Source: Juncala / Pixabay
My 15-year-old son and I were competing in our first show in over a year. The venue was new to us, and new things can be hard for autistic people like me and my son.
We compete in both dressage and showjumping, a sport called “combined training,” or CT. The stewards add up your scores from dressage with the number of faults from jumping to get the final placings.
Dressage always comes first. Dressage, at the highest levels, is like horse ballet, complete with music. At our level, we must memorize a routine, called a “test,” and perform it for a judge to show that our horse is willing and strong and that together we are a good partnership.
For showjumping, we must memorize a jump course, and then try to jump it as fast as we can. If you knock down a pole, you get a fault. If you go off course but circle back, you get a fault. If you go off course twice or jump the wrong jump, you get disqualified for the entire show.
My son and I competed in dressage back-to-back, so I got to watch him go. All I thought was, “Wow, he’s going to beat me,” and I couldn’t have been prouder.
After dressage we switched to our jumping gear and headed up to the jump arena. I could tell that the day was starting to wear on my kid. He said he wanted to go first with the jumping. I bit my tongue when I wanted to tell him to let others go first so he could see how the course looked.
But he’s fifteen, and he was running out of mental energy, and an argument with me would have made it all worse.
So off he went. He and his horse, a bright red chestnut, dashed around the course like a single being, but then, oh no—off course. No problem, they circled back. They took the correct jump and continued, but then, coming around to the final line—oh—my heart. They jumped the wrong jump.
The steward rang the bell, which sounds like someone ringing for tea, and he was out.
Disqualified.
After, when I trotted over to him, he didn’t want to speak to me. I respected that choice. Instead, he spoke to his coach, and that was good. In a moment it was my turn to go. I did my course, which I jumped clear.
Soon after, when I met up with my son back at our trailer, he was in good spirits. Together we rubbed down our horses, gave them water, packed the tack away, loaded them onto the trailer, and drove home.
Later that night, I finally brought up the show.
“You were awesome,” I told him. “I’m so proud of you.” I gave specific reasons why I thought he did well.
I meant all of it. I didn’t care that he and his horse went off course. Showjumping is an executive function nightmare.
As an equestrian athlete myself, what I fear most on a course is not losing a stirrup or even falling off. I fear going off course because it is the one thing that feels most out of my control.
After I spoke my words of praise, I remembered something I saw on social media about “autonomy-supportive parenting.” One bit in particular jumped out at me—that there’s a better alternative to saying, “I’m so proud of you.”
You might have heard of “gentle parenting” or “permissive parenting,” which are similar to autonomy-supportive parenting. In fact, based on the research I’ve done, they’re all similar.
They definitely get grouped together and mocked on social media as a stupid way to parent your kid. The memes say that gentle parenting means that you’re spoiling your kid. You’re letting them run all over you. You’re teaching your kid to be a weakling.
There’s just so much mocking of parenting methods that actually seem pretty great to me. After all, I grew up undiagnosed autistic and was constantly told I was spoiled and a weakling, and I had my own boundaries trampled until I didn’t know how to set them anymore.
Parenting Essential Reads
I want to do better for my kids, and I’m willing to try almost anything.
So I asked the question the parenting guidance suggested, “Do you feel proud of yourself?” Then I waited, holding space for his reply.
He said, after a moment, “No.”
“But why?”
“I went off course.”
With the question I asked, I created an opening for him to express pain and frustration that he would have otherwise kept inside. No kid wants to disappoint a parent who seems so happy with how the kid performed.
I imagine “gentle” parenting would help all children. But it definitely helps neurodivergent (ND) kids. ND kids get their autonomy stripped away because they vary from the neurotypical norm.
Social pressures beat at ND kids, at the kid I was, until our perceived rough edges are smoothed away. We think only what we’re told to think. We feel only what we’re supposed to feel.
And then we die a little inside, every day.
When I asked my son what he felt about his athletic performance, I told him, indirectly, that it was okay to have his own feelings (even if they were different than mine) and to talk about them out loud.
Is that letting him run all over me?
I was once a ND kid. I know what such moment, one that centered my feelings, would have meant to me. They were very rare during my childhood. As I write this, I can’t think of a single one.
If your kid is ND, you must push back against a world that tells your kid that they’re wrong every moment of the day. That they’re screw-ups. That they’re idiots for forgetting the showjumping course.
It seems like “gentle” parenting just means that you should treat your kids like people. If that’s the case, then I’m all for it.
