I’m Mike Carr, and my son Michael is 35 years old and severely autistic. Over the years, I’ve screwed up plenty, learned hard lessons, and discovered what actually works. I shared these seven autism parenting tips on my Autism Labs podcast because, honestly, I wish someone had told me this stuff decades ago.
Key Points:
- Show daily gratitude to build support.
- Use visual schedules to ease anxiety.
- Celebrate small wins loudly.
- Value caregivers to keep a strong team.
Just Say “Thanks” – A Lot
Look, I’m terrible at this one, but when I remember to do it, everything changes. The magic word? “Thanks.” Use it at least ten times a day.
If you’re a dad reading this, thank your wife. Seriously. She’s probably carrying way more of the load than you are, and she needs to hear it. I mean the daily grind of caring for a severely autistic kid – it’s exhausting.
Thank the teachers who show up every day. Thank the therapists. Thank anyone who’s making your kid’s life a little brighter or helping you through the rough patches. It sounds simple, but genuine gratitude makes everyone want to stick around and do better.
Stop the Anxiety Before It Starts
Most of the behaviors we deal with? They come from anxiety. Think about it – if you couldn’t talk and someone kept telling you to do things without explaining what was happening, you’d be pretty stressed too.
We use visual schedules like crazy. Pictures on an iPad, printed photos, whatever works. Show them where you’re going. What’s happening next. Michael’s whole world changes when he knows what to expect.
I’ve also gotten better at reading the signs. You probably do this naturally if you’re a mom, but us dads need to pay attention. Is your kid looking anxious? Acting weird? Those little signs usually mean something big is coming.
And when Michael has a seizure, which happens sometimes, staying calm is everything. I talk to him, maybe put on some music, and just let him know everything’s okay. That steady voice matters more than you’d think.
Be Their Biggest Fan
When your kid does something good – anything good – go nuts. I’m talking high fives, clapping, the whole cheerleader routine. Michael loves it when I get excited about him putting his clothes away or folding laundry.
At 35, he still wears pull-ups at night, and when he has a dry night? We celebrate like he won the lottery. These wins matter, no matter how small they seem.
Ignore the Bad Stuff (This One’s Hard)
This took me forever to learn, and it goes against every parenting instinct you have. When Michael does something he shouldn’t, I don’t react. At all.
He doesn’t care if attention is good or bad – attention is attention. He’ll look me right in the eye and dump puzzle pieces on the floor just to see what I’ll do. If I react, he giggles and does it again.
Now I just turn away or point to what I want him to do without looking at him. No expression, no reaction. It feels wrong, but it works.
Actually Pay Attention
Your kid knows when you’re checked out. Even if what they’re doing seems boring to you, show them you care. Look them in the eye when they look at you. Smile at their silly stuff.
I try to pick things we both like. Michael loves basketball, so we shoot hoops. We go swimming. He’s got this old Wii with a bowling game where you literally can’t miss – there are a hundred pins and the ball always hits something. We high-five and cheer, and he eats it up.
In the summer, we go to Central Market for their outdoor concerts. Michael has to get chicken salad the second we arrive (I’ve stopped fighting this), and then we just hang out. Kids running around, music playing, nobody cares what he’s doing. It’s perfect.
Give Them Some Control
Instead of just telling your kid what to do, give them choices. “Want to fold laundry first or put clothes away?” Either one works for me, but Michael gets to decide.
Or let them know what’s coming next: “Fold the laundry and we’ll play basketball” or “Put the puzzles away and you can have a snack.” They’re still doing what needs to be done, but they feel like they have some say in it.
Put Your Team First (Yeah, You Read That Right)
This is the one you’re going to hate, but stick with me. For years, we made Michael the priority. We put all our energy into him and forgot about the people taking care of him. Big mistake.
Staff kept quitting. People would bail on their shifts because they got a date or concert tickets. We had no backup, no loyalty, no real team.
Then I remembered something from Southwest Airlines – their CEO used to say employees came first, not customers. When employees felt valued, they treated customers exactly right.
So we flipped it. We started putting our team members first. Built a real culture where they felt valued and connected to each other. Now when someone doesn’t show up, they’re letting down people they actually care about.
Want proof this works? A couple years ago when Southwest had that massive meltdown over Christmas, one of our team members was stuck in California. Her flight got canceled, and she was supposed to work the next day. Her mom drove her overnight – overnight! – from California to Austin so she could make her shift.
We never asked her to do that. We couldn’t have asked her to do that. But when people feel like they’re part of something bigger, when they really care about your kid, incredible things happen.
The Bottom Line
These seven tips changed everything for our family. I’m not saying it’s easy – some of this stuff took me years to figure out. But if you’re struggling with behaviors, staff turnover, or just feeling overwhelmed, try one of these. Start small, be consistent, and give it time.
Michael’s 35 now, and our life is pretty good. Not perfect – we still have tough days. But these strategies work. They really do.
Transcript
Mike Carr (00:03):
Welcome back this week to another Autism Labs podcast. I think I’ve got something that you’re going to find hopefully valuable. These are going to be seven autism hacks for parents, parents of severely or profoundly autistic individuals in particular, but could be any autistic person, and you just need some help in this tough journey. So the first hack is, what’s the one word you should use at least 10 times a day? And I find myself remiss in doing this, but I just wanted to mention how helpful it’s been for me. So what do you think that one word is? The one word you should use at least 10 times a day. Thanks, simple. But if it’s genuine, if it’s authentic, it works wonders, right? Let’s start with your spouse, and if this is a dad watching right now, like me, man, thank your wife all the time, right?
(00:55):
I mean the heavy load that she’s carrying for your severely autistic child, especially if he’s a young adult or she’s a young adult, it’s a big load and probably the mom’s doing more, quite honestly than you are dad. So thank her for it. But regardless, thank the staff, the folks that are showing up day after day and working with your son or your daughter, teachers, therapists, anybody that’s involved in the care and making your son or daughter’s life a little more joyous and a little bit more interesting and exciting and giving them a little bit of happiness from day to day and helping them through those behavior challenges or whatever those challenges might be. So that’s hack number one. Just use that. Thanks word a lot. Hack number two, this has to do with how do you reduce anxiety and stress? And what I believe, at least with our son, who’s 35 now, is better communications.
(01:52):
A lot of behaviors underlying cause is anxiety, especially if you have a nonverbal son or daughter that doesn’t really understand when you tell them to do something or you tell ’em something’s fixing to happen or where you’re going to go that day. And so there’s this, just imagine this inherent anxiety. They wake up and they don’t know what’s fixing to happen, or if it’s out of their normal routine, oh my gosh, what’s going to happen now? And if they’re nonverbal, well, how do you communicate that? So what we do, well, you guys probably do too, but it’s worth reiterating, is a visual schedule, right? Pictures, whether it’s on an iPad, iPhone, just a picture board if you will, a book of pictures showing them an image of where you’re going. Just anything to improve communications really helps and pay attention to nonverbal cues, right? Watch and look and really observe your son or daughter.
(02:46):
You probably do this naturally if you’re a parent. Moms I know do dads may not quite as much and are they okay? Are they looking a little anxious? Are they doing something a little bit weird? Or that maybe is a precursor to a behavior meltdown? So looking at not just verbal communications or visual communications, but signs, visual cues about what might be happening that’s made a big deal. And of course, if something is happening, don’t lose your cool, right? Stay calm. Our son has seizures. Sometimes they’re pretty bad, but that calmness, that hey, you’re the steady voice that you’re paying attention to what’s going on. You’re trying to communicate perhaps through music, just calm the individual down or the folks down the team down and assure them everything’s going to be okay. So communications I think is just hugely important and something that’s not necessarily always easy to accomplish, but if it can be done, it can be done properly.
(03:36):
It almost always relieves anxiety and stress with your son or daughter who’s autistic and with the rest of the crew, the rest of the team that’s involved. Number three, improve positive behavior. Well, of course you want to improve positive behavior. Well, how do you do this? One of the things I forget to do is just lots of praise, right? Be the cheerleader when your son or daughter does something that’s surprising or that they’re supposed to do or that you’ve been working on for hours or days or weeks and they finally do it, man, high five, congratulations, clap, sing, whatever. Get right in their face and smile. Just show the fact that this is a big deal. This is something, oh my goodness. And our son, Michael, loves, loves, loves to hear that he likes the cheerleader kind of vibe that he’s done something great or he is done.
(04:22):
Something that he maybe doesn’t do as consistently as we’d like him to put away things and put away his clothes and fold his laundry and not wet his bed at night, which is a big cods send after 35 years, he still wears night. But anything like that, those high fives, those enthusiastic comments are just hugely important. Hack number four, reduce negative behavior. Okay, so how do you increase positive behavior, the cheerleader? Well, how do you reduce negative behavior? And this is a bit counterintuitive because this took me a long time to learn. You don’t give them attention when they do something bad for Michael. He doesn’t distinguish between something that he does that’s desirable or something that he does that’s undesirable. If I react, he’s one, he’s excited, so he’ll look me right in the eye and he’ll turn those puzzles upside down and I throw all over the floor right before bed, or he’ll look at me right in the eye and he’ll do something else he knows he’s not supposed to do.
(05:20):
And if I react, he’s excited, he’ll giggle, he’ll laugh, he’ll smile. And boy, I know we’re head down the wrong path. So what I try to do is not react at all or I vert my eyes or I point at what I want him to do and I turn my head aside so can see my expression or if I am going to laugh, he’s done something that’s just silly, but he knows he’s not supposed to do it again. I’m not trying to let him see me smile. So if there’s no reaction, I’m not rewarding that negative behavior and he ultimately, if I just ignore it, we’ll stop doing it or we’ll pick up whatever needs to be done. Okay, hack number five, give your son or daughter undivided attention. They know when you’re paying attention just like your neurotypical kids do, and if you’re bored because it’s not quite as stimulating an exercise or an activity with them.
(06:08):
But if you show that you’re still paying attention to them and you’re still talking to them and you’re still giving ’em that praise and you’re looking ’em in the eye when they’re looking at you in the eye and you’re smiling at something that they do, however trivial or silly it might seem to you, it makes a big difference. And what I try to do is I try to pick activities that for me personally aren’t so hard to do, but that I know Michael likes to. So if it’s outside, we might go for a walk, we might play basketball, he loves basketball, we might even go for a swim. Those are all things that I enjoy doing, he enjoys doing, and then together it sort of builds that father-son bond inside we might play, we, he’s got an old Nintendo wi and there’s a hundred pin bowling game on this Wii, and I mean you cannot miss with a hundred pins.
(06:48):
It makes no difference where you throw the ball with the the we of ice, you’re going to hit at least one pin. And so there’s always this sense of excitement and fun and lots of cheerleading and clapping and high fives and it makes a difference. I’m paying attention to having fun together. We’re doing something that’s cool. Another outside activity, now that it’s summer here in Austin is a central market, has free music on Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights, or maybe it’s Friday, Saturday, Sunday nights. Anyway, whatever nights, whatever nights you can see, I’m a well-informed dad. Whatever nights it is, we will take him for dinner and so we arrive. We have to immediately buy him some chicken salad. He’s not going to wait for his dinner to be served. At least we’ve not figured out how to consistently get that behavior. We’ll go sit on a picnic table, there’s a park right behind the picnic table and then the music is on a deck on the other side.
(07:34):
He just loves it, right? There are lots of kids running around, there’s lots of noise. So no one really cares what he’s doing. He gets to eat his chicken salad if he wants to get up and wander around the park, he can do that. If he wants to listen to music, he can do that. It’s just a fun family event. We’re paying attention to him. We’re talking to him about the music. We’re having a good time together. And then inside, again, puzzles. He likes to do puzzles. Some of them are pretty boring if he’s done them over and over again. It’s sort of hard to get excited about doing a puzzle with him, but you turn it sideways, I turn it upside down. He is of his memory is such that he’s very visual and very pattern oriented. So the same exact puzzle that he’s worked a thousand times, if I change the orientation 90 degrees, he has trouble doing it.
(08:12):
And so that makes it a little bit more interesting for me. It makes it a little bit more challenging for him, but regardless of what that is, hack number five, give your son or daughter undivided attention hack number six, offer them a choice rather than insisting that they do just one thing or let them know what’s coming next if they do something. So this idea of offering choices, do you want go do the laundry or do you want to go ahead and put your clothes away first? Do you want to fold the laundry or do you want to put your clothes away first? Either one of those is important because some stuff’s not even folded. Some stuff hasn’t been. He may prefer to get up out of his chair and go put stuff away in his bedroom and then come back and do it again.
(08:52):
So give him a two choices. It sort of gives him some sense of responsibility, empowerment that he’s making the decision, even though those are two choices that either one of which is perfectly fine with us, or if he does something, he knows what’s coming next. So it’s this choice that, okay, if you fold the laundry, we’ll get to go outside and play some basketball. Or if you put all your puzzles away neatly, you’re get to have a snack. Both of those are again, choices. The motivator of course is snack versus basketball, need to do both of them, and that’s another way to offer choices and involve him in that decision making process. The last hack I want to talk to you about today, hack number seven is probably the one you’re going to disagree with me on the most. So please hear me out. Please pay attention to what I’m saying.
(09:36):
I think there’s some value in this, at least from what we’ve learned. And who’s your priority, right? Who’s your number one priority? And it’s probably your son, your child, right? Your kids are always your number one priority. What I’ve learned when it comes to our team is Michael’s not the number one priority. Our child, our neuro divergent child, severely autistic is not our number one priority. It’s the team. Now you’re going to think that sounds bizarre and wrong. In no way hose Jose O. Here’s why. We tried making our son the priority for over 10 years. We didn’t build the culture and we didn’t build the family atmosphere amongst all his staff. And so we constantly fought turnover and people not showing up right before a scheduled time because something else came up. The guy that they’ve been waiting to get asked out from finally ask him out on a date and they’ve been waiting for weeks or months and they’re going to go out on a date night, it makes no difference.
(10:28):
So we’d also planned to go out on a date night. No, no, they’re going to do that. Or they get an opportunity to go to a concert and they’re going to go with all their buds. And so the guy says, Hey, I’m going to go in this concert. It’s a really cool opportunity if you make them the priority and you have a leader, and this is key. You have to have a leader that builds the right culture and the leader sort of iue upon the rest of the team that this is a huge responsibility. And if you don’t show up somebody else on our team’s going to have to fill your slot. We always have backup right now. We finally have backup for everything. And so that’s going to inconvenience someone else that’s part of your team you respect and you have fun with, and you don’t want to really do that disservice to.
(11:06):
So if you build the right culture, and this goes back to Herb Kelleher, who was the CEO of Southwest Airlines for a long time, and he did this. He said that our employees come first. And when the employees came first, they treated the customers exactly the way that he wanted them treated because the employees felt valued and they wanted that joy and that fulfillment to be then shared with the customer. So the same sort of true in taking care of your kiddos. Now, you may not believe this, this is a true story and it blew us away when it happened. If you do this right, some phenomenal things are going to happen. So a couple years ago, I don’t know if you guys recall, Southwest Airlines reservation system failed over Christmas. They canceled thousands of flights. We had a team member who was in California vacationing with her family, with her mom and folks, and she had a shift that was scheduled right after Christmas and she was going to fly Southwest Airlines to get back.
(11:58):
Her flight was canceled so she could not make it. So here’s what happened. Her mother drove her overnight all the way from California to Austin, Texas so she could make her shift. Now that is phenomenal, unbelievable. We could never have ask her to do that. We didn’t ask her to do that. But when you have the right team and when you put the team members first and they feel that sense of responsibility and quite frankly, love for your son or daughter, it’s just as if they were their own brother or sister, amazing things happen. So that’s the last hack I wanted to leave you with. You may not agree with me and it’s tough to do because you have to have the right culture or they’ll take advantage of you. But if you put the team first and you have that right leader, you’re going to end up having higher quality care for your son or daughter if you try to always put your son or daughter first, and you’re going to have a loyalty and a following and a commitment and less turnover and all the other things that seem to be so challenging.
(12:55):
That’s it for this week. Hope you have a wonderful rest of your week. See you.
