In the first full solo episode of 2026, Lisa reflects on her son’s transition into adulthood at 18 and looks back on roughly four years of acuity that began when he went into a free fall at 13. This is an honest, hopeful look at what the teen years have taught her and what she and his team are navigating as they figure out what the near future holds.
- What the onset of acuity looked like for Lisa’s son and family, and how it reshaped their lives.
- What she has learned about parenting through the teen years and an adolescent’s hardest periods.
- Why she chooses to hold on to hope while preparing for the realities of the adult-side transition.
Listen Here
RESOURCES MENTIONED
- The Autism Mom Coach
- The Solid Circle waitlist
- One-on-one coaching with Lisa Candera
RELATED EPISODES:
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to The Autism Mom Coach Podcast. I’m your host, Lisa Candera. I am a lawyer, a life coach, and most importantly, I am the full-time single mother of a teenager with autism.
On this podcast, I share the tools and strategies you need so you can fight like hell for your child without burning out.
Let’s get to it.
You are listening to Episode 190 of The Autism Mom Coach: What the Teen Years Have Taught Me So Far.
Hello everyone, and welcome to the podcast. Since this is the first full solo episode of 2026, I wanted to share what’s been going on, what I’ve been thinking about, and hopefully leave you with something hopeful.
To back up a bit, last year my son turned 18. That happened in September, so he’s still 18, but now on the adult side of that equation. With that has come a lot of transitions. We’re working through what the near future is going to look like, and when I say “we,” I mean me and his team.
As part of that, we’ve been having a lot of conversations about the past — what worked, what didn’t, and what we learned from essentially four full years of acuity.
If you don’t know our story, here’s the short version.
When my son turned 13, we went into a free fall.
Up until that point, he was attending sixth grade in a general education classroom. He had a few pull-outs for speech and reading, but otherwise he was fully included. He was going to birthday parties, doing after-school skiing, and really enjoying school.
As seventh grade and middle school approached, his anxiety started to increase. That increase exploded when COVID shut everything down midway through his sixth-grade year, when he was 12 turning 13.
In the months following the shutdown, his anxiety skyrocketed. His OCD made a very loud entrance. And then teenage hormones joined the mix.
All of that led to him going from well-functioning to barely functioning. That deteriorated even more at the start of seventh grade, when he was expected to transition to middle school.
Normally, kids get eased into that transition — visits to the school, meetings with teachers, learning the layout, seeing the lockers. None of that happened.
Within a very short period of time — I think less than two weeks — we had our first 911 call, followed by back-to-back ER visits. From there, it snowballed: more 911 calls, more ER visits, inpatient hospitalizations, partial programs in several states, new doctors, new diagnoses, more medication changes than I can count, out-of-district placements, endless IEP meetings.
Now, being five years out, I don’t even want to say “the other side,” but being further away from those years of acute crisis gives you perspective.
I’ll be honest — it got so bad and so dark that I truly believed I had lost my child. I thought there had been some kind of permanent break. Between the hormones, the anxiety, the OCD, the trauma — I didn’t know if there was a way back.
That was terrifying.
Now, being in a much better place, I find myself reflecting on everything I learned. There are so many practical, nitty-gritty lessons I could share. Things I would never have known without living through it.
But on a more macro level, there are three principles that guided me through those years. And I’m very intentional about carrying them forward into this next chapter of adulthood.
That’s what I want to share with you today.
Principle One: Acceptance
For a long time, I thought I understood acceptance. I thought it was something you did once — something you checked off a list.
I worked hard to get my son diagnosed. I embraced the diagnosis. We built the IEP. We got accommodations. I told people who needed to know. I didn’t hide it. I went to support groups. I did the walks.
To me, acceptance was done.
Fast forward to the teenage years. I had been parenting solo for many years, and we had found a groove with autism. I want to be careful how I explain this, because once when I said something similar, someone interpreted it as giving up — and that’s not what I mean.
What I mean is that I had risen to the level of attention, precision, and effort required in our daily life. It was baked into me.
Ben is my only child. I didn’t know anything different. I knew our life was different from other families, but this was normal to me.
It was still hard. There were still struggles, challenges, and anxiety. But I felt like I had it in hand.
That changed dramatically when anxiety, OCD, and teenage hormones arrived all at once.
That was a whole new world — and I wasn’t okay with it.
Autism already felt like enough. I understood that anxiety and OCD can be part of autism, but when they came charging to the front and took over, I resisted it. I felt resentful. I was angry that things had gotten harder.
Then aggression entered the picture, and I really lost my footing.
The child I was seeing didn’t match the child I knew. At the same time, we had transitioned to an entirely new middle school team who had never seen the version of Ben who was thriving.
I kept saying, “You don’t understand — just a few months ago, this is what he was like.”
Looking back, I imagine people may have thought I was in denial. I didn’t experience it that way. I was genuinely confused. I didn’t understand how my child could deteriorate so quickly.
That resistance kept me stuck. It interfered with my ability to make clear decisions, because I was making choices based on where I thought he should be, or where he had been — not where he was.
A clear example came after his first inpatient hospitalization. The school district offered several out-of-district placements. One of them served students with high levels of aggression.
That was a hard no for me.
At the time, his team agreed. His behaviors had been mostly self-injurious, with threats toward me, but not significant outward aggression yet. I was afraid that placing him with aggressive peers would escalate things.
I pushed — and succeeded — in getting him into a school that reflected how I still saw him.
He was accepted.
And it didn’t work. Not at all.
His aggression escalated. He was clearly not suited for that environment at that time. I was grieving deeply. I remember saying to a close friend, who is also a BCBA, “He doesn’t belong in a school with aggressive kids.”
She said, “He doesn’t belong here either — because he’s the one being aggressive.”
That hit me hard.
It reminded me of that Breaking Bad scene where Walter White says, “I’m the one who knocks.” That realization landed: my child was the child with the behaviors.
Accepting that didn’t make the grief easier, but it made me a clearer advocate. A better decision-maker. A stronger team member. I didn’t need to be handled gently. I wanted honesty.
Acceptance, for me, became less about “why” and more about “and now this too.”
Principle Two: Unconditional Love
Unconditional love means loving someone no matter what. That sounds obvious when it’s your child.
But when your child becomes someone you don’t recognize — when you go from being their best buddy to their biggest trigger — it gets tested.
I never questioned whether I loved my son. But there were moments when I questioned whether the version of him I knew was gone forever.
The question I asked myself was this:
Can I love him no matter what — even if I don’t like him, even if he doesn’t like me, even if I don’t recognize him?
The answer was a full, embodied yes.
That decision was empowering. I wasn’t waiting to see how things turned out. I knew in my body that I could love this child no matter what.
That love guided my decisions — even when he wasn’t a fan.
It became a North Star during a time when very little felt steady.
Principle Three: Holding Hope
Holding hope means accepting what is right now and still believing in something better — even when there’s no evidence yet.
It means seeing your child at their worst and holding hope that they will come back.
This mattered deeply during years when nothing seemed to work. We tried everything we were told to try. Programs. Doctors. Medications. I moved to another state and lived in a hotel for three months to get specialized OCD treatment.
Things that helped other families didn’t help us.
Holding hope took effort.
I know parents who are afraid to hope — afraid of being disappointed or heartbroken again. Holding hope is an act of courage. You put your heart on the line.
I remember a moment with a case manager during one of my son’s most acute periods. She said something like, “But for a miracle…”
She wasn’t wrong. She cared deeply about my son. She was stating facts.
And I remember thinking, I believe in miracles. I can believe in a miracle for him.
I didn’t know how or when. There was no evidence. But I decided to believe.
And yes, I got corny. The song “You Sexy Thing” by Hot Chocolate popped into my head — I believe in miracles. I downloaded it. I listened to it. Because I did believe.
And my son came back. He’s himself again — even better in some ways.
I know there are challenges ahead. But I also know what rock bottom feels like — and that light can still exist there.
When you put these three together — acceptance, unconditional love, and holding hope — you see what autism parents do every day.
We get knocked down. And we get back up.
No matter where you are in this journey — even if your experience looks nothing like mine — this life will push you to your edges. There is growth there. But it’s also hard. And it’s lonely.
You don’t need to be in crisis to reach out for support. That’s why I do what I do. I built my one-on-one coaching program to be the resource I wish I had during those years.
If you want support — whether you’re in crisis or just struggling — schedule a consultation call with me. It’s a conversation. I want to hear where you are and see whether working together makes sense.
You can find the link in the show notes, or email me directly at lisa@theautismmomcoach.com.
Thanks for listening. I’ll talk to you next week.
