Living Inspired with Autism

Send us Fan Mail What if one of the most powerful things you could do as a parent of an autistic child was simply to own it ? Own the difficult days. Own the beautiful moments. Own the uncertainty, the learning, the mistakes, the growth, and the fact that your family may look very different from everyone else’s. In this episode of Living Inspired with Autism , I’m talking about what happens when w...

Send us Fan Mail What if one of the most powerful things you could do today was simply... breathe? As parents of autistic children, we can become incredibly good at rushing. Rushing to appointments. Rushing through school mornings. Rushing to find answers. Rushing towards the next milestone. And even when our bodies stop, our minds can still be racing ahead. In this episode of Living Inspired with...

Send us Fan Mail What do you do when your autistic child is getting older, the emotions are getting bigger, the behaviours are becoming harder to understand, and the parenting strategies that used to work suddenly don’t? This episode was inspired by conversations I had with parents at the Autism Strong event in Charlotte. So many parents stopped to share what they were struggling with, and I kept...

Send us Fan Mail Listening to Your Body: Rest Without Guilt as an Autism Parent When everyone needs you, listening to your own body can slip to the bottom of the list. But you are part of the family equation too. In this episode of Living Inspired with Autism, I share what happened when illness interrupted a busy Monday and I chose to rest instead of pushing through. What surprised me most wasn’t...

Send us Fan Mail Marriage, autism & getting it wrong together  Marriage can be complicated. Add autism parenting, appointments, routines, emotional regulation, paperwork, sleepless nights and the constant mental load, and even the strongest relationship can start to feel stretched. In this episode of Living Inspired with Autism , Antoinette gets real about marriage, autism and what partnership...

Send us Fan Mail What if changing one thing in the way you parent, think and respond could begin changing everything else? In this episode of Living Inspired with Autism , I’m talking about the ripple effect of the Autism Parent Blueprint and why this work goes far beyond simply learning how to handle difficult days. The Blueprint is built around three key pillars: Inner Stability Learning how to...

Send us Fan Mail   What if the biggest change in your family doesn’t begin with changing your child? What if it begins with the parent you are becoming? When you’re raising an autistic child, life can become very focused on the problem directly in front of you. The meltdown. The school meeting. The sleepless night. The difficult trip to the supermarket. The next appointment. The next decision. And...

Send us Fan Mail What if trying so hard to become a better parent is actually making parenting feel even harder? As autism parents, we can carry an exhausting list of expectations. I should be calmer. I should have more patience. I should know what to do by now. I should be handling this better. And underneath all of those thoughts can sit one painful belief: I’m not doing this well enough. In thi...

Send us Fan Mail There is a difference between getting through your life and actually feeling alive in it. As parents of autistic children, we can become incredibly good at functioning. We organise, advocate, anticipate, manage, support and solve. But underneath all that competence, it can become very easy to lose sight of ourselves. In this episode of Living Inspired with Autism , I’m talking abo...

Send us Fan Mail When you’re raising an autistic child, it can become very easy for your own life to slowly disappear beneath appointments, advocacy, therapies, school meetings and everyone else’s needs. But you are still here. In this episode of Living Inspired with Autism , I’m talking about your power, your capability and the person you are beyond everything you manage each day. This isn’t abou...

Send us Fan Mail Two small words can create a surprisingly powerful shift: So what? As parents of autistic children, our brains can become incredibly good at spotting problems. A call from the school, a meltdown in public, a difficult behaviour or a milestone that hasn’t happened yet can quickly become something much bigger in our minds. But what actually happened, and what are you making it mean?...

Send us Fan Mail Seeing the school’s number pop up on your phone can make your stomach drop before you even answer. In this episode of Living Inspired with Autism , I’m talking about the emotional weight parents of autistic children can carry when school becomes a constant source of phone calls, difficult reports, early collections and challenging IEP meetings. I share some of our experience with...

Send us Fan Mail What if the obstacle you are facing did not have to disappear before you could experience more freedom? In this episode of Living Inspired with Autism , Antoinette explores what it means to become the parent and person for whom an obstacle no longer holds the same power. This does not mean pretending that interrupted sleep, unpredictable plans, limited time, judgement or uncertain...

Send us Fan Mail What if the goal was not to feel safe all the time, but to trust yourself when life feels uncertain? As parents of autistic children, uncertainty can become part of everyday life. You may be thinking about your child’s development, school, behaviour, future, available support or whether you have the capacity to keep managing everything in front of you. In this episode of Living In...

Send us Fan Mail   As a parent of an autistic child, you may have become exceptionally good at caring for everyone else while slowly placing yourself at the bottom of the list. In this warm and powerful masterclass, Antoinette invites you to see yourself differently. You are not simply the person managing the appointments, emotions, responsibilities and endless moving parts of family life. You are...

Send us Fan Mail Plans can bring structure, direction and calm, but what happens when the day suddenly looks nothing like the one you carefully mapped out? In this episode, Antoinette explores how parents of autistic children can plan with intention while remaining flexible when life changes unexpectedly. She shares how different planning styles can complement one another, why black-and-white thin...

Send us Fan Mail Change can be exciting, positive and something you have chosen, while still leaving you feeling completely exhausted. In this episode, I share what our recent house move has taught me about having compassion for yourself in the messy middle of change. We talk about why transitions take so much energy, even when they bring wonderful opportunities. For autistic children, change can...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Living Inspired with Autism, we are talking about emotional capacity and what it means to feel difficult emotions without making them an emergency.  As parents of autistic children, we can often feel emotionally maxed out, but you may have more capacity than you currently believe. I share how resistance drains your energy, why emotional strength is not about tol...

Send us Fan Mail Most of us believe that emotions simply happen to us. We think our child’s behaviour makes us frustrated, a family member’s comment upsets us, or a situation at school causes our stress. But your emotions are created by your thoughts about a circumstance, not only by the circumstance itself. In the final episode of the emotional skills series, we explore how to create emotions on...

Send us Fan Mail What if the thing holding you back is not failure, rejection or disappointment, but the emotions you fear those experiences might create? In this episode of Living Inspired with Autism , we continue the emotional skills series by exploring your willingness to feel discomfort. As autism parents, many of us quietly learn to protect ourselves by hoping less, dreaming smaller and avoi...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Living Inspired with Autism , Antoinette continues the emotional skills series by exploring something many autism parents experience but do not always recognise: indulging in emotions. This is not about judging yourself for feeling deeply. It is about noticing when an emotion stops being something you are allowing and starts becoming something you are feeding. T...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Living Inspired with Autism , Antoinette continues the emotional skills series by exploring something that sounds simple, but can feel incredibly uncomfortable in real life: allowing your emotions. As parents of autistic children, we often carry so much through the day. The meltdowns, the unpredictability, the noise, the behaviours, the comments from others, the...

Send us Fan Mail Emotional Skills Series. Podcast 1 In this episode of Living Inspired With Autism , Antoinette begins a powerful new series on emotional skills for parents of autistic children. As parents, we often move through life feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, reactive, guilty, frustrated, sad, anxious, or just “not okay.” But many of us were never actually taught how to understand what we ar...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever imagined something beautiful for your autistic child’s future, only for your brain to immediately shut it down with, “Be realistic”? In this episode of Living Inspired With Autism , Antoinette speaks directly to the parent who has heard too many “no’s,” carried too many disappointments, and quietly started building the future from the past. But your past is not the m...

Send us Fan Mail As parents of autistic children, we are often handed limitations. From doctors, schools, specialists, systems, reports, assessments and well-meaning people who speak in predictions, timelines and “realistic expectations.” But what happens when those limitations start becoming the lens you see your child through? In this episode of Living Inspired With Autism , Antoinette talks abo...