Autism Lives in Our House. We Don’t Live in Autism’s.

Before I knew my son was autistic, he ran face-first into a glass wall.

And I mean ran.

Cristian was somewhere between one and two years old, and his dad and I were at a GMC dealership in Virginia buying my Acadia. I remember that car because I had traded in a practically brand-new Kia Optima that I loved for it. But I had always wanted to be an SUV mom, and the Acadia had seven seats, so clearly I had arrived.

Anyway.

We were waiting for them to finish getting the car ready when we started walking back inside the dealership.

There was a children’s playroom inside with toys, and like a lot of dealerships, the walls around it were made of those huge sheets of glass that stretch almost from the floor to the ceiling.

We saw the glass.

Cristian saw the toys.

And that was it.

My child took off.

If you’ve never seen a toddler run like his life depends on reaching a pile of toys, I don’t know what to tell you. Cristian was fast as hell. By the time I realized where he was headed, I knew there was absolutely no way I was going to reach him before he reached that glass.

So I froze.

Eyes wide. Fists clenched under my chin. Watching the tragedy unfold in real time.

THUMP.

Face first.

His little body bounced backward, his feet came up, and he smacked the floor.

Of course he immediately started screaming.

I ran over, picked him up, checked his face and tried to console him while thanking God we weren’t headed to the emergency room with a broken nose.

At the time, I didn’t think:

Autism.

I thought:

This damn child.

But looking back, I remember wondering whether he even understood what had just happened.

There had been nothing between Cristian and those toys as far as he was concerned. Not the room. Not the glass. Not the possibility of getting hurt.

There were toys.

He wanted them.

And he was going to get there.

That was it.

Then There Were the Lifesaver Gummies

Around that same time, there was a challenge going around social media where parents would put candy in front of their children and tell them not to eat it until they came back.

The videos were adorable.

Some kids stared longingly at the candy. Some touched it. Some snuck a piece. Some sat there like tiny saints and patiently waited for their parents to return.

Naturally, I decided I needed to see what my child would do.

I even recorded it.

I sat Cristian at his little table, put a handful of Lifesaver gummies in front of him and started explaining the rules.

Before I could even finish, this boy was trying to shove the candy into his mouth.

I put my hand over the gummies.

“No, Cristian. You have to wait.”

He’s trying to move my hand.

“No, Cristian.”

Still going for the candy.

“You have to wait until I come back.”

Nothing.

I kept explaining.

He kept trying to get to those damn gummies.

Finally, I lifted my hand and started walking away.

I don’t think I made it five feet.

Cristian started dogging those Lifesavers.

Challenge over.

There was no internal debate happening. No tiny angel and devil sitting on his shoulders discussing whether he should obey his mother.

There was candy.

He wanted the candy.

The candy was available.

Eat the candy.

And once again I remember thinking:

My child is so damn impulsive.

But I was a first-time mother.

What the hell did I know?

Maybe all two-year-olds were like this.

Maybe everybody else’s kid ran face-first into glass walls and treated basic instructions like optional reading.

I didn’t know what was a toddler being a toddler and what might be something more.

Until somebody else said something.

“Something’s Wrong With Him.”

Cristian attended the Child Development Center near Naval Station Norfolk while I was stationed there.

One afternoon, I came to pick him up and one of the caregivers who regularly worked in his classroom pulled me aside.

She asked me if I had ever gotten him checked or evaluated.

I told her no.

And then she said it.

“Because something’s wrong with him.”

I don’t remember some big dramatic confrontation after that.

I wish I could tell you my mother-bear instincts immediately kicked in and I gave her hell right there in that classroom.

They didn’t.

I was shocked.

Embarrassed.

Intimidated.

Mostly, I wanted to get my baby and get the hell out of there.

So I did.

I’m the kind of person who sometimes doesn’t fully process difficult situations until they’re over. I go home and debrief myself. I replay the conversation. I think about what I said, what they said, what I should have said and what I wish I had said.

And the more I replayed that conversation, the angrier I became.

She hadn’t said she’d noticed Cristian struggling with something.

She hadn’t suggested that there were developmental milestones we might want to discuss with his pediatrician.

She said something was wrong with him.

Twice.

I eventually contacted the director. We spoke, and later met in person. She apologized and told me that the caregiver no longer worked there.

Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be the last difficult experience we’d have with someone responsible for caring for or teaching Cristian.

We’ve also had teachers, caregivers and aides whom I absolutely adore—people who have loved my child, understood him, challenged him and genuinely wanted to see him succeed.

Those people matter to me more than they’ll probably ever know.

And maybe that’s why the bad ones piss me off so much.

Because I’ve seen what happens when someone genuinely cares about a child who needs a little more patience or a different approach.

But that woman at the CDC did something else that day too.

She planted a question I wasn’t ready to answer.

I Started Looking for “Normal”

I Google everything.

A headache. A weird noise my car makes. Something I saw on television. A random thought at two in the morning.

So of course I started Googling the things I noticed about Cristian.

And I started watching other people’s children.

Not in a creepy way.

I was looking for proof.

If another child did something Cristian did, I could tell myself:

See? All kids do that.

If I found an article saying something was developmentally typical, I could breathe a little easier.

See? He’s fine.

I was trying to find the normalcy in everything he did.

There is no “almost” about it.

I was in denial.

And I can admit that now.

I didn’t know much about autism. I hadn’t been exposed to it enough to understand the spectrum or the many ways autism can present. The picture of autism I had in my head didn’t look like my son.

Cristian talked.

He walked.

He played.

He learned.

Eventually, even potty training came together.

So I kept looking for evidence that whatever I was noticing was just Cristian being Cristian.

But here’s the strange thing about my denial:

I was also determined to get him whatever help he needed.

Every time his pediatrician gave me a developmental questionnaire, I answered honestly. If anything, I probably overthought the questions because I wanted to make absolutely sure nothing was missed.

I wanted professionals to look at everything.

I wanted answers.

I just desperately wanted those answers to prove me wrong.

Eventually, Cristian was diagnosed with a developmental delay and began receiving occupational and speech therapy.

And life continued.

Until eventually we pursued an evaluation for autism.

That’s when I got scared.

Then Somebody Said the Word

Autism.

I wish I could rewrite this part of my story in a way that makes me sound enlightened.

I can’t.

I was devastated.

I boohoo cried.

Because at that moment, I didn’t know autism the way I know autism now.

I didn’t hear a diagnosis and immediately think about neurodiversity, accommodations, advocacy and all the things I would eventually learn.

I heard:

My child’s life might be harder.

And I didn’t want that for him.

I loved him.

I wanted the absolute best life possible for him.

And at that point in my life, an autism diagnosis did not feel like good news.

So I cried.

And you know who wasn’t crying?

Cristian.

He was sitting in the back seat with absolutely no idea that his mother was having a full emotional breakdown over something that had apparently changed his entire future.

Except…

It hadn’t.

He Was the Exact Same Kid

We got home.

And Cristian was still Cristian.

Same child.

Same personality.

Same smile.

Same energy.

Same everything.

Nothing had happened to him.

Nobody had taken anything away from him.

The diagnosis hadn’t changed my son.

It had given me information about my son.

And once I realized that, I had to ask myself:

Am I making this bigger than what it is?

Autism was something we were going to live with.

Okay.

So how do I make space for it without allowing it to consume us?

Eventually, the way I started thinking about it was pretty simple:

Autism, you can live here.

You can have a corner.

We’ll acknowledge you.

We’ll learn about you.

We’ll make accommodations for you.

We’ll go to therapy when therapy is helpful.

We’ll advocate.

We’ll adjust.

We’ll do things differently when differently is what Cristian needs.

But you can take your ass over to your little corner, sit down and shut up.

We will not live in your house.

You live in ours.

Autism gets to be part of Cristian’s story.

It does not get to become the whole story.

Be Careful What You Ask For

One of the things I wanted most was for Cristian to be able to communicate.

I wanted him to tell people what he needed.

I wanted him to speak up when something didn’t feel right.

Most importantly, I wanted him to be able to advocate for himself when I wasn’t there to do it for him.

Well.

Mission fucking accomplished.

Because this child will not shut up.

There are days when I am practically begging him to take his top lip and his bottom lip and introduce them to each other for five minutes.

He fights for his life.

This is also partially my fault because I worked so hard to give him choices and make sure he knew his voice mattered that somewhere along the way Cristian apparently decided everything is a democracy.

It is not.

Sometimes I’m not asking for your thoughts, sir.

But underneath my frustration—and trust me, the frustration is real—I love that he has a voice.

I love that if Cristian doesn’t like something, he will tell you.

I love that he’s learning to advocate for himself.

Because I won’t always be standing beside him.

And I need him to know that his voice still matters when I’m not in the room.

Nothing Is Wrong With My Son

That caregiver was right about one thing all those years ago.

There was something about Cristian that deserved our attention.

There were things he needed help with.

There were things we needed to understand.

There were things we were going to have to do differently.

But she was wrong about the most important part.

There was nothing wrong with him.

It took me time to understand the difference.

I spent months searching for normalcy because I thought “normal” meant my child would be okay.

Now I know better.

Cristian has challenges.

Some things are harder for him.

Some things are harder for me as his mother.

There are battles I wish he never had to fight and obstacles I’d remove from his path tomorrow if I could.

But none of those things make him wrong.

He’s nine now, and one of my favorite things about him is something I couldn’t fully appreciate when he was that little boy sprinting toward a glass wall.

Nothing breaks his spirit.

I can fuss.

I can yell.

I can take things away.

The world can disappoint him.

He can have a hard day.

And somehow, this kid finds his way right back to happy.

Sometimes I don’t know whether his ability to tune out everything happening around him is a gift or a curse.

Maybe it’s a little bit of both.

But I know this:

The little boy sitting in that back seat while his mother cried over his diagnosis wasn’t worried about whether he was normal.

I was.

And maybe he understood something before I did.

Normal was never the thing he needed to be.

He just needed the space, support and freedom to be Cristian.

Autism can live here.

It always will.

But it doesn’t run this house.

And it damn sure doesn’t define the boy who lives in it.