Why Friendships Change When You’re Raising an Autistic Child

In this week's episode of The Autism Mums Podcast Victoria and Natalie talk about how relationships can shift when your family begins navigating autism, even before a diagnosis is confirmed. As priorities change and the reality of advocating for your child sets in, friendships can evolve, strengthen, or sometimes drift apart.Key TakeawaysRaising an autistic child can reshape your priorities and change the person you become.How advocacy for your child can challenge social expectations and sometimes make others uncomfortable.Friendships may evolve as your life begins to revolve around meeting your child’s needs.Connecting with other parents of neurodivergent children can create powerful understanding and support.Surrounding yourself with compassionate, supportive people can make the journey feel less isolating.Connect with The Autism MumsWebsite – https://theautismmums.com/Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/theautismmumsFollow us on TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@theautismmumsFollow us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/theautismmumsTranscriptVictoria Bennion: [00:00:00] In today's episode, we're talking about something that doesn't always get discussed openly, but that many parents on the autism journey experience, and that's how friendships can change. When you're raising an autistic child or autistic children, your life can begin to look very different from the one that you imagined or the one that you used to have. Your priorities shift, your time becomes limited, and you often find yourself advocating for your child in ways you never expected.All of that can have an impact on the relationships around you. Some friendships grow stronger, some drift apart, and sometimes you find new connections with people who truly understand your journey.In this episode, we are reflecting honestly on our own experiences, the changes we've noticed in ourselves, the challenges that can arise with longstanding friendships and the new supportive communities we've discovered along the way. if you've ever felt like your world and your relationships have changed we hope this conversation helps you feel a little less alone.It's [00:01:00] interesting, something I've noticed how friendships shift when I was going to say after the diagnosis of autism, but in my life I can go back to the playground when my son was at first school and he was really struggling to go in in the mornings and me being in the playground outside late trying to persuade him to go in and realizing that I wasn't alone and that there were other parents in the same position and it was really lovely from that point of view.As I know we've talked on the podcast before about how you make new relationships, make new friends, but I think it's also important to talk about what happens with existing friendships and situations. It's something that I've been thinking about quite a lot recently. I think that it's a common struggle because your life goes in a very different direction andcertainly I find my priorities changed and I wouldn't have had the understanding that I do [00:02:00] now, and it could just cause me to reflect really.Our journey has now been about three years. In that three years, I would say that I'm quite a different person. Than who I was before.Natalie Tealdi: Yeah, definitely. I think it makes you a lot more resilient. I certainly fight harder. I used to find it hard to speak up in meetings and things like that, but when you're put in the position of you need to get your child the support they need, then you're gonna do whatever it takes.And you're armed with more knowledge. So I didn't know anything about autism before. This was even raised as a possibility. So, you know, you go on this journey, don't you, of gaining all this knowledge, speaking to other people that are going through this similar things and your life kind of becomes consumed by it for a time.Victoria Bennion: Yeah, that's really true. And there's a point, and I remember the point. I was driving in the car back from school and I was at this crossroads mentally, with what direction did I [00:03:00] go in and I really didn't feel like I wanted to fight. I really didn't feel like I had the strength to fight the local authority.And parts of me was thinking, I, may just deregister him, I'm just gonna deregister him, keep him at home. At that point, we didn't have a diagnosis, but autism had been mentioned. But I didn't feel like it was, the right thing to do for this child.What he needed was actually the appropriate support, the appropriate setting. Before I knew it, I had fallen into the fight, the EHCP journey, the pathway for diagnosis, the fighting for, at that time, a reduced timetable, all the things that go with it. And I feel like for me, over that time, I, like you say, I've, certainly changedI'm a much more compassionate person. Because like you said, you learn these things. You go on the courses, like the Early Birds course, you read the books you [00...