Summer means a major scheduling shift for autism families—ESY, camps, work, co-parenting, and vacations all colliding into one fragile plan. In this episode of The Autism Mom Coach, Lisa tells the story of the summer she finally built the perfect setup, hiring a special education teacher to care for her son Ben, only to have it unravel three weeks in when the sitter disappeared and a child services caseworker showed up at her door over “vials of drugs” that turned out to be a cat’s catnip toy. It’s a funny, honest reminder that plans falling apart isn’t the exception in autism parenting—it’s the rule—and that you always figure it out anyway.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why the elaborate plans autism parents build for summer are so prone to falling apart, and why expecting the disruption rather than the smooth version can actually steady you.
- How Lisa navigated losing her childcare mid-summer—rescheduling work trips, taking Ben to the office, improvising day by day—and why that “make it work” summer became one of her favorites.
- Why holding loosely to the perfect plan, and building flexibility into your schedule and your mindset, lets you pivot without spiraling when things inevitably go sideways.
Related episodes:
- What Is an Expert? Why You Know More About Your Child Than You Think (Ep #169)
- Being Unbothered: How to Stay Regulated When Your Autistic Child Pushes Your Buttons (Ep #197)
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Transcript:
Welcome to the Autism Mom Coach podcast. I am your host, Lisa Candara. I am a lawyer, a life coach, and most importantly, I am the full-time single mother of a teenager with autism. In this podcast, I am going to share with you the tools and strategies you need so you can fight like hell for your child without burning out.
Let’s get to it. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the podcast. I am so glad you are here, and I hope you are doing well. So it is after Memorial Day. It is June. It is summertime. Either your children are out of school or they’re going to be any day now. And so with summer comes a really big shift for autism families.
And I remember when my son was younger, I hated wishing the summer away because I love summer, but summer was so challenging. In fact, I remember I would start planning for summer in January. Right after the new year, I started deciding whether or not my child was going to go to ESY that year and whether or not or which camps we would send him to.
And because of his autism, there were few and far between camps that could really accommodate his needs. Between ESY, camp schedules, work schedules, vacation schedules, co-parenting schedules, summer became a complex schedule with this hodgepodge of activities where week to week things could look totally different.
But after a few years of doing this, I became more used to it, and in fact, one year I decided to make it even easier on myself and I hired a special education teacher to be Ben’s caregiver sitter during the day. So she would be in charge of getting him on and off the bus, taking him to and from ESY, everything.
It was perfect because she was a second grade special education teacher. She had a lot of energy, and she had been with our family for a few months at that point, and she was a really great fit. So I was really excited for the summer because it took so much pressure off of me to be on call all the time, especially when I worked in Philadelphia, which is a good enough distance away from where my son would be attending ESY and going to camp.
So this summer started off fantastic and everything was going really well until it wasn’t. About three weeks into summer vacation, my sitter sent us a text message letting us know that she was feeling really sick and she wouldn’t be in for the rest of the week. Okay, no problem. I could figure that out, but Monday comes around and she’s calling out again, and at the same time, I receive a note in the mail, and it is from the New Jersey Department of Children’s Services And all I could think about was that I had recently done a custody transition with my ex-husband.
So the next day, the caseworker comes, and he starts asking Ben questions. He wants to see Ben’s room. He’s looking into our refrigerator to make sure we have food. Ben had no idea what was going on, and this was a young man, and so Ben was, like, showing him his Star Wars. He’s excited to show off his stuff, and this guy is, “How are things with you at home?”
And Ben having no idea what this is about, launches into this whole dilemma he’s having that he’s turning 10 years old in the fall, and he’s trying to figure out what kind of party he wants to have. And so I really hope that was telling to this caseworker of what kind of problems Ben was dealing with at this time.
In any event, when he finally gets to me, he says to me, “Do you have any idea why I’m here?” And I said, “I’m guessing it has something to do with my ex-husband and our custody arrangement.” And he says, “No.” And at that point, I’m like, “Oh, crap.” If it’s not that, what could it possibly be? Now, we hadn’t lived in this home for a very long time, and our neighbors were very close to us, and so I was thinking maybe we’re being too loud, maybe there were complaints about that.
I had just adopted a new kitten who was terrorizing the elderly neighbors by all of the dead animals that he was producing for the neighborhood. So my mind is wand- wandering to things like that until he let me read the complaint, and the complaint said something to the effect that, “Mom is a single mom of an autistic child, and I am concerned because she is leaving vials of drugs around the house” And I think she specifically said vials of weed.
And at that moment, it clicked in my head that the only person this could possibly be was the babysitter because she was the only person in our home other than Ben and I. And two, vials of weed? Now, as boring as it is, I’ve actually never smoked weed, but what I understand about it, it doesn’t come in vials.
But the picture started to make sense in my brain. Like I said, we had just adopted a new kitten, and when you adopt a new kitten, you get them toys, and those toys have catnip. In any event, while this caseworker was there, I went to the living room, I picked up the vial, and I showed it to him, and he was just shaking his head and laughing.
Long story short, the case was completely closed. Nothing ever happened. But in addition to being traumatized that I have caseworkers in my house questioning my son about my parenting, I now don’t have a sitter for the summer. So for all of you autism moms who are working so hard to create the perfect plan to keep all the trains running on time, the children supervised and fed, and something goes wrong, you are not alone, and I have come to expect this, that it is not the exception, it is the rule.
That has helped me mentally because this threw me through a loop. And so the fact is, with everything, with autism parenting, it doesn’t go the way we think or the way we want it to go, and we still figure it out. Always. We always figure it out. And so I want to just give you that reminder. Maybe you don’t have a story as dramatic as my catnip story.
Maybe you have a story that’s much more dramatic than that. But you definitely have stories. You all have examples of planning for things to go one way, and then those plans falling apart, and you had to pivot, and you had to make it work, and you have done that. Just like Ben and I did the summer of the sitter
Instead of having the smooth summer that I was hoping for, it was a bit rocky, and we had to improvise a lot. That meant that I had to reschedule work trips. I had to take vacation days. Some days I worked from home, and some days I took Ben into the office with me. None of it was perfect, none of it was smooth, but it worked.
And in fact, some of my best memories with Ben are from that summer. Riding the train with him to Philadelphia, getting my coffee with him, having lunch with him. He decorated my whiteboard in my office with all kinds of drawings. It was a charming summer. There were some really charming moments in that summer, and there were some really difficult ones.
But overall, I remember that summer as the summer we just made it work. And so remember, you can do this too. You have the skill. There are no perfect plans. So I encourage you to not hold so tightly to the perfect plan and to build in the flexibility in your schedule, or at least in your mind, that if things go sideways, that you can adjust.
All right, everyone, that is it for this week’s episode of the podcast. I hope your summer is off to a great start, and if it’s not, I have the solution for you. You can transform your autism parenting experience very quickly by working with me. I work with clients one-on-one for three months, and inside that time, they go from feeling- and inside that short period of time, they go from feeling frazzled and out of control and unsure of themselves to feeling confident in their ability to regulate their own emotions, make decisions, and to pivot and adjust and support their child in a way that works best for them.
You do not have to spend months and months on a therapist’s couch explaining autism to them. You don’t have to bury yourself in the online support groups where you’re just hearing about more problems and less solutions. When you work with me, you’re getting tailored advice to your exact situation and support that will help you do tomorrow better for yourself and your child.
So this is your chance to work with me one-on-one. You can get started now by scheduling your consultation call using the link in the show notes. All right, everyone, I will talk to you next week. Thanks for listening to The Autism Mom Coach. If you are ready to apply the principles you are learning in these episodes to your life, it is time to schedule a consultation call with me.
Podcasts are great, but the ahas are fleeting. Real change comes from application and implementation, and this is exactly what we do in my one-on-one coaching program. To schedule your consultation, go to my website, theautismmomcoach.com/work-with-me, and take the first step to taking better care of yourself so that you can show up as the parent you want to be for your child with autism.
