I use Autism throughout this letter but it can be replaced with any other neurodivergent identifier.

Dear fellow perfect flawed evolving human,

I am not an older parent to adult children (yet). So I write to you not as a peer, but as a child of someone like you. Perhaps your adult child cannot say these things to you, as much as they wish to, just like I cannot say these things to my own parents. So instead I will say them to the world and hope they might fall across the cultural and generational chasms that mark so many of our most important relationships.

You have been told by your adult child that they think they are neurodivergent (in fact, have always been). They might have sought out a diagnosis or not. It might be in addition to the news that your grandchild is neurodivergent.

This is a lot to be hit with. It is perfectly understandable if your immediate response is one of shock or confusion or denial or even derision. These are difficult feelings to manage.

Take time. Drink tea. Watch online cat videos. Do what you need to do and come back to it when you are ready.

“I am Autistic”

Three little words, yet there is so much power in them. What does it mean for your child (and/or grandchild)? What does it mean for their future? What does it mean about the past? What does it mean for your parenting? Did you make a mistake? What does it mean for you?

Your first response might be: “No, you’re not.”

Consider this possibility: what those words mean to your adult child may be very different from what they mean to you. The message they are trying to send might not be what you are receiving. Just as radio signals suffer from interference, human communication suffers from the ambiguity of language and the distorting weight of culture, context, the times, and our own individual experiences and beliefs.

(Now add neurodivergence into the equation!)

Words have the meanings society gives them, and society is ever changing. But instead of going into the definition of what autism (or any other neurodivergent label) does or doesn’t mean, now and in the past, let’s take a step back.

What makes us humans and not radio transmitters is that the literal words we use is often only part of what we are actually communicating. We are not computers (despite how the media might portray us neurodivergents).

I don’t know what was said in your particular situation, what words were used and with what tone, what your relationship dynamic is like or history, if emotions became high, or if there were accusations made or hackles raised.

But consider: behind it all was this a bid for connection and acceptance from a place of vulnerability? Is your adult child, in fact, reaching out to you, as their most familiar source of comfort and authority in a cold harsh world (despite now being an “independent grown up”), for a steady hand? Do we ever truly stop being your fragile child?

It might not be obvious. We might do our best to put on our mask of resilience and self-sufficiency for myriad of reasons. We might not even know it ourselves. But why else would we share something so profound, so life-changing with you if not in the hope, however faint it might be, that it might lead to you understanding us better and perhaps even accepting us as we are, not as we should be, or what you had hoped us to be? Is this not the deep dark secret wish of all humans?

And yet we have expectations of you too. We expect you to be wiser and stronger and more knowledgeable and on top of your shit. It is a devastation beyond words when we realise you are not. That you are, in fact, just as fragile and vulnerable and helpless as we are (and it’s actually okay for you to be).

But by the time we realise this i.e. that you are human, it is too late, and we have already internalised your disappointment believing you are the omniscient authority in our early lives. Perhaps you remember this experience from your own relationship with your parents?

So is it possible to bridge this chasm of unmet expectations, mutual disappointments, resentment and despair we have unwittingly inflicted upon each other over the decades?

This is not a letter about blame, though I sometimes wonder if us humans can really believe such a statement. Dealing with the past, with blame, guilt, shame, regret, defensiveness, are going to be inevitable parts of this journey, if we choose to embark on it. We might get stuck there. Maybe we’ve always been stuck there. But it is possible to go all the way through and out the other side. There is healing that can happen and there is so much goodwill in all of us to repair our relationships with each other and with ourselves. We just don’t know how to do it because society has never prioritised teaching us how, and how to get through the discomfort and pain of it.

So even though this started with neurodivergence, it is not so much about neurodivergence, as about growth and healing. For you, your child and your relationship.

We are all products of our childhoods, our environments and absolutely our genetics and neurobiology, just as you are a product of yours. We have all been operating under the common fallacy that we have full and complete agency over our beliefs, feelings and actions, an illusion that can only lead to shame and misery. We both grew up believing that every mistake we make is an advertisement of our worthlessness.

But we are all adults now and we can question these fallacies. You are someone’s child, just as I am. You are someone’s parent, just as I am or might one day be. We have enough common ground to explore and from which to better understand each other as fully fledged humans, if we can only reach across the expanse.

What now?

Are you ready to learn about your child, directly from the source and to put aside your own preconceptions? Are you willing to meet them with curiosity and acceptance and not as an extension of you or your parenting? Are you able to make room for their perspectives and their experiences, their trauma and their struggles, without taking it as an attack on you and your parenting? Chances are you can’t. I say that not with bitterness and resentment but with deep sadness and grief. I know it isn’t necessarily a choice you are making. How much agency do we all really have to change our fates?

But there is hope for others out there and that’s why I am writing this.

So are you willing to try? Are you willing to challenge your beliefs about, well, pretty much everything? Are you willing to confront the past? Are you willing to ask for help to get through it? Are you willing to start seeing and even celebrate your child as their own autonomous being, who is so much like you but also so different to you (perhaps in all the ways you wish they weren’t)? It might well be the hardest thing you ever do. But it might be the most courageous and most rewarding. You might start to notice your adult child is braver and wiser and stronger than you ever realised because your sense of what those things mean might change. After all, what could be scarier than looking deep into ourselves?

We know you did your best. We know you just want us to be safe and happy. We don’t expect you to have all the answers or to be perfect anymore, and we know that you have struggled and sacrificed. We understand you more than you give us credit for.

All we want to see is that you are willing to try to understand us. You have no idea how powerful that would be for us, what a gift that would be and how much it would help to free us from our burdens so we can reach for the stars. But we also know how impossible it might be for you. For many of us, it’s something we don’t dare hope nor ask for.

So maybe only in our dreams will we invite you to go on this journey with us. To learn about who we are, our true selves, without the burden of conformity and expectations. We ask you to have faith that there is a place in the world for us despite it, maybe even because of it. We ask you to believe that the core of us is good and valuable, concepts not measurable by economic contribution or social status. Perhaps you are more familiar with a world in which those were the only things that guaranteed safety and happiness. One where fitting in was the only way to stay safe. But the world has changed; in some ways for the worse, but in many ways for the better. People who don’t fit in with the “norm” can find belonging and happiness. Normal has changed. Being different is more normal than it ever was – at least here in the West. There are laws now in place that protect us from discrimination. Yes, being openly different still comes with stigma and risks, but much less so than before, and we have been empowered through connecting with others like us. Just look at the LGBTIQA+ community and all that they have achieved in recent history. There are other marginalised groups doing similar work to change the world for the better – including the neurodivergent community.

You might roll your eyes at all this, or maybe you are simply unable to comprehend why we are even bothering with it all when we could just put our head down and get on with things. We ask you for patience. Different world views cannot come together overnight, but we are willing to try and we ask you to try too.

The research tell us emotional safety is just as crucial to wellbeing as material safety and we can see our negligence of it everywhere we look – increasing levels of anxiety, depression, broken relationships, social ills… You might well see it as a reflection of our weakness as a generation, echoing how your parents may have viewed yours. You want us to be “tough” because the world is harsh. But what if the world is harsh in a different way now to what you knew? What if instead of constantly fighting our feelings and being worn down with shame, it was possible to make peace with them? What if in coming to know our true selves and being able to celebrate it and share it with others, we are able to attain the kind of freedom, fulfilment and peace that we all deserve but so rarely have the opportunity to pursue?

What you see as “resilience” we see as pretending (masking) driven by shame, internal angst, and inevitable poor mental and physical health. What you may see as softness we see as empathy and courage to be fully-feeling authentic human beings. What you see as being spoilt we see as privilege and opportunity to be made the most of and to be grateful for. We want our children to move through the world in awe of life and the possibilities, not constantly afraid of being found out. We are the products of a different time and place. You don’t need to be afraid for us anymore. We will be okay.

And you might discover more about yourself in the process and it might fundamentally change you. You might come to realise that you are inherently good and valuable too.

So even though this might initially feel like a tragedy, or a waste of time, or even like an attack, we hold onto hope that you may come to see it as a precious opportunity. It doesn’t have to be something else you have to white-knuckle through as another self-sacrifice for the sake of your child. We could explore a different way of doing things, together. We could learn from each other.

Your child, along with lots of other late-identified neurodivergent people all around the world, is on a journey to the self, one that is full of hope and possibilities. They are asking you to come with them. I hope, more than anything, to see you there.

With love and fellowship,

Selina