Written By:
RBT
Introduction
If you’re reading this, you’re already doing something right. You’re questioning, learning, and wanting to do better for your child, and that matters more than any single technique or strategy.
Most parents of autistic children we work with are deeply loving and well-intentioned. They want their child to thrive. But many common parenting practices, often passed down from older generations, suggested by well-meaning relatives, or rooted in outdated professional advice, can unintentionally make life harder for autistic kids.
This isn’t a list of judgments. It’s a list of approaches we’ve learned to reconsider, both in our own practice and alongside the families we support across Maryland. Each “don’t” comes with a better alternative, because the goal isn’t to make autistic children act neurotypical. It’s to help them feel safe, understood, and capable of being themselves.
1. Don’t Force Eye Contact
For decades, eye contact was treated as a benchmark of attention and respect. Many of us were taught to insist on it: “Look at me when I’m talking to you.”
But for many autistic children, eye contact isn’t just uncomfortable. It can be physically overwhelming. Research suggests that direct gaze can over-activate brain regions involved in threat detection in autistic individuals, making it harder, not easier, to process what someone is saying.
In our in-home ABA sessions, we’ve watched the same scenario play out countless times: a parent asks a question, the child looks away to think, and the parent gently turns the child’s face back. The child loses the thread entirely. When we let kids listen the way they listen best, sometimes glancing elsewhere, sometimes fidgeting, sometimes pacing, comprehension often goes up.
What to do instead: Focus on whether your child is engaged, not whether they’re staring at you. Engagement can look like a tilted head, a soft hum, or a response that tells you they heard you. That’s listening.
2. Don’t Punish or Suppress Stimming
Stimming, repetitive movements like hand-flapping, rocking, spinning, or vocalizing, is one of the most misunderstood autistic behaviors. Many parents have been coached to extinguish stimming because it “looks different” or “draws attention.”
The problem is that stimming serves real purposes. It helps regulate emotion, manage sensory input, express joy, and maintain focus. Suppressing it doesn’t remove the underlying need. It just removes the tool. The need then often resurfaces as anxiety, meltdowns, or shutdowns.
Modern, ethical ABA no longer targets stims that aren’t harmful. We only step in when a stim causes injury (like forceful head-banging) or significantly blocks learning, and even then, we look for a safer alternative that meets the same need.
What to do instead: Ask what the stim is doing for your child. If the honest answer is “helping them feel okay,” let them stim.
3. Don’t Over-Correct Speech and Behavior
When a child says “I goed to the store,” it’s tempting to jump in: “I went, not goed.”
For autistic kids, constant correction can be deeply discouraging. If every utterance becomes a quiz, they keep failing. They may simply stop talking. The same applies to behavior, tone, posture, hand placement, and volume. A child who feels constantly micromanaged loses trust in their own communication.
We’ve worked with families where the child was nearly silent at home because every attempt at speech was reshaped on the spot. Once parents shifted from correcting to modeling, language often expanded within weeks.
What to do instead: Model the right version naturally in response. “Oh, you went to the store! What did you see?” The child hears the correction without being targeted by it.
4. Don’t Push Through Sensory Overload
A crowded grocery store, fluorescent lighting, a noisy birthday party, these can be genuinely painful for an autistic child, not merely inconvenient. Yet many parents are advised to “push through” or “expose them more so they get used to it.”
This rarely builds tolerance. It builds dread. The nervous system doesn’t habituate to overwhelming input the way it does to mildly uncomfortable input. Pushing past the edge often leads to bigger meltdowns later, sometimes hours later, at home, when the child finally feels safe enough to fall apart.
What to do instead: Learn your child’s early warning signs (covering ears, withdrawing, repetitive questions, sudden silence). Build in breaks before they hit the wall. A ten-minute pause in the car is a tool, not a defeat.
5. Don’t Compare Them to Siblings or Peers
“Your sister learned to tie her shoes at five.” “Your cousin is reading already.”
Comparisons assume a single developmental track. Autistic children develop on a spikier profile, sometimes ahead in one area (reading at three, advanced vocabulary) and well behind in another (toileting, self-care). Holding them to a sibling’s timeline communicates a quiet message: you’re behind, and that’s a problem.
Children absorb that message even when nothing is said outright. Self-esteem in autistic adolescents is heavily shaped by how their early development was framed at home.
What to do instead: Track your child against their own past self. Three months ago, they couldn’t tolerate a haircut. Today, they sat through the first half. That’s progress, regardless of what any peer is doing.
6. Don’t Talk About Them in Front of Them
Many parents fall into the habit of describing their child’s struggles to teachers, doctors, or relatives while the child is in the room. “He won’t eat anything but chicken nuggets. She has terrible meltdowns. He still wets the bed.”
Even children who appear not to be listening, and especially nonspeaking children, who are often deeply attentive, hear and remember these conversations. Being talked about as a problem in your own presence is corrosive to a child’s sense of self.
What to do instead: Save those conversations for private moments, or include your child in age-appropriate ways. “We’re going to talk to Dr. Lee about some things that have been hard. Is there anything you want her to know?”
7. Don’t Over-Schedule Therapies and Activities
This one surprises a lot of parents. After a diagnosis, the instinct is often to do everything. ABA, speech, OT, social skills groups, swim lessons, equine therapy, a specialized diet, weighted blankets, and three apps before bed.
More isn’t always better. Autistic kids often need more downtime than their neurotypical peers, not less. A packed schedule produces the same outcome as sensory overload: meltdowns, regression, and burnout that can last months.
In our parent training sessions, we frequently help families subtract rather than add. A focused, well-structured therapy plan with real recovery time built in almost always outperforms a packed calendar.
What to do instead: Choose two or three core supports and protect unstructured time fiercely. Boredom isn’t a problem to solve. It’s where regulation and creativity live.
The Bigger Picture: From Fixing to Supporting
If there’s one shift we hope every parent makes, it’s this: your job isn’t to fix your child. Your job is to understand them, advocate for them, and equip them with skills that genuinely serve their life.
Autistic children don’t need to be transformed into neurotypical ones to live full, meaningful, connected lives. They need adults who respect how they’re wired and adjust the environment accordingly, while still teaching the practical skills (communication, daily living, safety, self-advocacy) that make the world easier to navigate.
That’s the foundation of evidence-based, neurodiversity-affirming ABA today, and it’s the foundation of confident, compassionate parenting.
Conclusion
The parenting habits covered here, forcing eye contact, punishing stimming, over-correcting, pushing through sensory overload, comparing to peers, talking about your child in front of them, and over-scheduling, are common precisely because they come from a place of love. They reflect a desire to help your child fit in, succeed, and thrive.
The shift isn’t about lowering expectations. It’s about changing the shape of them. When you stop trying to make an autistic child act non-autistic and instead build a life that works for them, you’ll often see the very things you were chasing, communication, connection, independence, arrive on their own timeline.
Progress is real. It just needs room to look like itself.
Get Support That Honors How Your Child Learns
Admire ABA provides compassionate, evidence-based ABA therapy and family support throughout Columbia, Baltimore, and Silver Spring, along with surrounding communities across Maryland. Whether you’re navigating a new diagnosis, rethinking long-standing routines, or simply looking for a second opinion on your current plan, we’d be glad to help.
Contact us today to schedule a consultation or learn more about our parent training program. We’ll help you build a plan that fits your child, not the other way around.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it bad to make my autistic child make eye contact?
Forcing eye contact can actually make it harder for autistic children to process what you’re saying, because direct gaze is often overwhelming to their nervous system. Focus on whether your child is engaged rather than where their eyes are pointed. Listening doesn’t require staring.
Should I stop my autistic child from stimming?
In most cases, no. Stimming helps autistic children regulate emotion, manage sensory input, and feel safe. Suppressing it removes a coping tool without addressing the underlying need. The only stims worth redirecting are those that cause physical harm or significantly block learning, and even then, the goal is a safer alternative, not elimination.
What’s the most important thing not to do with an autistic child?
Treating autism as something to fix or hide is the most damaging mindset. Autistic children flourish when they’re understood and supported as they are, with practical skills taught in ways that work for how they’re wired, not when they’re pressured to mask, mimic, or perform neurotypical behavior.
SOURCES:
- https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-neurodivergent-therapist/202401/autism-dynamic-disabilities-and-spiky-profiles
- https://exceptionalindividuals.com/candidates/neurodiversity-resources/spiky-profile/
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11110614/
- https://neuroclastic.com/autistic-skill-sets/
- https://www.lyonsdavidson.co.uk/why-spiky-profiles-matter-in-understanding-autism/
