Essential Advice As You Begin Your ASD Parenting Journey

As a fellow mother guide, teacher, and life coach I have shared my story to help, heal and support other mothers. During these past few years my son Joseph and I have begun a podcast, and written a book together entitled A Mother’s Guide Through Autism/Through The Eyes Of The Guided. 

I personally have shifted my career from teaching and leading in a traditional school setting to coaching moms who have children with ASD. This experience of living with autism from the mother’s perspective has given me the opportunity to reflect on what I want to pay forward to other moms who are beginning their own personal autism journeys as a mother guide. 

I have so much to share with you all, but for today I am going to condense my essential advice each week for the next 10 weeks. I want to share my top 10 list beginning with the most essential piece of advice and work through the list.

This list was difficult to create because condensing the past 30 years into 10 essential pieces is leaving some other important pieces of advice out. I decided that I can always add to  this list as needed in the future. So, I am going to begin at the beginning of my ASD parenting journey.

If you are at the beginning of your ASD parenting journey this list is for you. If you are somewhere in the middle of your ASD parenting journey, or your child is now an adult my hunch is that you will also find value in this list as we all share and connect on many levels as mother guides. 

Being a mother guide is part of our own personal life journey. We will always be a mother guide.

In our book, A Mother’s Guide Through Autism, I share my own personal stories of joy in discovering that I was pregnant, what expectations I had for my unborn child, and also the pain, grief, and how to genuinely smile again on my ASD parenting journey. 

Reflection is important in healing your heart. I also know how difficult it is to revisit the deep pain of knowing that your child is going to live with a lifelong disability. As I have shared in past blogs I refer to these moments as life tsunamis. These are life events that take you to your knees.

Before I begin the top ten list of essential advice to help guide you as you begin your ASD parenting journey I want to leave you with a bit of support and love from my mother’s heart to yours. 

Excerpt from A Mother’s Guide Through Autism.

I want to disclose that I am still on my own autism journey as a mother guide. I will be a mother guide for the rest of my life. As I move forward, my intentional purpose is to continue to share my story and pay it forward with what I have learned. I am a teacher at heart, so this is my love language to teach, guide, and continue learning.

May you find peace and healing as you move through this healing guide. This is a prayer I wrote to use whenever you are losing hope and you find yourself on your knees.

Mother Guide’s Prayer

I pray from the depth of my mother’s soul
To release my child from suffering,
To release my heart from deep sorrow and fear for our future,
To send earth angels to guide us on our long journey,
To keep my mind, body and spirit filled with hope as I go through 
my life guiding my child’s disabilities and gifts.
May others who judge me be forgiven as I have been forgiven.
Give me the strength and courage to be the mother guide my 
Child needs when needed, and the intuition to allow them to fly to
their own destiny. Please guide my child with love and patience, all
the while guiding me, my child’s Mother Guide.

- Amen.

Written by Brigitte M. Volltrauer Shipman - Joseph’s Mother Guide 

I hope this offers you some comfort and peace today.

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