How to Help Your Neurodiverse Child Out of the Cocoon

But first, meet professional musician Harold Simmons II, aka Fyütch, and his eight-year-old daughter, Aura. Together, they recently earned a Grammy nomination in the best children’s music album category. Aura learned about the nomination when Harold picked her up from school – she rushed back to tell her friends, but just one of them knew of the Grammy Awards. But her teachers understood, and celebrated the achievement at the next school assembly, the pair told The Washington Post.

Neurodiverse children might “cocoon” to protect their mental and emotional health – parents must help them become butterflies

Little of our world is designed to support neurodiverse adults, let alone neurodiverse children, and that lack of infrastructure makes navigating the world tough for them. Autistic youth have to work to decipher social codes readily understood by neurotypical children, so just getting to the end of a school day can be exhausting. Kids with ADHD operate on sensory overload: flooded with information, struggling to sort it all.

A lack of support pushes these children to burnout, UK-based therapist Gee Eltringham argues in HuffPost. They’re like soda bottles constantly being subjected to little shakes until, eventually, they reach the point of explosion, she said, bubbling out and losing a bit of their energy each time. Eventually, they’re left with nothing to give. That’s to say burnout, for them, is both cause and consequence of trauma. “It strips children of their ability to cope, engage, or function beyond survival,” Eltringham says. 

Retreating to “a cocoon” to rest, then, becomes a life-sustaining necessity. Further, when stress at school is a driver towards burnout, as it often is, recovery can take a longer period of time – months, or even years during which parents might want to let their children remain in isolation, ostensibly for protection. Eltringham urges parents to quiet such instincts, and instead to nudge their children to re-encounter the world as young butterflies, lest their cocoons become permanent. 

Families, having “been to hell and back,” are understandably afraid to reintroduce stress. Parents become “anxious about their child’s anxiety,” and the outside world begins to feel too risky to approach. But eternity in the cocoon is no life at all. “Purpose, joy, and fun – foundations of executive function – are slowly eroded,” Eltringham writes. “Motivation collapses.” Children kept in their cocoon may seem safe, but they’re no longer blossoming.

It’s a difficult idea to accept, for some – sometimes sheltering children from the possibility of more harm seems the only viable option. But “sometimes understanding alone is no longer enough. Parents must offer therapeutic leadership within the cocoon.” Eltringham implores parents to try scaffolded parenting, in which parents support their children in making a gentle, gradual return to the world – starting with small steps, like requiring them to eat dinner with the family again, rather than in their room. 

And parents, don’t forget to be gentle with yourself, Eltringham adds. Cocooned children are not a consequence of bad parenting, but rather a systemic failure to support neurodiverse children (and adults) in schools, health services, and elsewhere. If more support came earlier, or at all, fewer children would burn out, fewer families would be devastated, and fewer kids would need to hide from a world that could and should have met them with understanding in the first place.

But instead, this “enormous task falls to parents” – to deliver “careful, attuned support that helps a child feel safe enough to take tiny risks again.” 

Co-regulation – a vital skill in the parenting toolkit

When my kid gears up for a meltdown, my impulse is to become a puddle right alongside her. On more than one occasion, my daughter has done her best to be her best amidst a litany of frustrations at school, holding the tension right up until she enters the car and shuts the door – only to let the band snap directly at me. And sometimes, just like the writer of this essay in Parents, I’ve yelled right back at her. I know I’m not alone. You’ve been there too – it’s the easy response, and the one that hurts us both the most. But while we can become dysregulated with our children in such heightened moments of overstimulation, exhaustion, or upset, we parents also have the opportunity to set a new tone – to co-regulate healthier emotional responses with them.

Co-regulation means meeting our kids’ distress with grace – a process of helping children calm down when “the logical part of their brains may be completely offline.” Instead of reacting or escalating during a meltdown, co-regulation requires parents to tap into empathy; to connect and support. And you’ve probably done it without knowing the term – we do it readily when our children are babies, quickly scooping up a crying infant and embodying calm, soothing them until they’re calm with us. “The caregiver is able to go to them, recognize their distress, and [do] their best to meet their need, enabl[ing] the child to return to regulation.” explains Katie Fries, a licensed clinical social worker and registered play therapist. “And when this process happens over and over again, the child is able to internalize an implicit belief that their distress will be responded to and their needs will be met.”

The thing is, co-regulation doesn’t stop being useful when our children have started using words. It’s useful throughout childhood, even for older kids. An understanding foundation shapes how children learn to manage emotions later in life. The good news for spirited parents like me is that you don’t even have to be perfectly calm to do it. The crux of co-regulation is emotional connection, which could sound like a parent saying, firmly, “You are so mad about that!” during a tantrum, says Christine M. Valentín, also a licensed clinical social worker and registered play therapist. The message matches the energy of the moment but pushes back against the dysregulation, unlike matching both with “Stop yelling!” or matching neither with fake calm, Valentín notes. The point is to preserve the trusting relationship you have with your child. Acknowledging their feelings, even in an elevated tone, reminds them that you see them and care about their needs. Other times, especially for older kids, just sitting quietly with them wherever they are is enough to remind them you’re physically and emotionally there.

Remember, co-regulation doesn’t mean pretending you don’t also feel upset. It means modeling self-regulation, even outside of those high-stress moments. Let your children see you play with a fidget toy to soothe anxiety. Let them witness you taking calming breaths. Introduce them to the stuffy you squeeze when you feel overwhelmed. Remember that they see how you handle your own low points – if you meet a tough day with late-night doomscrolling, or instead go out for a quick walk to clear your head, they’ll notice. Being open teaches kids that everyone, grownups included, feels overwhelmed sometimes, and gives us a chance to show them that there are healthy ways to return to center. Over time, your positive example will help them grow into emotionally regulating themselves. 

In other news…

In an essential episode for the days ahead, MPR News sought expert advice on how to help your children navigate the anxiety, fear, and uncertainty so many families feel as a result of federal immigration enforcement’s recent activity, in part by taking calls from concerned listeners. One key piece of advice from social worker and therapist Ana Mariella Riviera – don’t pretend that everything’s alright: “I think that our kids do not live in a bubble, especially today. And rather than denying the harsh realities that we are seeing, I think it’s important to help them make some sense of what is happening.”

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Sharing Spaces: Earlier this week, The Trevor Project released the latest episode of its documentary-roundtable series Sharing Spaces, the Advocate reports, its first in two years. The episode features six LGBTQ+ people who survived conversion therapy, who shared their thoughts and feelings in a discussion chaired by a therapist. Recent research from the Trevor Project found that more LGBTQ youth were being exposed to the practice – going from 9% of those surveyed in 2023 to 15% in 2024. Airing as the Supreme Court is, troublingly, due to consider whether states can continue to ban the harmful practice, the conversation also explains why self-acceptance can be lifesaving.