Caring for the Caregivers: Strengthening Relationships in Neurodiverse Families

I would like to start this blog post by thanking you for taking the time to read this. Whether you yourself are a parent with a child with neurodiversity, a colleague reading this to expand your perspective, or just someone who has a bit of time and said “why not”, I hope that you enjoy this post.

As many of you may have yet to meet me, allow me to start by providing a bit of personal context as to my background. I am a Licensed Professional Counselor who holds specialties in the areas of couples counseling, grief work, and Autism Spectrum Disorder and Neurodiversity. This means I am able to help support not just the relationships within couples and families, but also that I understand the process of grieving the life many parents thought they were going to have prior to having a neurodivergent child. Our world is built for the “neurotypical”, and it is a challenging process to navigate being neurodiverse in our society. 

This is also a topic that hits very close to home with me in my personal life as well. My wife is a pediatric physical therapist and through getting to know her and her field, along with the medical field at large, I have seen how medical professionals often struggle to understand the mental health impacts for caregivers of countless specialist visits, severe prognoses, and being constantly told all the things your child will “never do”. When I visit clinics and talk about the importance of trauma informed care and parental support I often see peoples’ eyes go wide as they feel heard in a way they didn’t know they needed. I had a particularly impactful moment recently when I was a guest speaker at a parent support group and I asked one of the parents who is pouring back into their cup. She paused and told me that no one had ever asked her that before and the group came together to support her. This moment for me truly highlighted the needs that parents and caregivers have when it comes to supporting children with neurodiversity. 

When it comes to having kids, or really any significant life transition, a lot of people will say you “should be happy”. While this is well meaning most of the time, it also is not true for a majority of people. Children can be wonderful, and bring moments of joy and laughter, but they can also be stressful and bring up a lot of anxiety, fear, and uncertainty. It is also well documented and supported by research that after having a child many couples experience a decrease in marital satisfaction. This is due for a variety of reasons, but mainly the fact that kids require a lot of time and attention that have to be diverted away from the marriage itself. For kids with different needs, this is even more apparent. For many parents this stress leads to things like anxiety, depression, feeling hopeless, constant brain fog, and internalized shame and guilt. 

So in order to support our kids, we first need to support each other as a couple. But what does supporting each other look like? I could probably write, and talk, for hours about all the things that contribute to a healthy relationship, but to save both of us time, I will focus on a few that I have seen help the wide range of couples and are easiest to implement, given that time and quite frankly energy are limited resources. 

We start with spending time with one another. I know, at the end of a long hard day the only thing most of us wanna do is go to sleep, sit in silence, or doom scroll on Tik Tok watching wholesome animal videos. (Side note: if you have not seen Punch the Monkey PLEASE look it up. You are welcome.) Time spent together that is purposeful is a great way to build up a positive emotional bank account. This bank account is an accumulation of positive moments and traits, little consistent deposits if you will, that help us build a positive perspective of another person. The better your bank account is, the more stable and prepared you are as a couple when life requires big withdrawals (stressful events, job transitions, or even a bad day in Atlanta traffic). It doesn’t have to be elaborate or time consuming, but to let your partner know you are dedicating even a minute to being present and attentive with them can make all the difference. 

The second thing I will offer up is being proactive. We do this by updating your love maps for one another. A love map is how well you know your partner’s world at that moment. Who are their friends? What music are they listening to? Who is their workplace nemesis? While we spend a lot of time getting to know each other at the beginning of relationships, this often falls off. Even if you spend all day together, we all have so many unique thoughts and feelings when we feel comfortable voicing them there truly is a world of possibilities. 

Third, is being curious, and it is through this that we build conflict management skills. Now when I say conflict, this is different from fighting. Disagreement is going to come up during the lengths of any meaningful relationship, now this does not mean we have to learn how to fight better like a Rocky Montague, but that we have to learn how to be curious before we are judgemental. When we become emotional it is really hard for us to remember that the point is not to win. The point is to come to a place of understanding and, if possible, compromise. The most basic tenant of this is to suspend judgement and approach conversations with curiosity. 

So that’s some tips from a couples therapist that I hope you can find a way to use: be present, be proactive, and be curious.

Author Blake Armstrong with his therapy dog, Blue.