World Autism Awareness Day: The Moment I Stopped Trying to Fix My Son

By Lauren Tarzia

It was the beginning of the holiday season at my parents’ house when I first heard the words that stopped me in my tracks:

"I didn’t do it… I didn’t do it… I didn’t do it…"

At the time, I had no idea what it meant or how it would change everything about the way I parented.

Nicky had been watching The Polar Express, and suddenly I heard him repeating one line over and over again.

“I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.”

At first, it sounded like pretend play. Kids repeat movie lines all the time.

But this was different.

He wasn’t pretending. He was repeating the phrase rhythmically to himself.

And the truth is… I should have known.

I did know.

I’m a speech-language pathologist.

That was the first time I recognized delayed echolalia; repeating words or phrases from past conversations, routines, movies, or books.

But I didn’t let myself fully go there.

Because this wasn’t a student of mine.

This was my son.

It was right before Nicky was about to turn two.

And I had a six-month-old baby as well.

I was exhausted. Emotional. Deep in that fog of early motherhood where everything feels heavy and uncertain.

When I finally said it out loud, “Oh no. I think he’s autistic. What am I going to do?”

My family was quick to comfort me.

“He’s still so little, Lauren. That’s what toddlers do.”

And underneath that, another message lingered:

You just had a baby.

You’re still postpartum.

You’re worrying about everything.

So I buried it.

I told myself it was a phase.

But once you see something, you can’t unsee it.

Nicky talked a lot. Anyone listening might have thought his language was advanced, but most of what he said was repetition: lines from movies, snippets of books, or conversations he had heard before. Very little was spontaneous.

And then there was how he played.

Sometimes he would sit with a piece of string, turning it over and over, completely absorbed. Toys didn’t hold his attention in the same way.

At the playground, he loved being there, but his play followed the same exact sequence every time...climbing, saying a movie line, sliding, climbing, saying same movie line, sliding...over and over again. Other days, he wandered, talking to himself, repeating lines from movies and books as he walked.

At the time, I told myself he just wasn’t engaging.

Looking back, I see it now:

He was engaging.

Just not in the way I expected. (I’ll talk about this more in a future blog about autism and communication).

So I tried to guide him.

I modeled play. I redirected him. I interrupted his routines, trying to make his play more “typical.”

He resisted. He got frustrated.

And I couldn’t understand why what I thought was helping only made things harder.

Because the truth is… I knew better.

I knew what it meant to step into an autistic child’s world. I had done it so many times with my students. That’s why I connected with them. That’s why I was good at what I did.

I understood them.

So why couldn’t I see it in my own son?

One day at the playground my mom was with us and the baby, I watched him again...wandering, quietly repeating movie lines, completely content in his own rhythm.

But I wasn’t.

My heart was full of love… but a huge fear was taking over.

We all got in the car to go home. My mom, a retired special education teacher & administrator, had been watching him too. I turned to my mom who knew about my worries and also started to see the signs. 

“Mom… what should I do?”

Then I asked her something I already knew the answer to.

“What would you tell a parent to do if they came to you?”

She didn’t hesitate.

“I would tell them to get their child evaluated.”

Then she looked at me and said gently,“Then you need to do the same, Lauren.”

I felt it rise in my chest. The question every parent is afraid to ask.

“What if… what if he is autistic?”

Her answer came immediately.

“Then he’s autistic.”

I replied, “Then what do I do?” I needed to know! 

And then the words that changed everything:

“Then you’re just going to love him and be there for him.”

Even with that, I struggled.

Because I had seen this before.

I had worked with parents like me.

I had seen their sadness. Their grief. Their helplessness.

I remember sitting with them, feeling for them, wanting so badly for them to know:

We will help your child.

But I didn’t truly understand what it felt like to be them.

Until I was.

And I was terrified of becoming one of those parents.

So I told myself something with a kind of quiet determination:

“I’m not going to be one of those parents. I’m going to fix this.”

And at the time, that belief wasn’t unusual.

Because back then, so much of what we early childhood educators were taught, what we were told success looked like, was about closing the gap.

Teaching autistic children how to play like their peers.

How to talk like their peers.

How to act, respond, and show emotion like neurotypical children.

We thought we were helping.

But what we were really doing… was teaching them to mask.

I didn’t understand that yet.

So I did what I had been trained to do.

That summer, I turned our home into a therapy space. I used everything I knew to try to shape his language and play into something more “typical.” 

It was a disaster.

The more I corrected his “movie talk”, the more frustrated he became. The more I interrupted his repetitive play, the angrier he got.

Everything I thought would help… didn’t.

Instead, it created distance.

And I was left sitting in the quiet after those moments, feeling like I was failing him.

When Nicky started his preschool year at three, the differences became clearer.

He loved school. He adored his teacher. It seemed like he was learning.

But socially, there was an obvious gap.

He played alongside other kids instead of with them. He held onto toys tightly and struggled when others tried to join. The back-and-forth of play didn’t come naturally yet.

And for the first time, I really allowed myself to see it.

Not just the differences.

But the reality.

No amount of correcting was going to “fix” this.

Then during COVID, something shifted.

I started listening to autistic adults.

Really listening.

I read their stories about masking...about pretending to be “normal,” about hiding who they were just to fit in.

And over and over again, I saw something that stopped me cold:

Parents who tried to change them.

Fix them.

Correct them.

Some felt unseen.

Some felt misunderstood.

Some felt unloved.

And I had to face something I didn’t want to admit:

That was me.

Not because I didn’t love my son.

But because I didn’t understand him yet.

I wasn’t trying to change him for him.

I was trying to change him for me.

For my comfort.

For the picture I thought motherhood would look like.

The next day, I made a decision that changed everything.

I stopped being his therapist.

And I started being his mom.

I stopped correcting his movie talk.

I stopped interrupting his play.

I stopped trying to reshape him into someone he wasn’t.

I let him talk in scripts.

I let him repeat his sequences and rituals.

I let him explore the world in his own way.

I let him be Nicky.

And everything got easier.

Not because autism disappeared.

But because I stopped fighting against it.

When I finally stepped back, I saw something that had been there all along:

His joy.

Nicky is one of the happiest, kindest children I know. He loves deeply. He laughs easily. He brings light into every space he’s in.

And I believe that part of that joy comes from knowing — deeply — that he is loved exactly as he is.

The day his joy disappears is the day I will know he has forgotten who he is.

And my job as his mother is to make sure that never happens.

Acceptance didn’t happen overnight.

It came through denial. Through exhaustion. Through learning how to let go of who I thought he should be.

But on the other side of that process, I found something I didn’t expect:

Peace.

Not because everything is easy.

But because I’m no longer trying to change my child into someone else.

Believe me, I still have days that I grieve for the child I thought I would have, a typical boy with a typical brain. I wonder how he would be but then I realize that he wouldn’t be Nicky. He would be someone else! Not my son! 

He is exactly who he is supposed to be.

And I am so proud to be his mom.

If you’ve ever felt like you were failing your child — especially when you “should” know what to do — you’re not alone.

Sometimes the hardest part isn’t learning more.

It’s unlearning what we thought it was supposed to look like.

If this resonates with you, share your story. Someone else might need to hear it.