Our weeks don’t fall apart, but they don’t feel smooth either. They function – mostly because someone is always holding things together.
Our children are in the young to mid-teenage years now, which in some ways makes things easier. They mostly do their own thing – usually something online, whether that’s gaming or exploring more creative interests. At the same time, I still find myself wishing they were a little more involved in the everyday tasks that help the house function week to week.
Sometimes that looks like asking for very small things: putting the recycling into the larger bin, bringing clothes through to the laundry, helping in passing when they’re already moving through the shared spaces. I try to ask gently, when it feels least disruptive.
But more often than not, those requests used to turn into arguments. Things needed to be done now, not later, not once they’d reached a safe point in a game. That tension would build quickly – irritation on my side, resistance on theirs – and eventually I stopped asking. Not because I thought it was the right lesson, but because I just needed the chores done. There is always plenty to do, especially after work and on weekends, and I didn’t want to still be clearing the kitchen late at night after everything else.
I do most of the cooking in our family. I enjoy it, and I know it helps my partner, who carries a lot of the invisible work that comes with supporting two school-aged children with ASD – appointments, coordination, and the steady effort of helping them function in a neurotypical world.
As I’ve mentioned before in When Family Life Feels Harder Than You Expected, I don’t want to run a family café. Over time, we’ve settled on a list of “safe” meals – ones that are generally accepted and eaten without too much friction. I still try new recipes occasionally, gently adapting familiar ones rather than overhauling everything. A creamy tomato and herb beef mince with pasta, for example, feels close enough to ‘spag bol’ without tipping the balance, and I can still fold a few vegetables into the flavours without them becoming a point of contention.
A few years ago, I wrote down the meals both children would eat. One of them doesn’t tolerate whole vegetables on the plate, so I stopped pushing that particular point. Grated or finely chopped vegetables mixed into meals work better for us. Leaving whole vegetables untouched – or argued over – was costing more energy than it was worth.
The stabilising shift wasn’t in doing more – it was in quietly deciding which battles didn’t need to be fought anymore.