Letting Go and Holding Back.
When you are a parent of autism, your children are young much longer than their peers. You lose that connection of "Johnny's mom let's him do it!" They are not able to ride their bike out of sight, walk to the convenience store for soda, walk down to fish in the creek with their peers. They don't go on sleepovers, because they aren't ready. And, frankly, nobody ever asks. And by the time they might be ready to do that, their peers have moved on. They are now going on group dates, and riding their motor bikes and ATVs. They're going to concerts of groups neither you nor your child have ever heard of. They have learned to drive and some of them even have their own cars. And your kid still can't ride a bike. And so you limit them for far longer than other kids. Often far longer than they need. At 12, for Nathan, it is still not a question. He has no concept of safety. He has to be locked in the house for safety. There are locks on the w