How I Love Them: Mothering Neurodivergent Teens and Young Adults

My youngest child just turned 17. He is everything I could have wanted, and also not what I hoped for back when he was a baby and I still didn't know what raising a child actually meant.

I have two children. My oldest will be 21 in December. It feels like we lived in those middle kid ages for so long- 4 and 8, 7 and 11, 14 and 18. We're at the tail end of that middle, 17 and 20. Mothering is different now than it was even just a year ago. It's interesting how sometimes mothering is the same for a long while, and other times it seems like it's different every month!

I loved them physically when they were babies and little, literally with my body. Keeping them alive with my breast milk while it lasted, carrying them everywhere- being able to hold their entire bodies cradled in one arm. Then they got mobile and wiggly and vocal and that love shifted from mostly physical to some physical and mostly trust. We started the slow pull apart of becoming separate people who still love each other. When is the last time I picked either of them up? Carefully carried a soft sleeping body down the hall and tucked them into bed? Put their socks on? It's so long ago I don't remember.

Being a parent is such a wild thing. I still am amazed that both of my children lived and grew inside my body for almost a year, and then they got born and my body made food for them. I think about how smooth and plump and springy their sweet baby cheeks were, how soft those cheeks felt when we rubbed our faces together. The erratic way baby heads move. The way they both used to love gumming the end of my nose. I started seeing them through other people's eyes, it was so weird when the way they were in the world was different for other people than it was for me. They buried their heads in my neck when life was hard, their arms almost choking me they needed physical me so bad, little voices chirping "Mommy mommy mommy" a thousand times a day in ways that I long for sometimes.. but don't really miss in a substantial way.

I got sober with these children, they were 4 and just a week shy of 8, still little enough that bundling off upstairs immediately after dinner was no cause for complaint. The three of us sprawled on the rescue ship king-sized bed playing so many games of Crazy 8's and reading Little Pookie or Busy, Busy Town until it was bath time and I knew I was safe for another day.

I wiped their bottoms and washed their bodies and clothed them and fed them. I bought them toys and books and colored and drew and sang and talked and read to them, pulled open the covers and made room for them next to me when they got scared in the night. I swam with them and biked with them and camped with them and I tried not to scare them by yelling and I tried to not make my pain their fault.

When school was tough I ached for them, when friendships were confusing I understood. I had lessons to share but I also learned alongside them, and I often had no idea what to do. Doing things like dropping them off at school when their day before was terribly difficult, putting them on the bus when other kids have been mean to them, knowing when to step in and when to let them try to deal with it themselves is hard too.

Walking our U-shaped block over and over listening to my oldest talk about Minecraft for hours because somehow I knew that listening then would mean she would talk to me about bigger stuff later. Not making my youngest eat any of the foods he didn't like and not making a big deal out of it either. Always reading him just one more story even if I was totally tapped out. As they got older I learned how to parent more and more like me and less and less like the general hum told me I should. I learned to love them in the space between us, to make space for them to be themselves, and god sometimes that was so hard. The times when all I wanted to do was fling my body between them and the world so nothing bad would ever happen.

I wanted them to have all the smoothness life never offered me. I wanted them to be able to sit still in class and not be disruptive. To be liked by their teachers. To live up to their potential. To be willing and capable participants on teams, to be well liked by their peers, to have good friends, to dress and act in a way that proclaimed them to be good people. I wanted them to be recognized and welcomed at school, liked by other parents, to get A's and B's, be in clubs, and on track for college. To be as normal as they could be.

I thought things would be easier if they could just be normal, if we could just be normal. That pressure to be normal is unspoken but so real, so...there. I felt it on the playground when I pushed them on the baby swings. I felt it in carpool line, at parent nights, when I packed their lunches. Somehow you can just tell who is doing it right and who is doing it wrong. And also- if you're doing it right- but the people who are usually doing it right are doing it wrong- then you are actually doing it wrong. It's a mind fuck to be the person in charge of your kids and feel like a stranger at the park is in charge of you because of the strong vibe normal gives off. There were so many times I felt like I wanted to scrape the world off of my skin and just be the parent I was without having to escape the stench of normalcy.

I wish that time of me wanting us to be "normal" hadn't existed.

But I knew being different was so fucking hard.

Being a multiply neurodivergent parent raising multiply neurodivergent children with a multiply neurodivergent partner is something I didn't even know I was doing until 2024. I just thought that there was something wrong with me. I thought I just needed to try harder. I want to acknowledge the fact that even though I struggled so much, I also learned to be the mom I always hoped I would be before I got diagnosed with ADHD and autism and understood that being gifted is neurodivergent too. I am a mother whose children know deep down that she loves them, likes them, and wants them around.

It took almost 10 years for me to understand that in the push/pull between the mom I am and normal that I had to surrender and be the mom I am. Because it's not only about me, I gave up on raising the kids the world told me I should and raised the ones I actually had. I thought it would make things easier if we were just normal, but I know now all that would have done was make us less us.

So I didn't treat them like babies or act like they didn't know things or were a bother. I stopped signing them up for sports. I stood up for them when their teachers didn't understand who they were and helped them understand. (I had to do this every year, for both of them.) I didn't make them do things other kids did, I tried to get them to love nature as much as I do. They wore what they wanted, played lots of video games, and didn't read for pleasure. Even though my youngest is an incredible musician when he said I want to quit I said ok. Even though schoolwork came so easy to my oldest, when she said I don't want to go to college I said ok. I made a lot of mistakes, I didn't understand a lot of things, and I wished some things were different, but I have loved them openly, with both joy and frustration.

The other day I was putting some cookie sheets away and the whole arrangement fell and knocked over all the cans of cat food.

I got furious, banged the cookie sheet on the ground. Said fuck fuck fuck. Grrrrr'd. My youngest came in, asked me if I was ok. I have worked so hard to not yell, to not lash out, and in this moment I didn't squash my frustration. "No! I'm not ok. All this fell and you don't ever empty the dishwasher and I am constantly cleaning up after people and I AM NOT OK!"

He looked at me, and I could see him deciding what to do. He nodded his head, and went back to his room. This is how well he knows me. He knows to let me have space. That I just need a minute. I got the cookie sheet jenga fixed and stacked up all the cat food cans again. Made it more secure. Then I went and knocked on his door.

Hey, I'm sorry about that, I said. He stood up and held out his arms, a wry smile on his face- he doesn't really like hugging, but sometimes he offers me one. I took it. I looked up at him, my baby kid now taller than me, helping me feel better.

So much of the rhetoric around teenagers and young people is about pushing them away, as if growing up is about getting away from the people you love. Separating from them, not being close. It says parents want kids to leave, and kids want to leave their parents. It says how we love each other is from afar, that as our kids become grown ups we ourselves should stay a mystery, not share being grown ups with them, instead we should give them their independence and shut ourselves off from them so they can leave and our hearts won't break.

I think that when we're taught that growing up is a separation we are doing it wrong. I think that we need each other, and that if I don't cultivate closeness with my children I stop cultivating closeness with myself. Growing up is not about I can do it all by myself, it's about loving even more deeply, in ways that are so much more complex than bedtime stories and wiping away tears.

How I love my children is how I love myself. Can I be an adult in front of them, as they become adults? Can I let them be aware of me as a person, and as their mother? Can I relinquish the role of knower and become a person who is learning too? Oh yes, I can. I have. And I will. How I love them is with the patience, kindness, and care I have learned to show myself in the last almost 13 years of being sober.

As they get older how I love them has become more about what I'm not doing than what I am. It's a steady progression of getting out of the way, but never letting go. It's learning to listen instead of telling them what to do. It's remembering that no matter how similar something is to what happened to me, it is not happening to me, and so I don't know exactly how it feels. It's honoring them as people, their experiences, and sometimes that means me shutting the fuck up and watching them do it their way. It means changing my behavior to suit them instead of always expecting them to change to suit me. It is reciprocal. Regenerative. It keeps us close, interdependent.

I sometimes wonder what do I do with all the mothering I don't have to do anymore. But I don't stop being a mother when my children turn eighteen, or move out, or move away. I am mothering neurodivergent teens and young adults. I don't have to forsake that part of me because I'm not tying their shoes or taking them to school. How I love them is by continuing to be their mother, by being willing to be a grown up with them, alongside them. How I love them is by knowing when to hold on, and when to make room for them, and taking room for myself too.

I almost said how I love them is being willing to let go..but I will not let go. Instead I will join them as we go into the rest of our lives- after all, most of my mothering life (I hope) will be with my children as adults, not kids. I want to bring my mother part with me, the whole way. She doesn't have to end just because my children are grown up. I don't have to hide her away like the clutter that gets tossed in the closet when company comes over.

I can be just as mother-y as I was ten years ago, twenty years ago. I can be proud of raising them, and still be a mom. The ways our identities as mothers change over the course of time, I don't think we talk enough about this last and longest part of mothering. It can be so confusing to move on from caretaker to companion.

I don't know what's next, both of my kids still live with me and say they want to forever. When I ask my oldest if she wants her own place, if she wants more privacy, she looks at me like I'm crazy. Why would I want that? she asks. I have a capable grown up that I love with me all the time if I have any questions. My youngest says he'll stick around so he doesn't have to pay for so much and can have more money.

I wonder sometimes if I do want them to move out, so then I can have the freedom we talk about so fondly when the kids are gone. Oh finally! The kids are finally gone! I'm free! Lol. We act like we can't wait for them to get out of here and then we spend the rest of our lives wishing they'd come visit. That's weird.

So I think I can just go ahead and have freedom now, while they're still here. The only thing that really changes is how I love them, no matter where we are, because loving them is what always stays the same after all.