Your needs belong in the family too: neurodivergent parenting

Hollie-Ann Newman recorded this podcast episode the morning after having a meltdown. Not her child. Her. She said so, plainly, within the first few minutes of the conversation, because she had just been asked about the importance of parents staying regulated for their children.

That honesty is the whole point. If you have spent any time in neurodivergent parenting spaces online, you have probably absorbed the message that your regulated nervous system is the foundation your child builds on. Which sounds reasonable until your own nervous system is overloaded, exhausted, touched out, and your child needs you anyway. The gap between that advice and that reality is where a lot of parents are drowning, and where this conversation begins.

In Episode 46 of the Neurodivergent Pulse podcast, host Laetitia Andrac is joined by Hollie-Ann Newman, a late-diagnosed, multiply neurodivergent and disabled parent, disability and neurodiversity advocate, psychology student, and the voice behind Neuroinclusive Education. The conversation covers what sustainable neurodivergent parenting actually looks like when the caregiver has their own nervous system, their own needs, and no infinite reserve of regulation to draw from. It takes in co-regulation myths, the push-pull of different sensory profiles under one roof, the reciprocal experience of late diagnosis, and why embracing disabled and neurodivergent parenting, rather than constantly compensating for it, is what makes care sustainable for the whole family.

Is it harder to parent a neurodivergent child? Yes, and here is the data

Neurodivergent parents are whole people with their own sensory profiles, capacity limits, nervous systems, and identities that exist outside of caregiving. That sentence should be obvious. In practice, it is treated as a footnote.

Hollie-Ann describes herself as a queer, multiply neurodivergent and disabled person, full-time psychology student, e-commerce business owner, and disability and neurodiversity advocate, living and raising her family on Wiradjuri Country. All of those roles, she notes, draw from the same finite pool of capacity. Her experience is more common than most parenting content acknowledges: more than three in five parents raising neurodivergent children also identify as neurodivergent themselves, according to Understanding Zoe's research on neurodivergent families, drawn from 1,091 families across Australia. That same research found parents raising neurodivergent children carry an average of 33 extra hours of load per week compared to families raising neurotypical children. That is before accounting for the parent's own disability, sensory needs, or the absence of informal support. For neurodivergent parents carrying their own support needs alongside their child's, the conditions for neurodivergent parent overwhelm and finding clarity are structural, not personal.

Your needs belong as well in the family.

Hollie-Ann says this as a correction, not a slogan. For many neurodivergent parents, particularly those who are late-diagnosed and high-masking, the habit of placing everyone else's needs first runs so deep it barely registers as a choice. Naming it as something that needs to change is where sustainable care begins.

What does sustainable neurodivergent parenting actually look like?

Sustainable neurodivergent parenting means dropping the assumption that successful parenting looks neurotypical. It is not about becoming more tolerant of environments that do not work for your brain or body. It is about designing family life around the people who actually live in it.

Hollie-Ann is direct about this: "Disabled and neurodivergent parents, we need encouragement to embrace the disabled and neurodivergent parenting rather than, like, constantly trying to compensate for it" or trying to meet unspoken neuronormative standards that do not fit. The pressure to meet those standards is not neutral. It produces shame, burnout, and the exhausting performance of parenting in a way that was never designed for your nervous system.

There is also a generational dimension. As Hollie-Ann puts it, "we're of the generation that we have had to rewrite so many narratives that were taught to us" by the way our own parents parented. That rewriting is real work, and it happens on top of everything else. For her family, embracing neurodivergent parenting meant simplifying life significantly to accommodate everyone's support needs, accepting that it will never feel perfectly balanced, and returning to connection as the anchor when everything else falls apart.

Different nervous systems under one roof

Sensory profiles within a neurodivergent family rarely align neatly, and the tension that creates is not a sign that something has gone wrong. It is the reality of multiple different nervous systems sharing a space.

Hollie-Ann describes her own family's push-pull clearly. Her eldest is sensory-seeking with noise and big movements. She is triggered by noise and drawn to deep pressure and touch. "I don't know any family that has, like, similar sensory needs," she says, and that mismatch creates a constant negotiation between meeting her own support needs and meeting his. There is no clean resolution. The goal is not to eliminate the tension but to keep meeting each other where you are at. When the wheels fall off, connection is what you come back to.

Accepting different communication styles, different regulation styles, and different ways of connecting is part of what neurodivergent parenting actually involves. It is more complex than most parenting content acknowledges, and that complexity deserves to be named rather than smoothed over. For more on navigating different sensory profiles within a neurodivergent family, Understanding Zoe co-founders Laetitia and Johan share what this looks like from the inside.

The co-regulation myth: what no one says about neurodivergent nervous systems

The online advice about co-regulation is oversimplified, and it is oversimplified because most of it comes from a neuronormative lens. The idea that a parent simply needs to be regulated and the child will follow is not only unrealistic for most families; it misrepresents how neurodivergent nervous systems work. For autistic parents and others managing their own sensory and regulatory needs, this advice can quietly deepen shame rather than offer genuine support. For a closer look at how co-regulation actually works for neurodivergent families, speech pathologist Alana Cameron unpacks why connection matters more than correction.

I can be overstimulated, exhausted, touched out, or physically depleted at the same time that my child needs regulation or is having a meltdown or shutdown. This exact thing happened last night and I ended up having a meltdown.

Hollie-Ann said this the morning after it happened. Not as a confession, but as a fact. "Parents are not infinitely regulated nervous systems, particularly not those of us that are neurodivergent and/or disabled." The shame that follows parental dysregulation is not a signal that you have failed. It is a signal that the standard you are being held to was never realistic.

The research bears this out: 64% of parents raising neurodivergent children often feel exhausted and 64% feel overwhelmed, compared with 42% and 32% of parents raising neurotypical children. More than half (54%) say they always or often feel anxious, compared to just 25% of neurotypical parents. Chronic dysregulation is not a personal failing; it is a predictable response to an unsupported system.

Her alternative framework is more honest and more useful. "The goal cannot be perfect regulation," she says. Instead, she points to four things that matter:

• Awareness: Knowing your own capacity, body battery, and what you are carrying before you judge the outcome of a hard moment.
• Accommodation: Adjusting expectations and environments to fit your actual nervous system, not the one the internet assumes you have.
• Repair: Coming back after rupture. Repair matters more than never rupturing, and it models something important for your children.
• Support: Recognising what structural supports are missing and naming that as a systemic gap, not a personal failure.

This framework does not promise a calm household. It offers something more achievable: a family that can find its way back to each other.

Understanding yourself through your child's diagnosis

For many neurodivergent parents, self-understanding arrives through their child's diagnosis. Learning about your child's sensory profile, executive functioning, and support needs can illuminate your own in ways that years of coping without language never could. Samantha Johnson explores this exact experience in our piece on late-identified AuDHD motherhood and the path to self-understanding, including why motherhood often becomes the tipping point for recognition.

Hollie-Ann's experience follows this path. As she was exploring her son's assessments and sensory profile, she found herself looking at everything through the lens of her own experience too. "The more accurately I understand myself, the less likely I am to interpret my needs as flaws or deficits," she says. That shift, from deficit to difference, changes how you approach your own hard moments and how you approach your children's.

She describes it as a reciprocal relationship: understanding her son helped her understand herself, and that self-understanding made it easier to approach his needs with curiosity rather than anxiety. Supporting him helped her notice things in herself she had previously normalised, masked, or pushed through. As a high-masking autistic person, a lot had been pushed through for a long time.

The grief sits alongside that. "I look back and I'm like, 'Oh, if only I had known what I know now before I had kids.' I would've... Oh, man, it would've helped in so many situations, like all through school where I struggled." And alongside the grief is something genuinely valuable: "I've always put others before myself. So yeah, they've reinforced me that my needs are important too." Her children, in becoming the catalyst for her self-understanding, also became the reason she started taking her own needs seriously.

Why "just slow down" is the wrong advice for neurodivergent parents

Telling an exhausted neurodivergent parent to slow down or make time for self-care assumes things that are often not there: spare time, childcare, financial capacity, executive functioning, mobility, informal support, and an NDIS plan that actually covers what is needed. When those things are missing, self-care advice does not help. It becomes another demand the already-depleted person is failing to meet.

Hollie-Ann names this clearly. The advice "assumes that we have spare time, childcare, financial capacity, executive functioning, mobility, supports in place." It also individualises what is a structural problem. No amount of bubble baths compensates for never having adequate neurodivergent parent support in place. The employment data shows the financial reality plainly: 27% of parents of neurodivergent children have turned down promotions or job opportunities due to care demands, more than double the rate for parents of neurotypical children, and 18% have experienced difficulty maintaining any employment at all. For neurodivergent parents raising neurodivergent children, that load is heavier still: this group averages 37 hours per week on support and advocacy, and 95% say their caregiving role feels invisible or unseen. You can read the full research findings for more on how this load compounds. For neurodivergent parents without informal networks, the load does not reduce between the big events. It just continues.

Her approach is more realistic. "Make it as simple as possible," she says. Because she and her family have no informal support, everything is on them, which means sustainable care has to be embedded into what already exists rather than added on top. Some practical examples of what this can look like:

• Scheduling slow days deliberately between demanding family events, so recovery is built into the week rather than hoped for. This mirrors the principles behind energy accounting as a practical burnout prevention framework, where tracking what charges and drains your nervous system shifts families from reactive crisis to proactive planning.
• Putting a podcast on while cooking dinner, so a moment that is already happening becomes something that also fills your cup.
• Parallel play with a special interest alongside your children, so connection and restoration happen at the same time.
• Lowering unnecessary demands by asking which "shoulds" exist only because you think a good parent is supposed to do them.
• Simplifying family life to accommodate everyone's support needs, rather than trying to maintain a version of family life designed for different brains and bodies.

This is where tools that reduce cognitive load matter too. Understanding Zoe was built by neurodivergent parents who know this load intimately. The platform turns reports, observations, and hard moments into actionable next steps, so you are not carrying every piece of information in your head. Lowering the mental load of holding it all is not a luxury. For many families, it is what makes the week survivable.

Who takes care of the neurodivergent caregiver?

Too often, nobody does. That is the honest answer to a question that deserves more than a self-care checklist. The question of who cares for the caregiver gets individualised into advice that assumes resources, time, and informal support that many neurodivergent parents simply do not have. If you are reading this feeling like everyone else is coping better than you, Hollie-Ann's first response is worth sitting with: a lot of what you see online is smoke and mirrors. The curated version of neurodivergent parenting does not show what happened the night before. It does not show the meltdown, the repair, the slow morning that had to follow.

Her invitation is to become curious about your capacity before judging your character. Before asking "why can't I cope," ask what you are actually carrying. Some questions worth sitting with:

• What are you carrying right now, practically, emotionally, sensorially?
• What is your environment actually demanding of you, and is that demand realistic?
• What supports are missing, and is their absence a personal failing or a structural gap?
• What neuronormative expectations have you inherited that do not fit your family?
• Where could you lower a demand that exists only because you think a good parent is supposed to meet it?

You do not need to parent like anyone else for your child to be safe, loved, and connected with you. Hollie-Ann is clear on this: "Disability shouldn't be shameful. These needs don't make you difficult. Boundaries and accommodations can coexist with love." Exploring peer support communities for neurodivergent families is one place where that structural gap starts to close, and where parents find others who genuinely understand the load.

Self-compassion is, you know, not, not taking anything away from them. It's actually modelling, you know, that they can do that for themselves too.

That reframe matters. Caring for yourself is not a withdrawal from your children. It is a demonstration, in real time, that needs are legitimate and that people who love each other can hold both. It is also, as Hollie-Ann says, what makes parenting sustainable at all.

Frequently asked questions

Is it harder to parent a neurodivergent child?

Yes, and the data confirms what many parents already feel. Research drawn from a study of 1,091 families found that parents raising neurodivergent children carry an average of 33 extra hours of load per week compared to families raising neurotypical children. For neurodivergent parents raising neurodivergent children, that load compounds further: their own sensory needs, capacity limits, and the absence of informal support all add pressure that generic parenting advice never accounts for. Neurodivergent parent burnout is a predictable outcome of an unsupported system, not a personal failing.

Who takes care of the caregiver when the caregiver is neurodivergent?

Too often, nobody does, and that is the structural gap this question is really pointing to. For many neurodivergent parents, informal support networks are thin or absent, NDIS plans do not cover what is actually needed, and the question of who cares for the caregiver gets individualised into self-care advice that assumes spare time and capacity that simply are not there. Sustainable care for neurodivergent caregivers requires naming this as a systemic gap, not a personal one, and building support into what already exists rather than adding it on top.

What are the signs of caregiver burnout in neurodivergent parents?

Caregiver burnout in autistic and otherwise neurodivergent parents often looks different from the generic checklist. Rather than just fatigue, it can show up as increased sensory sensitivity, more frequent meltdowns or shutdowns in the parent, masking fatigue, difficulty initiating basic tasks, emotional numbness, or a sense of being permanently touched out. These are signs that the nervous system is overloaded, not that the parent is failing. Seeing caregiver burnout through a neurodivergent lens, rather than a neurotypical one, is the first step toward addressing it honestly. For a first-person account of what neurodivergent burnout looks like from the inside, Laetitia shares her own experience in this solo episode.

How do you know if you might be neurodivergent yourself?

Many parents first encounter the possibility of their own neurodivergence through their child's assessment process. Reading about sensory profiles, executive functioning, and support needs, and recognising yourself in the descriptions, is a common and valid starting point. For late-diagnosed autistic parents especially, the reciprocal experience of understanding their child and understanding themselves often happens simultaneously. If you are finding that your child's diagnosis is illuminating your own experience, that recognition is worth following. A GP referral or a psychologist who specialises in adult neurodivergent assessment is a good next step.

Connect with Hollie-Ann

• Follow Hollie-Ann's advocacy and work at @neuroinclusiveeducation on Instagram
• Try Understanding Zoe free for 7 days, the neuroaffirming app that turns every report, observation, and hard moment into an actionable next step