I remember when our girls were babies, and into the toddler years, car rides were sometimes the saving grace for all of us: me for my sanity and ability to parent well, and the girls as a way to help regulate their out-of-control baby/toddler emotions and even as a way to help them fall asleep. Those were, at times, some challenging years, especially as new parents who had no idea what we were doing.
Fast forward to the teen years and you will still find me sliding behind the wheel of the family vehicle to take one of our girls for a drive. While the circumstances are (mostly) different these days because I am not trying to coax them to sleep, I find that car rides still provide all of us a saving grace in this sometimes harsh world. As I may have mentioned in previous posts, navigating this neurotypical world as an autistic is not easy. In fact, when you are neurodivergent, sometimes moving through your day and the world around you can feel a lot like being a visitor to a foreign country; you don’t know the language all that well and you don’t tend to understand the customs. Trying to balance this can create some serious dysregulation.
Enter the invitation from me for a drive.
Both of our girls have a deep affinity for driving the back roads of our city with a favorite playlist as the background. This looks different for each girl. For the youngest teenager, she is happy to sit in the backseat with her headphones connected to her iPad so she is in her own protective bubble. She will at times converse, but that desire, depending on her emotions and the day she’s having, can be smaller; she is more about the driving around and her own world than anything else. For the oldest teenager, she rides shotgun and her favorite Spotify playlist pours through the car speakers as the world flashes past outside her window.
The common factor of these drives is that when the weather is even remotely nice outside, the girls love driving with the windows open and the sun and wind moving through the car and over them and their lives. It’s almost like a self-cleaning option on life in that moment; cares and concerns, anger and tears, fears and frustrations are all washed away on the rushing wind of a spring, summer, or fall day.
And I am happy to oblige.
Why? Because I’ve realized there is not much I can do to smooth the paths they have to travel in life. As parents, we know the journey from childhood to adulthood is rife with obstacles and hurts and frustrations. As parents, we also know that as our teenagers begin seeking and asserting their independence, they ask little from us in the way of help. It is a rite of passage I suppose, this sorting and sifting the world according to our own ideas, needs, and desires. These car rides I offer? They provide my teens with a sense of freedom and also a sense of connection and support.
And so I am happy to oblige.
Whether it is to sit in silent reflection with my own thoughts as my youngest sorts things out in the back seat or I find myself singing along to the 80s rock standards blasting through the speakers as my oldest belts out her favorite songs beside me, I see these moments as investments. They are investments in my teens, they are investments in our relationship, and they are investments in joy; and they cost me almost nothing (except gas money and time). And while there tends to be little conversation during these drives, I absolutely believe that these moments firm the foundation upon which they continue walking from childhood to adulthood. They are signposts and mile markers that remind them I am available if they find themselves at all lost along the way; I won’t tell them which way to go, but I will gladly look at the map of their lives with them if they want me to.
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