A high pain threshold can be common when your child has autism or, in fact, any special need. And it can be both a blessing and a curse.

Recently, when my son Brody had an accident at home, his high pain threshold was a real blessing. He was perched on the corner of our sofa (typically, one of his favourite places to sit when I’m not looking) and fell backwards, hitting his head on the corner of our solid oak table.

While we used to have those soft corner fittings for the table that you can buy to soften the blow from such incidents, we admittedly didn’t have them on the table because Broday just continually pulls them off (and chews on them). The mummy guilt from this was an added bonus to the whole episode.

We saw it happen in slow motion, like you always do with accidents. He lay there, wedged between the sofa and the wall. He raised his hand and held his head, but there were no tears. In fact, there was no big reaction at all. His Daddy scooped him up to assess the damage and then my heart crept into my mouth when I saw his head bleeding.

Enter panic and adrenaline. We rushed to the hospital and four impatient hours later—filled by crisps, biscuits and a temporary loss of sanity—we were home with a glued and bandaged-up head.

During the entire episode, Brody didn’t cry once. And it was a cut that would make your stomach churn. It was traumatic for us, but it was just inconvenient for him. His biggest frustrations were his dad holding a towel to his head until the First Response car arrived, and the boredom of waiting…waiting…waiting at A&E. In times like this, I am massively grateful that he has such a high pain threshold. Because to feel the pain from that cut would have been awful.

It also comes in handy because Brody has low muscle tone (hypotonia) and hypermobility. These two conditions, combined with a lack of spatial awareness, means he falls or bangs into things a lot. He is always covered in bruises, but he rarely complains when he falls. A lot of the time if he hurts himself when we’re not looking, we don’t even know about it until we see a mark appear or a bruise. I swear my child can injure himself in the blink of an eye. Sadly, he has no danger awareness whatsoever and because of that, I am your classic helicopter parent. Yet I still miss a lot, or don’t react quickly enough (there’s that mummy guilt again!).

While there are advantages to a high pain threshold, there are, of course, some downfalls.

A big worry for us is that our beautiful boy might really hurt himself and we would know nothing about it—especially as he is non-verbal and wouldn’t be able to tell us. I worry about how he might suffer in silence and it makes me feel awful, not to mention how bad it makes us look as parents. After all, who doesn’t know when their child is hurt?

Brody’s high pain threshold makes us panic if he ever cries. Because he rarely does, we figure if he’s upset he must have really hurt himself or be unwell. Of course, this isn’t always the case, but it’s a real worry for us.

A current problem is Brody has started stimming by crawling across the carpet with his forehead against it. He has “carpet burned” his head on numerous occasions and has remained completely unaware that he’s done so. The same goes for head banging, which he doesn’t do so much anymore, thankfully. He just doesn’t appear to feel it.

So, I have mixed feelings about that high pain threshold. It can scare the life out of me but, admittedly, it can really come in handy sometimes, too.

Food can be a very challenging part of your child’s ASD diagnosis. It is for one of my sons. He has a very limited menu and it continues to stay that way.

He will often eat the same thing for three to four months and then move on to another item. Then he will eat that one over and over for the next three to four months, and so forth.  A few items stick around all the time and he will eat them continuously. These items become his snacks.

His snack foods often switch from chips to fruit roll-ups to fruit snacks. I have to be stocked up on these items at all times. I buy huge quantities of them weekly at the grocery store. I will never forget the day a young high school boy was checking me out and, after he scanned the 10th box of fruit roll-ups, he stopped and looked at me and said, “Is there a good deal on those or something?” It was hard not to laugh. I am sure that young high school boy could not even fathom if I tried to explain it all to him. I just simply smiled and said truthfully, “Oh my son just loves them.”

Besides snacks, there are three main food items that my son will eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the same three foods in your house.

1. McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets

One food item that he is stuck on and won’t give up is McDonald’s chicken nuggets and they have to be fresh. I can always be found at the McDonald’s drive-thru at least twice a day, seven days a week. I have come to know each and every worker there. I’m not going to lie — in the beginning it was embarrassing. I’m sure they thought, “Wow. This woman loves her chicken nuggets.” I often wondered if they thought I was just lazy and never wanted to cook. Whatever they think, I will never know, and honestly, I don’t care. I am so tired and exhausted on most day that I just want the 10-piece chicken nuggets before the meltdown starts.

2. Pizza

Another phase he goes through is pizza. His loves his pizza and he will generally eat pizza from almost any restaurant. However, do not give him a frozen pizza, as he will often turn his nose up at that. I can often be found walking into Papa John’s for a large cheese pizza. Once again, I am on great terms with the staff. One day, the manager said, “Boy, you are my biggest customer.” I tried to explain to him that it was the only thing my child with autism would eat. I could tell he had no understanding of why I had to buy pizza every two days, but in the end, I didn’t care. I just needed a pizza for my son.

3. Spaghetti

The other big food item of choice is spaghetti. Thank goodness, I can make this for him! During these times, I think I keep the grocery store in business because I buy noodles and sauce in large quantities, weekly.

A lot of his rigid food habits are part of his autism struggles. All in all, his favorite foods are McDonald’s chicken nuggets, pizza, spaghetti, chips, fruit roll-ups, and fruit snacks. I have to be one prepared mother every single day to make sure I have all of these items on hand at all times. I have learned the hard way what happens if I don’t have his favorite item of food for the day — I would prefer to never find out again.

I guess you could say I have few expectations for the hopes of my child. They’re not going to be the same, day to day or week to week, let alone year to year or decade to decade. Right now, at this very moment in time, the only hope that I have is that she can learn to understand and control her emotions.

You see, it’s a Saturday at lunchtime, and we already feel like we’ve been dragged 20 miles through the hot desert with no shoes, water or sun cream. We are exhausted to the point that I just said I wanted to go to sleep so I wouldn’t hear anyone anymore. We’ve had multiple violent outbursts and meltdowns and we need a break, even though we only just paid for a few hours respite last night.

I guess I would categorize my hopes for my child into short- and long-term hopes, just like the way you would fill out and set targets for an IEP, SAP or EHCP. Breaking down the long-term hopes into smaller parts makes the hopes reachable. Additionally, you won’t be disappointed in the long run if those hopes aren’t achieved.

When you parent a child with autism, your hopes are somewhat different than parents of children with no additional needs and disabilities. Your hopes aren’t the sort that define your future, or even the usual hopes of having a well-paying job, a nice house, the perfect illusion of 2-4 children. Instead, they’re things like: “I hope my child has friends, and can socialize appropriately.”

I am going to list three long-term hopes for my child, along with shorter-term hopes. You’ll see how, in time, these hopes will become the future. My long-term hopes will look like those of a “normal” family’s hopes and dreams for the children they are bringing up. However, when you check out my shorter-term hopes, they will help you understand that it’s going to be a long slog helping my children to reach the hopes that come so naturally to any typical family.

1. Long-Term Hope: Independence.

Shorter-Term Hope: For Lola to be able to recognize and regulate her own senses.

To access things like parties, cinema, ice skating, and socializing with friends, Lola needs to be able to recognize when she is becoming overwhelmed with the world around her. She then needs to be able to self-regulate these emotions and senses so that she doesn’t bubble over and become a danger to herself and those around her.

2. Long-Term Hope: Friendship.

Shorter-Term Hope: To be able to understand other people’s thoughts and feelings, and interpret them into clear social rules. Lola cannot sustain friendships in the way that normal children can. She doesn’t understand the unwritten rules of social communication and gets confused easily, thus making it difficult for her to be able to play appropriately and enjoy games and other children’s company.

3. Long-Term Hope: Communication (because communication is the key to Hope Nos. 1 and 2!).

Shorter-Term Hope: Communication is a tricky one: It ranges from understanding emotions and how you feel, to being taught how to express those emotions properly, and thus being able to communicate emotions. It also interlinks with my hope for friendship, being able to have reciprocal conversations and understanding when it’s appropriate to talk, how to express your language and how to interpret others’ thoughts, feelings, tones and facial expressions.

Making sense of the world around you is very important for communication. The world is a very confusing place for people with autism, and having too much information to process can be very overstimulating, which may lead to a breakdown in the regulation of senses. Lola will need to be taught all of these things, little by little and step by step. She will need repetitive teaching and over-learning in order to gain these skills that come naturally to you and me.

These three things are my main hopes for Lola at the moment.

I’m not hoping for a well-paid job, finding love, having children and getting married. Right now I don’t care about her travelling the world and seeing new and exciting things, or for Lola to be successful in a career or sail through school with straight As.

Of course, I would love for Lola to achieve these things. I would love for Lola to one day be able to settle down and have a family of her own and a good career, but those things aren’t important to me at the moment. Right now, what is important to me—and above anything else in the world—is that I hope Lola is happy.