Real talk on raising autistic kids

Season 9 · Episode 12

Seen&Heard | Lauren Murray (S9E12)

Lauren Murray is a New Jersey mother of two daughters born almost twenty years apart. Her oldest is about to turn 21, graduated from the University of Central Florida two years ahead of her peers, and lives and works in Florida. Her youngest is four years old and was diagnosed about a year and a half ago as level two autistic, with sensory processing disorder and food limitations that keep her to a short list of safe foods. Lauren is a former teacher who also works for a chocolate company in the tri-state area, and because her husband works 12 to 18 hour days, she is her daughter's near sole caregiver on days that run from six in the morning to nine at night. On The Autism Dad Podcast's Seen and Heard series, hosted by Rob Gorski, Lauren explains that her daughter is bright and highly verbal, speaking better than most of her peers, which is exactly why strangers and even professionals do not recognize her as autistic. That invisibility carries a cost. At the park, another mother leaves every time she sees them coming because Lauren's daughter does not understand personal space and wants to play with everyone. In public, a meltdown gets read as a misbehaving toddler even though the family does everything possible to prevent it. Lauren shares a recent win, a trip to visit her oldest daughter in Florida where the return flight was canceled, they spent the night in the airport, and they were emergency landed at an unfamiliar airport, and her four-year-old took the entire disruption in stride. Lauren also describes feeling dismissed by the system, noting that New Jersey offers services the moment a child is diagnosed but closes the family's file if those services are not used within six months, even though a family's needs can change later. She praises her neurologist and pediatrician for actually listening. Her core messages are that level two autism can be invisible when a child is verbal, that there is often more going on behind a public meltdown than people assume, and that families raising kids who do not fit the stereotype deserve to be believed rather than judged.