Otherhood.

I'm in the hood and it's othering...

There are weeks in parenting that leave you tired. And then there are weeks that rearrange your nervous system.

This was one of those weeks.

Mega tough. I mean mega, mega tough.

Some of you will know that my son is autistic and has a PDA profile. In practice, that means that social dynamics, frustration and demands can overwhelm him very quickly. He can’t read the room. He can’t let things go. He can be explosive when too much is expected of him.

Most of the time, he is an absolute joy. Charming, funny, curious about everything. He approaches the world with a kind of ferocious enthusiasm that makes life around him feel vivid.

But there are moments when something flips.

A small frustration. A perceived injustice. A demand that suddenly feels unbearable.

And within seconds, the atmosphere changes. The child who was laughing moments earlier can become frighteningly dysregulated. He lashes out physically at me, my husband, his tutor, friends and occasionally whoever happens to be nearby. This week a policeman found himself unexpectedly in the fray.

And lets just say, he wasn’t impressed.

At six years old, I can still just about explain it away.

I say he is autistic. I explain that he is overwhelmed and dysregulated. I reassure people that he is not a violent child and that he does not mean harm.

Most people are kind. They nod. They step back. The moment passes.

But my mind does not stop there.

I imagine the same moment when he is twelve. Or sixteen. I imagine the same surge of dysregulation in a taller, stronger body. The same loss of control is interpreted very differently by a world that is far less forgiving of teenage boys than it is of small children.

A push. A shout. A split second.

Police involvement that does not dissolve so easily with an explanation.

And then the thought spiral begins.

Because dysregulation leads to escalation. Escalation leads to consequences. Consequences often lead to more dysregulation. It is terrifying how easily a single moment could redirect the course of his life.

He is so not there. He isn’t there. He cannot be reasoned with or talked down. He could seriously hurt me or others, by accident. And twenty minutes later, when he calms down and sees the devastation, what will become of him?

The hardest part is knowing that these moments are not chosen in the way we normally understand behaviour. His nervous system floods. His capacity to regulate disappears. In those seconds he is no more deliberately deciding to lose control than he is deciding to feel hunger or breathe.

And Yet…

Yet parenting sits uneasily between compassion and responsibility. I know his nervous system works differently. I also know that somehow he will have to learn how to live in a world that will not always accommodate those differences.

Living inside that tension is exhausting.

It is terrifying to watch your joyful child transform into someone you barely recognise. It is disempowering to find yourself suddenly the target of his rage, a small face inches from yours, spitting and snarling. And it is heartbreaking to notice your mind racing forward into imagined futures that suddenly feel fragile.

Will he have friends who understand him?
Will I ever find school or social systems support him rather than punish him?
Will the world make space for the intensity of who he is?

Even I am terrified and irrational when he comes at me, I, who know and understand so much, I who work so hard to advocate for him. If I fail through fear, how will others read him?

Then, beneath those questions sits another quieter one about identity.

Because parenting a child like this is not quite the version of motherhood that most people imagine. The cultural picture of motherhood still assumes that with enough patience, structure and love, children can be guided steadily toward adulthood.

But when your child’s nervous system regularly overwhelms their intentions, you discover that your role is something else entirely.

You become interpreter, regulator, shield and advocate. You scan environments constantly, anticipating where the next misunderstanding or demand might appear. Your mind is always half a step ahead, trying to protect the child you love from a world that may not understand him.

It is a particular kind of emotional labour.

Help and Hope

Recently I met with a group of other neurodivergent home-educating mothers. Sitting around that table was one of those quietly profound moments of recognition.

None of us had time. All of us were exhausted. Many of us cried.

There was constant anxiety running beneath the surface of our lives. Constant guilt that we were not doing enough or doing it right. Our heads were crowded with plans, strategies, worries and contingency thinking. Each of us was carrying an enormous emotional load that most people never see.

And yet something unexpected happened.

We laughed.

We swapped stories that would sound extraordinary to anyone else but felt completely ordinary to us. We recognised the strange choreography of our lives in one another’s experiences.

For the first time in a long while I felt the relief of not being the only one living inside this particular version of motherhood.

Or perhaps it is better described as Otherhood.

It is still motherhood, of course, but tilted slightly off-axis from the one most people inhabit. In otherhood the work is less about shaping behaviour and more about protecting possibility. It is about helping a child whose nervous system collides with the world learn how to remain inside it.

And perhaps it is also about learning to expand our own imaginations about what a good life might look like.

When I step back from the fear I can see that the same intensity that makes my son volatile is also the source of his brilliance. His curiosity is enormous. His sense of justice is fierce. His emotional life runs deep and vivid.

Those qualities will create friction with the world at times. But they are also the qualities that make people interesting, creative and alive.

The task ahead is not to extinguish that fire but to help him carry it safely.

And perhaps the other quiet truth of otherhood is this.

None of us are doing it alone, even when it feels that way.

Somewhere, in another kitchen or park or WhatsApp group, another mother is sitting with the same mixture of exhaustion, fear and love. She too is trying to hold the complexity of a child who does not fit easily into the world as it currently exists.

She too is fighting for a child.

When we find each other, even briefly, something shifts.

The burden becomes a little more shared.

And the path ahead, though still uncertain, feels just a little less lonely.

PS: If this is you, or someone you know, please comment or reach out. The Otherhood is hear for you.