You see yourself in your child. Now what? Three frameworks for breaking the cycle — with guest Tara Neri of Unmasked Parenting.
Show Notes
Episode Details
Season (Thread): 8
Episode number: 09
Release date: 2026-07-14
Hosts:
Natasha Stavros, PhD — author of The Unmasking Diary and Burning Inside Out (coming to a bookstore near you in December 2026)
Sarah Liebman — licensed marriage and family therapist, ADHD-diagnosed, special interests all things neurodiverse
Tara Neri, Unmasked Parenting – licensed clinical mental health counselor, certified in ADHD and autism spectrum disorder practice, and the creator of Unmasked Parenting. She is an autistic/ADHD parent with sensory processing differences and has spent over two decades supporting children and families who need more understanding, flexibility, and practical support. Her work blends clinical experience, lived experience, nervous system support, relational repair, and neurodivergent-affirming parenting.
Audio Engineer and Composer: Noah Smith
Director: Linda Highfield
Duration: 30:56
Audience and tone: Educational, conversational, supportive; stigma-free exploration of neurodivergence, diagnosis, and self-understanding using personal experience as a case study
Summary: When a late autism diagnosis reveals that your child is likely neurodivergent too, the emotional reckoning is layered: relief, grief, anger, and a fierce protectiveness — all at once. In this episode, Natasha Stavros and Sarah Liebman welcome their first ever guest, Tara Neri (LCMHC, creator of UnmaskedParenting), to explore three frameworks for neurodivergent-affirming parenting after a late diagnosis: 1) distinguishing reflection from projection when you see yourself in your child; 2) interrupting the intergenerational cycle by asking “am I responding or reacting — and to my child, or to my younger self?”; and 3) Tara’s signature approach, regulation-first parenting, which centers the parent’s own nervous system as the foundation for the child’s. The episode closes with a diary excerpt from After the Masquerade in which Natasha navigates alexithymia, sensory exhaustion, and two real-time parenting moments that show what neurodivergent-affirming parenting actually looks like in practice — imperfect, attuned, and quietly revolutionary.
Key takeaways about neurodivergent parenting with reflection, not projection
Reflection vs. projection: When you recognize your neurodivergent traits in your child, the path forward begins with the painful but liberating realization that if your child deserves deep love and understanding for who they are, so do you.
Interrupt the cycle: Breaking intergenerational patterns means pausing to ask “am I responding or reacting, and is it to my child in front of me, or to my younger self?”; when you get it wrong, it’s important to repair rather than pretend it didn’t happen.
Regulation-first parenting: You cannot pour from an empty cup, regulating yourself first is not permissive parenting, it is the most powerful thing you can model, because children learn self-advocacy and self-compassion by watching you practice it on yourself.
Resources and References
Read more on this topic from our guest Tara Neri:
Recognition Without Projection – For parents who see themselves in their child and are trying to separate compassion from fear.
The Nature of Nurture – For parents thinking about what children need from us beyond behavior correction, performance, or compliance.
You’re Running on Outdated Survival Rules – For parents noticing that old coping patterns may still be shaping how they respond, protect, avoid, or control.
Books
Brain-Body Parenting by Mona Delahooke – Best for understanding behavior as nervous-system information, not just a choice or discipline problem. This book helps move parenting away from compliance-based responses and toward bottom-up support.
Low-Demand Parenting by Amanda Diekman – Best for reducing unnecessary demands, rebuilding connection, and supporting neurodivergent kids without constant pressure. Especially useful for families navigating burnout, demand sensitivity, and low capacity.
Unmasking Autism by Devon Price – Best for adult self-understanding, masking, identity, burnout, and authenticity. This connects strongly to the idea that we cannot help our children unmask while continuing to abandon ourselves.
The Unmasking Autism Diary: Memoir Excerpt on Recognition Without Projection
Honestly, since I started down this path, I had no idea what cascade of events would take place. I hadn’t really thought about how I would process a diagnosis or what it would mean. All I knew is that whatever it meant, couldn’t be as bad as not knowing. It couldn’t be as bad as the guilt and shame I felt for struggling to function like everyone else – go to work, do my job, eat, sleep, poop, reproduce, buy things, die and decompose.
Getting my diagnosis helped me begin to understand myself better, but as a parent – it feels like there is no room to process. My job is to show up and be present so that my turmoil doesn’t pass onto my child.
Well, first let’s start by acknowledging how ridiculous a notion that is. Nice in theory, but the practice – daunting. When my child, who is very likely autistic like me, is overwhelmed, so am I. When they scream and cry and are overloaded, I am too. Somehow I’m supposed to model self-regulation, when my primary executive function challenge is emotional regulation.
And, it’s not just emotional regulation that I struggle with. Because my emotional dysregulation and inability to pick up or provide socially appropriate non-verbal communications or expectations of social reciprocity has led to some big-T traumas in my life, I have learned to survive by dissociating. How am I supposed to first teach my likely autistic child emotional regulation, when I don’t have it myself, and second how to engage with their emotions?
Of note, many people with autism also struggle with alexithymia, and I am one of those people. Alexithymia comes from the Greek root a for lack of, lexis meaning words and thymos meaning emotions. Alexithymia is the difficulty of connecting words to feelings. For people with autism the characteristics of alexithymia are most commonly associated with cognitive empathy rather than affective empathy. This means that people with autism very often connect deeply in an empathic way, but lack the cognitive skills to identify, especially in real time, theirs and others’ feelings, to distinguish between feelings and bodily sensations of emotional arousal, to describe their feelings, to identify or communicate facial expressions, or even to identify or remember faces.
My therapist asked me how I’m processing everything, outside of the work shit show that has ensued from a disclosure of my diagnosis. I told her that it’s been really hard. I’m so overwhelmed with life and the idea of having to go back to work, or find a new job just so that I can pay the bills and keep health care for my family.
I feel completely and utterly socially exhausted. All I want to do – no, all I can do – is write, read, and putz around in the garden or go to yoga. I want to remove all sensory stimuli and retreat into my mind away from the social cognitive load that is breaking me.
I mentioned that I’ve been focused on parallel play like working on art next to my daughter, gardening, biking, watching TV with her, or reading books together. None of these really require me to connect on a deeper level, the activity is doing the connection.
I did acknowledge that I’m not totally dissociated from my role as a parent. I’ve been leaning into what it looks like to embrace neurodivergent affirming parenting.
Just this last weekend, my daughter had a friend over and they were climbing on the couch. They decided to crawl under the mid-century modern couch, which sits about six inches off the ground. My daughter’s friend’s head got stuck and she got scared. My daughter started making noise and screaming too. After we separated them and I soothed her friend from her fear and panic, I talked to my daughter. She didn’t want to sit next to me. She didn’t want to make eye contact. She was in a shame spiral.
I told her that she didn’t need to sit next to me or look at me, but that she did need to listen. I told her it was ok and that nothing was her fault. That accidents happen and that when that happens we need to check in on our friend and make sure that they are ok.
She decided to go check on her friend. I listened from outside the door. They began to talk about what happened. Her friend said that she was scared when my daughter made her go under the couch. My daughter swooped to her own defense, “My mommy said I didn’t do anything wrong.”
I came in and knelt down with them, “That’s right, no one did anything wrong. What I think they are saying is that they got scared and that they didn’t feel very supported in that moment when they were scared.” The two girls looked at each other with resolve. They decided to keep playing.
Later that evening, my daughter told me that when other kids cry she feels it in her body. I told her that that’s what it feels like to be overwhelmed.
Over the next twenty-four hours, I noticed that she would act out – yelling, whining, or batting at the air in response to me and her father. I told her that I noticed she was doing this when it looked like she felt rushed and didn’t have the time to communicate. I suggested that she use the word “pause”, or “I need a minute.” She suggested the word, “wait”. I was proud of her.
In both incidents, I’m proud of myself for recognizing my own autistic tendencies and offering her an alternate path to shame.
AI-generated Show Transcript
Disclaimer
This podcast is for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute counseling, psychotherapy, or mental health services. Listening to this podcast or communicating with the host and guests does not form a therapist-client relationship. The information here is not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your own mental health professional with any questions you may have regarding a mental health condition.*
Introduction: When You Recognize Yourself in Your Child
**Natasha Stavros** `[00:01:25]`
Welcome to Following the Threads. I’m Natasha Stavros.
**Sarah Liebman** `[00:01:28]`
And I’m Sarah Liebman.
**Natasha Stavros** `[00:01:30]`
Today’s episode is about navigating a recently received autism, ADHD, or AuDHD diagnosis as a parent who recognizes parts of themselves in their child. Before we dive in, let’s welcome our very first guest — Tara Neri. Tara is a licensed clinical mental health counselor certified in ADHD and autism spectrum disorder practice, and the creator of Unmasked Parenting. She is an autistic ADHD parent with sensory processing differences, and has spent over two decades supporting children and families who need more understanding, flexibility, and practical support. Her work blends clinical experience, lived experience, nervous system support, relational repair, and neurodivergent-affirming parenting. Welcome, Tara.
**Tara Neri** `[00:02:25]`
Hi — thank you for having me.
**Natasha Stavros** `[00:02:35]`
In the last few episodes, we talked about my experience getting an adult autism diagnosis and how important social communication and behavioral challenges, stemming from childhood into adulthood, are to that story. For me, getting my autism diagnosis broke a dam of emotions. I was relieved to finally have something that could help me make sense of everything that seemed to go wrong. I grieved that I had truly believed years of other people’s projection — that I was undeserving and unworthy of acceptance, safety, or trust. I was angry that I had been asked to suffer to accommodate everyone else’s comfort before my own. And I was protective: the evidence cited as the basis for my diagnosis was a near-identical match to the behaviors of my nearly four-year-old daughter. So today I wanted us to talk about reflection and projection — what the difference is, and what you do when you love your child to pieces while having spent so much of your own life in self-loathing for being exactly who they are.
Reflection vs. Projection: What It Means to See Yourself in Your Neurodivergent Child
Receiving a late autism diagnosis as a parent can unlock both profound compassion and painful grief — often at the same time.
**Tara Neri** `[00:04:27]`
I think it all starts with recognizing that your child is deserving of being deeply loved — the way that you love them. You see all these similarities: their sensitivity, their sensory needs, their big feelings, just how they move through the world. And you know they’re not a bad child. You do not see someone who is undeserving. So it starts with that painful realization: if it’s true for them, it was true for us too. That’s a lot to hold, and it’s going to bring up grief. You don’t rush through it. You begin processing it through small acts of kindness — as you’re learning your child and supporting them, you start noticing what overwhelms them, and then you realize: oh, that overwhelms me too. What might it look like to show myself that same support and understanding?
**Sarah Liebman** `[00:06:26]`
So here you are: you’ve got the diagnosis, and like Tara said, you’re asking what you do with this awareness. At the very least, you start extending kindness to your child in moments where the autopilot response would have been “stop it, behave yourself.” And that piece from our episode title — what is projection and what is reflection — I was thinking about it in terms of intrasubjectivity: becoming the subject of your own thoughts and observations. When you pause — which is a great suggestion most of us get as parents, though “pause to what?” is rarely answered — it’s that moment of inner awareness that makes the difference. And then there’s intersubjectivity: you begin to see the world through your child’s eyes, and you allow them to start seeing the world through yours. Instead of the old model where the parent just gets more and more uptight and the kid is in trouble, you say: “It’s really loud in here. I don’t like it either.” That moves you from acting upon the child to something more connected — imagining yourself in both positions at once.
How to Interrupt the Intergenerational Cycle: Responding vs. Reacting
**Natasha Stavros** `[00:09:05]`
This leads to the second point: I don’t want to treat my child the way I was treated — where my experience was largely dismissed, and I was forced to comply with things that were exceptionally difficult without any acknowledgment of that difficulty. So how do you actually interrupt the cycle and stop your story from becoming your child’s story?
**Tara Neri** `[00:09:54]`
An interrupt is a really important word — and whether that looks like a pause or a full stop depends on the person. Something I found myself using a lot is: am I responding or am I reacting? When you’re reacting, you can ask yourself: where is this fear coming from? Am I having a hard time because my child is having a hard time? Is it because I remember what it felt like? Am I reacting to the child in front of me — or to my younger self? On the surface, you may see frustration, fear, urgency. Underneath, there’s grief, shame, and unresolved pain. So interrupting the cycle means not immediately parenting from that first reaction. And when you do — because we all do — you come back and repair. You pause and ask: what is underneath this? What belongs to my child, and what belongs to me?
**Sarah Liebman** `[00:11:53]`
Tara said something really important: we all parent from fear. We all react. But learning to repair with your child — working through your own beliefs about what it means to acknowledge your scary behavior, and allowing your child to need the apology and to appreciate it — that’s where growth happens. Parenting from fear is kind of the norm, because if you’re afraid, it’s taken to mean you love your child. But what does that actually look like? It looks like force. “Stop it. It’s not a big deal. Suck it up. It’s just a haircut. It’s just a shirt.” And then there’s the other end of fearful parenting — just letting whatever happens, happen, even when it runs over your own sensory needs and time needs. The important question underneath both is: what am I afraid of?
**Natasha Stavros** `[00:14:50]`
And we may feel extra pressure to get it exactly right — because we know what it feels like to be misunderstood, unsupported, or pushed past our capacity. That’s where Tara’s framework becomes so valuable.
What Is Regulation-First Parenting? A Neurodivergent-Affirming Framework
**Tara Neri** `[00:15:15]`
Regulation-first parenting started for me with supporting the parent first. The important piece is not just responding to my child — it’s also responding to myself, giving myself that same kind of understanding while still holding myself accountable the way I do my child. It doesn’t mean I never raise my voice. It means I practice noticing when it happens, and I come back to repair. Instead of looking at the behavior and asking “how do I stop this?” — think of the iceberg. What you see is above the water. What’s swimming underneath can be really scary to look at. What’s happening in my body? What’s happening in my child’s body? Are we tired? Are we hungry? Including ourselves in that care is the foundation. And I want to be really clear: this is not permissive parenting. This is not my child gets to do whatever they want because they have particular needs. I can say “I’m not going to let you hit” while understanding my child is overwhelmed — calmly, with confidence. That’s the underlying piece of regulation-first parenting.
**Sarah Liebman** `[00:17:18]`
I love the name because you don’t have to remember what it’s about — it’s right there. And what I found refreshing when I first got acquainted with Tara’s work is that most parenting approaches focus on the child: how do you get them to do the thing you want? The parent is kind of left out. You could have anything going on inside you and still count to three. But Tara’s framework says: I get to regulate, not just have to regulate my child. We’re both subjects in this experience. And especially when you’ve got a mutual prospective meltdown situation — all I have to do is regulate myself. Whatever comes beyond that will come if I’m regulated.
**Natasha Stavros** `[00:19:24]`
I love it because it’s monkey-see, monkey-do — and that is how learning actually happens. When I regulate first, I am demonstrating to my child: I know it’s hard, I know you’ll sometimes need accommodations, and I’m going to show you what it looks like to get your needs met rather than demand that you need nothing. Tara, you said something on Substack I found so profound: your role is not to prepare your child for a world that will accommodate every one of their needs, but to teach them how to find the resources they need and advocate for themselves. And that’s the real beauty of regulation-first parenting — you want to teach your child love, acceptance, safety, trust, getting their needs met. You have to do that for yourself first. You have to show them what it is, so that they can do it for themselves.
**Tara Neri** `[00:21:35]`
Yes. What I want for all of us is that permission to be vulnerable and to not know everything. There’s this social expectation that parents are supposed to be the know-all, be-all. But allowing ourselves to be vulnerable lets our child learn to do that too — while also learning how to advocate and accept themselves as they are. We’re passing something different down. And that matters so much.
Closing: What We Covered and What’s Coming Next
**Natasha Stavros** `[00:22:30]`
Just a quick reminder of the three things we covered today: reflection — noticing the difference between reflection and projection in how you see yourself in your child; interrupting the cycle of parenting from fear and stepping into practicing regulation-first parenting; and recognizing that no one needs to be perfect. Subscribe to hear next week’s episode, kicking off a new series on disclosure of your diagnosis — from the casual, to the intimate, to the necessary. Please like, share, or comment. We look forward to getting to know you.
**Sarah Liebman** `[00:23:07]`
See you next time.