u/itsnotsobad1983

My identical twin boys entered the game in 2020. There was no tutorial, no instruction manual, and no helpful floating arrow explaining what we were supposed to do next. There were simply two tiny, nearly indistinguishable humans with enormous personalities and questionable regard for sleep.

When they were three, we enrolled them in pre-K. That arrangement lasted until the school politely asked us to take them somewhere else. They were kind about it. They explained that they were not equipped to handle two autistic three-year-olds simultaneously. There was only one problem. As far as I was concerned, my boys weren’t autistic. Sure, they scripted language, struggled with transitions, became overwhelmed by sensory input, communicated differently, and reacted to unexpected changes as if someone had quietly replaced the laws of physics. But I didn’t see anything particularly unusual about that. They seemed perfectly normal to me.

“They aren’t autistic,” I thought. “They’re just like me.”

This was apparently not the airtight defense I believed it was. The universe quietly recorded my argument and saved it for the moment when its significance would become painfully obvious.

Both boys were evaluated later that year and diagnosed with Level 2 autism. We started ABA shortly afterward and gradually assembled an entire support party consisting of therapists, teachers, school staff, visual schedules, transition warnings, communication tools, predictable routines, and an apparently unlimited supply of laminated paper. Every time we learned something new about how their brains worked, a previously locked door inside my own history creaked open.

They memorized songs, videos, conversations, and entire scenes. They used familiar scripts when their own words were difficult to find. They struggled when plans changed unexpectedly. They needed extra time to process what people were asking them to do. Their emotions could hit their bodies like an electrical storm, and once they became overwhelmed, reasoning with them was about as effective as filing a formal complaint with a tornado.

I understood all of this instinctively because I had experienced versions of it my entire life… I had delayed speech and needed speech therapy as a child. I copied actors and borrowed other people’s personalities because everyone else seemed to have received a social rulebook that had somehow been left out of my starter pack. I struggled with eye contact, sensory input, transitions, abstract schoolwork, task switching, and emotional regulation. I could hear electrical sounds other people ignored, smell things nobody else noticed, and become overwhelmed by textures, noise, conflict, or unexpected changes.

As an adult, stress could make me overheat, sweat profusely, hyperventilate, and eventually lose the ability to regulate myself. I believed these were personal failures. Other people called me emotional, difficult, dramatic, lazy, argumentative, or unstable. Nobody suggested that my nervous system might be operating with entirely different settings.

The more I learned about my sons, the harder it became to avoid the obvious question: If these boys are autistic, and they are this much like me, what exactly does that make me? A few years after their diagnoses, at 43 years old, I completed my own evaluation and was diagnosed with Level 1 autism.

I had successfully identified that my autistic children were just like me while somehow failing to consider the most obvious explanation. My reward was the opportunity to reprocess 43 years of memories using updated information. No additional storage space was provided.
The diagnosis didn’t transform me into an autistic person. It revealed that I had always been one. The same was true for my sons. Their diagnoses didn’t change who they were. They gave us a better map for understanding where they already were and what they needed to keep moving forward.

That realization brought relief, but it also brought grief. I began wondering how different my childhood, relationships, health, and marriage might have been if someone had recognized autism in me earlier. I wondered what I could have learned if I had received visual supports, emotional coaching, patience, and co-regulation instead of being treated as if every struggle were a moral failure.
But then I look at my boys.

They are now six and in first grade. They are affectionate, hilarious, intelligent, creative, and capable of turning our home into a continuous two-person theatrical production. They read above grade level, understand multiplication, memorize hundreds of songs and scenes, and sing in harmony with each other. They can recite entire programs while one performs and the other supplies sound effects, because apparently the universe decided one autistic performer was insufficient.

They also still need support with communication, transitions, safety, sensory regulation, and expressing what is happening inside them. We use visuals, routines, repetition, preparation, and calm correction. When one of them becomes overwhelmed, I try to understand what his behavior is communicating instead of making him ashamed of it.

I do not always get it right. Parenting remains a live-action campaign in which the objectives change without warning and at least one party member is frequently missing a shoe. But my boys are not growing up believing that their brains make them defective. They are growing up knowing that they are loved, understood, and supported.

They led me back to the child I used to be. By learning how to become the father they need, I am also learning how to care for the parts of myself nobody understood. I originally believed my sons couldn’t be autistic because they were just like me. It turns out that was the biggest clue anyone had.

Has anyone else received an autism diagnosis after their child? Did you initially miss their autistic traits because those traits felt completely normal within your own experience?