You Don’t Want a Hug, Right? The Hilarity and the Hard of Raising Humans with Neurodiversity

Many neurodiverse people have special interests and engage in repetitive behaviors. These interests are a crucial way for our kids to connect with others. But sometimes their interests and behaviors can be limiting, especially in school or other social settings.  In today’s episode, we talk about why neurodiverse kids engage in special interests and repetitive behaviors with such intensity, how it...

Family travel is supposed to be fun, right? We’re bonding and making memories and all that jazz. In a perfect world, we’d agree with you, but the reality is a bit more miserable when you’re traveling as a neurodiverse family. In today’s episode, we talk about how to plan for your trip in advance and get your neurodiverse kids used to the idea long beforehand, the issues you’ll likely encounter no...

Both of us have spiraled down the rabbit hole of diagnosis with our children. As a parent, when you first hear about autism, you don’t know what you don’t know. You find yourself asking, “Are these behaviors normal?” many, many times. What even is “normal”, anyway? In today’s episode, we talk about the term “diagnosis”, the data around autism diagnoses, and our rabbit hole experiences with multipl...

Ahhh, summer time. Swim lessons, water parks, summer camps - it’s the dream life, right? *insert record scratch* For neurodiverse families, that’s not really the case. Instead, summer can be really hard for us.  In today’s episode, we talk about the struggles of summer, how we try to cope, and how summer is harder on parents than the kids. Plus, you can hear what our kids think about summer from t...

Making friends can be hard for anyone at any age, but it’s especially hard for neurodiverse children. We’ve had a front row seat to the experiences our kids have had trying to make friends and the lessons they’ve learned (and often have to re-learn) about who to let into their friendship circles.  In today’s episode, we talk about the data behind making friends when you have autism, learning what...

Isolation and loneliness are realities for parenting raising humans with neurodiversity. We’ve experienced both and know how difficult it can be through the many ages and stages of our kids’ lives. In today’s episode, we talk all about isolation and loneliness and their impact on neurodiverse families. We go into the data behind it, share stories related to feelings of isolation in many different...

We’re bringing you a mini episode today, and it’s one we had to record to rectify something we just realized: not everyone knows what neurodiversity means, or what autism spectrum disorder actually entails.  In today’s episode, we’re getting back to basics and digging out the DSM-5 to define these terms for anyone who might not be aware. Let’s normalize the experiences our children are having and...

We have a lot of experience parenting some fiercely amazing, neurodiverse kids and we have so many stories about that to share with you on this show. But before we dive deep into those stories, we wanted you to get to know us and our families a bit better.  In today’s episode, we interview each other and talk about where we live, our difficult journeys of having kids (to say the least!), their dia...

Well, hello there. We’re your hosts, Gwen and Kristen, nice to meet you. This is the very first episode of You Don’t Want a Hug, Right? If you’re looking for honest and often irreverent conversations about parenting humans with neurodiversity, then you are in the right place.  In today’s episode, we’re sharing our mission and our perspective, not lessons or lectures. We’re also giving you an intro...

Join Gwen & Kristen on their proverbial couch (the most INCLUSIVE of couches) as they share irreverently honest stories and wisdom gained through a collective 35 years of parenting FIERCELY EPIC neurodiverse humans.   These friends have spent eons talking together about the hilarity and the hard of their parenting journeys and they want to invite you into those conversations too.  Thanks for t...