this right.
Maybe I’ve got his imagined teenage self all wrong.
But here’s what I do know:
- If I don’t hold anything too tightly, the stuff that’s meant to pass will pass.
- My silent partner — this chill boy that can’t sit still — is right here with me, figuring it out too, putting his mark on his own life.
- It’s going to be ok. Not as imagined. Not perfect. But this is the life we have, and we have to own it with love and pride.
💬 Final Thought
If you’ve ever looked at your child and fought back the swelling trauma in your guts
just know this:
You’re parenting through fire.
And that makes you a warrior.
Parenting Through ASD 