parenting so far that you were not prepared for?

Well, first of all, thank you for the work you both are doing to dig into this because I don't think any of us should be carrying the shame backpack.

I think we all need to figure out how to let it go because this is far too common of a version of parenthood.

We don't think it is, but it is.

For me, I think the biggest surprise was that two-thirds of kids with autism, and this is what people don't talk about, are aggressive towards their caregiver.

So when my son started to be aggressive Honestly, he was aggressive from the age of three and it sort of went in various forms up and down.

And when I mean aggressive, it could be expletives, calling you three name in the book.

good for us.

Yeah.

Um, and so really for maybe a year and a half, sort of went through various cycles where I would maybe have to orchestrate a smaller scale layoff, obviously dealing with all the stuff at home.

And then in May 2025, everything really culminated.

I was planning another round of, of layoffs, probably the second biggest that, that I had done.

And the evening before, things got to a boiling point, effectively, with my youngest son, and people really weren't safe.

And at this point, we had exhausted all of our options for care, medication, therapy.

We had kinda hit a wall in, on what we-

Yeah.