Back-to-school season floods an autism parent’s mind with “what if” questions that hijack sleep. What if he refuses to go to school, what if he gets aggressive, what if I have to call 911, what if he gets kicked out of the new placement too. I have lived that spin, and here is what it taught me: a “what if” is not a question you are trying to answer. It is anticipatory anxiety on a loop, and your body cannot tell the difference between the catastrophe you imagine and one that is real, so you pay the stress cost over and over before anything happens.

This episode is the countermove. It is the five-step protocol I built to turn a vague catastrophic “what if” into a specific problem you can plan for, so you make your decisions ahead of time from a grounded state instead of in the panic of the moment.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why “what if” questions and back-to-school anxiety keep autism parents stuck in a fight-or-flight loop instead of moving toward a solution.
• Why making decisions ahead of time, from a calm state, leaves you better equipped for school refusal, morning meltdowns, calls from the school, IEP disagreements, and the after-school collapse.
• Why the five-step protocol, define the concern, rate it, list your options, decide what you can do now, and write an if-then plan, turns catastrophizing into a plan you can use.

Resources mentioned:

• Email Lisa your If, Then Protocol:lisa@lisatheautismmomcoach-com
• Schedule a consultation with Lisa

Related Episodes:

• Setting Yourself Up for Success This School Year: A Mindset Guide for Autism Parents (Ep #210)
• Catastrophizing as an Autism Parent (And How to Stop) (Ep #10)
• Mental Rehearsal: How Autism Moms Can Prepare for Back-to-School Season (Ep #25)

Listen Here:

Transcript:

Here is the corrected version with bold removed from all body copy and retained only in headers.

Back to School: How to Answer the “What If” Questions Keeping Autism Moms Up at Night

You are listening to Episode 211 of The Autism Mom Coach: Back to School: How to Answer the “What If” Questions Keeping Autism Moms Up at Night.

Hi, I’m Lisa Candera, mother to an 18-year-old son with autism and founder of The Autism Mom Coach. Through years of trial and error, I have created tools that have helped me stop escalating meltdowns, make impossible decisions, and advocate more effectively for my son. I’ve now coached over 100 moms through these same struggles.

In this podcast, I share everything I’ve learned, and what I’m still learning, with you.

Let’s get started.

Why “What If” Questions Keep You Stuck

Last week, in the first episode of the Back-to-School series, I talked about shifting your mindset from bracing to acceptance and from fear to focus, and doing that over and over again.

This week is about the mechanics.

I’m giving you a step-by-step protocol for answering the questions that keep you up at night: the “what if” questions that send you into a spin.

Before we get to the protocol, let’s talk about why these questions keep you stuck.

The problem with “what if” questions is that most of the time, we aren’t actually trying to answer them. We aren’t applying our highest level of thinking and looking for solutions. We’re looping on the question itself.

That’s understandable because these questions usually bring up fear and anxiety. When you’re in a fight-or-flight state, you have less access to the kind of deliberate thinking you need to solve a problem.

If you never move beyond “What if?” and put your brain to work finding solutions, you stay stuck.

And there is a cost to that.

When you repeatedly imagine and anticipate a disaster, your body can respond with the same fight-or-flight stress response you would experience if something threatening were actually happening.

Instead of experiencing that stress if and when the situation occurs, you experience it repeatedly for days or weeks.

That takes a toll on your energy and confidence. And there’s another important part of this, especially in autism parenting: some of the things you’re worried about actually do happen.

You may get the call from school.

Your child may refuse to get on the bus.

The IEP may not be followed.

Your child may hold it together all day at school and lose it the minute they walk through your front door.

These are real problems that sometimes require real decisions.

When you’ve spent your time dreading them instead of preparing for them, you’re less equipped to respond effectively when they happen.

Make Decisions Ahead of Time

The countermove to the “what if” loop is making decisions ahead of time.

These are decisions you make before the stressful situation happens, when you have greater access to reason, judgment, and perspective.

Otherwise, the thing happens, your adrenaline spikes, and suddenly it’s easy to freeze, go blank, overreact, or have absolutely no idea what to do.

Making decisions ahead of time means considering your options and choosing your next steps for situations you reasonably believe might happen.

Maybe your child refuses to get out of bed.

Maybe it takes 20 minutes to get dressed because their clothes don’t feel right.

Maybe you get a call from school about a behavior.

Maybe your child holds it together all day and then melts down the minute they get home.

You may still get that initial burst of adrenaline when it happens. But now you also have something else available to you:

I knew this might happen. Here’s what I decided I would do.

You have a plan you made before you were in the middle of the problem.

That matters because sometimes the thing you’ve decided to do will be uncomfortable.

You may need to hold a boundary. Leave work early. Disagree with someone at the IEP table. Wait out a meltdown.

Making the decision ahead of time means you’ve already thought through why you’re choosing that response and what you want to accomplish.

Why I Created This Protocol

I created this protocol because I’ve had plenty of moments when I got that jolt of adrenaline and felt myself freeze or had the urge to overreact.

Eventually, I realized I needed something concrete to focus on. Almost like a decision tree.

I wanted a process I could use instead of repeatedly asking myself, “What do I do?”

I’ve also coached parents through many of the situations I’ve experienced myself: waiting out a public meltdown, calling 911, deciding whether inpatient hospitalization is necessary, dealing with insurance companies, and navigating major school problems.

I’ve worked to distill those experiences into a concrete protocol that I can use when I need it and that you can apply to your own circumstances.

When the “What Ifs” Became Real for Me

Shortly after my son Ben turned 13, our lives became extremely challenging.

It was 2020. We were dealing with COVID, puberty, and middle school. His anxiety was sky-high, his OCD was out of control, and he was becoming aggressive toward me and himself.

He was hospitalized for the first time in September 2020. Shortly afterward, he was placed out of our school district in a smaller school.

At that point, it was undeniable that his mental health was deteriorating, and I was flooded with questions:

What if he refuses to go to school?

What if he gets aggressive?

What if I have to call 911?

What if he needs another inpatient hospitalization?

What if insurance refuses to cover it?

What if he gets kicked out of his new school?

Unfortunately, I’ve lived through many of those scenarios, some more than once.

And after you live through a few of your worst-case scenarios, you learn something important: the thing you were terrified would happen can happen. You can deal with it. And sometimes the crisis becomes the thing that finally gets your child access to something they need.

For example, if your child is melting down at school day after day and experiencing severe anxiety there, those visible struggles may provide the information necessary to demonstrate that the current placement is inadequate and a different school environment is needed.

Being an attorney and a very process-oriented person, I wanted to map these situations based on what I had learned from living through them.

I wanted a clear path for what to do next.

That became this five-step protocol.

The Five-Step “What If” Protocol

Step 1: Clearly Define the Problem

Take your vague, overly broad “what if” and turn it into the precise situation you are concerned about.

Get factual.

Who? What? When? Where?

Data over drama.

Instead of sitting with:

“What if I have to call 911?”

Define the circumstances that would cause you to call 911 in the first place:

“If Ben is unsafe toward himself or me, I will call 911.”

Or consider:

“What if he refuses to go to school?”

Based on my actual experience with Ben, there was usually a lot of threatening that he wasn’t going to school. There could be resistance to getting ready, getting on the van, and sometimes a full meltdown in the morning.

But most of the time, he eventually went.

That distinction matters.

Once you make the issue specific, you can start identifying possibilities, troubleshooting, and developing strategies.

Vagueness keeps you stuck. Specifics move you forward.

Step 2: Rate It

Next, rate the situation in two ways:

How likely is it to happen?

How big of a problem would it actually be?

For likelihood, I use three buckets.

Very Likely

This is based on past experience or a new development you already know about.

Before Ben turned 13, hospitalizations and out-of-district placements weren’t even on my radar.

After everything we experienced, those possibilities moved into a different category for our family. They became situations I needed to be aware of and have a plan for.

“Very likely” means: I should know my options and my next steps.

Likely

This is the ordinary friction that can come with the school year for autistic children.

That might include:

• IEP issues
• Behavioral or social challenges
• Difficulty with transitions
• Routine changes
• Increased expectations
• Calls from school
• In-school meltdowns
• Difficulty with group projects or gym
• Misunderstandings about your child’s behavior
• After-school meltdowns

None of these things is guaranteed. None would necessarily surprise you either.

Unlikely

This is the fear that has never happened or happened once under circumstances that are no longer relevant.

Maybe you used to receive frequent calls about your child’s behavior on the bus, but this year your child isn’t taking the bus.

Maybe you’re worried your tween will be bullied for wearing Bluey or Paw Patrol shirts, even though there’s no history of bullying.

Maybe you’re afraid you’ll be fired because of the time you spend managing your child’s needs, despite years of positive feedback and zero concerns raised by your manager.

An unlikely scenario usually doesn’t require a plan right now.

Your time and mental energy are better spent on the situations that are actually likely to require something from you.

How Big Is the Problem?

Next, rate the impact.

When something goes sideways, everything can feel enormous in the moment. That’s why it helps to distinguish between something that is unpleasant or inconvenient and something that represents a significant problem.

Think about it on a scale from 1 to 10.

For me, Ben whining, complaining, or stomping around before school was normal within the context of our lives.

I didn’t treat it like an emergency.

That also made it easier to recognize when something crossed the line from our ordinary difficulties into a much bigger problem, such as aggression or elopement.

Step 3: Determine Your Options

For situations you’ve identified as likely or very likely, start listing your options.

I want you to come up with at least five, including options you probably wouldn’t choose.

The purpose is to force your brain to search for potential solutions instead of repeatedly rehearsing the worst-case scenario.

You are creating choices.

You can evaluate them later.

Step 4: Ask, “What Can I Do Right Now?”

Look at your options and decide what you can do today.

This could mean preventing a foreseeable problem, reducing its likelihood, or putting support in place so you’re better prepared if it happens anyway.

For example, if you’re concerned about handling your workload during the first week of school if your child struggles with the transition, you might:

• Take PTO.
• Talk to your supervisor.
• Give colleagues a heads-up.
• Move certain deadlines.
• Reschedule meetings.

If you are dealing with a history of self-harm or aggression, preparation might include securing dangerous objects or writing out what you would say if you needed to call 911.

You aren’t predicting that these things will happen.

You’re deciding what resources and preparation would make you more capable of handling them if they do.

Step 5: Create Your If-Then Plan

Finally, write the actual action plan:

If this specific thing happens, then this is what I will do.

For example:

If my child comes home from school furious and overwhelmed, then I will give them space before placing demands on them.

If I receive a call from school, then I will ask questions and understand what happened before automatically jumping in the car to pick up my child.

If I believe my child’s IEP isn’t being followed, then I will communicate with the teacher and case manager, document my concerns, write a parent concern letter, and request an IEP meeting if necessary.

You are taking “What if this horrible thing happens?” and turning it into concrete steps you can follow.

The Protocol at a Glance

Here are the five steps:

1. Define the problem. Get specific about what you are actually worried will happen.
2. Rate it. How likely is it, and how big of a problem would it really be?
3. Determine your options. Brainstorm at least five possible responses.
4. Decide what you can do now. Prepare, prevent, or put support in place.
5. Create your if-then plan. Decide exactly what you will do if the situation occurs.

Next week, I’m taking five of the most common back-to-school “what if” questions I hear from autism moms and running each of them through this protocol using real client examples.

Before then, take one of the “what if” questions that has been occupying your brain and run it through these five steps.

If you want to share what you come up with, email me at lisa@theautismmomcoach.com. I’m happy to review it and help you strategize.

Ready to Put This Into Practice?

If you’re ready to apply the principles you’re learning in these episodes to your own life, schedule a consultation call with me.

Podcasts can give you the insight. The work happens when you apply it to the actual decisions, meltdowns, school problems, and situations happening in your family.

That is exactly what we do in my one-on-one coaching program.

Schedule your consultation at theautismmomcoach.com