I came across the concept of low demand parenting on socials.
Our then-10-year-old had just been diagnosed with Autism and my Instagram feed had adjusted itself accordingly.
A woman was speaking about drastic changes she’d made to her sons’ lifestyles – no structure, unlimited screen time, eat whatever, and no school.
The video showed two boys running around the house, diving off the couch, screaming with excitement – all on a regular school day.
It was drastic.
Radical.
What chance did her kids have now?
Turns out, about as much as my own son who, three years later, definitely lives a life of low demand.
So how did I get from there to here? And is it a good idea?
Firstly, it wasn’t a conscious decision.
Like many neurodivergent children in Australia, my son struggled at school.
Social and sensory issues made the classroom and playground unbearable.
By the time we realised how hard he was finding it, it was past the point of putting any scaffolding in place.
He simply stopped getting up in the morning.
For us, his parents, it was a process of panic, grief, then acceptance and adaptation.
A looooong process.
But it wasn’t just school.
He started saying no to fruit and vegies.
He told us his feet were too sore to walk anymore.
He moved his mattress into the loungeroom so he could sleep near the TV.
As with school, we panicked, then grieved, then accepted and adapted to these things too.
To be honest, he wasn’t giving us much choice.
You can’t force a child to get out of bed, eat vegetables or sleep in a particular bed when they’re that age.
I wasn’t quite the ‘low demand’ mummy I’d seen that day on Instagram though.
And our son wasn’t the ball of energy her kids were, far from it.
But the decade of demands that we routinely place on children, for him, had disappeared.
So has it been good for him?
That’s a hard question to answer.
Because parenting a child is a one off. We don’t get a re-do. We can try to learn lessons from child to child but it’s not always feasible when each is so different.
It’s hard to know if what is happening now with my son is best for his future.
I can tell you that since stopping school he’s not once told me he wants to die.
He’s stopped locking himself in the car or us out of the house, frightening and regular occurrences when stress and anxiety got too much.
Home schooling has been largely led by him – writing and spelling with dad on Tuesdays, woodwork with Pop on Thursdays, maths with me on Fridays and coding with a tutor on Saturdays.
His support worker takes him mini-golfing and bowling.
He makes dinner reservations for them.
And together they cook dinner for our family one night a week.
Add to his calendar a weekly physio session, a weekly swim and a weekly bath and he’s done.
Exhausted, he says, unsure how he used to fit school in.
Of course the tiredness also comes down to computer sessions that extend way past midnight and an inability (or unwillingness – the jury is still out on that one) to even get out of bed some days.
Sometimes his dad and I despair.
This isn’t how parenting – or childhood – is done.
Do we cut off the WiFi? Stop bringing him food? Refuse to pay for his outings?
All things that will absolutely lead back to aggression.
Other times we wonder if he’s so well-supported he’ll turn out the most successful and adjusted of all our kids.
