Learning to Be the Parent on the Other Side of the Desk

Therapist Danya Maloon recently wrote an article for Uniquely You! magazine, discussing her journey parenting two autistic boys and how her experiences have shaped her current therapeutic work with clients and their families.

By Danya Maloon, LCSW, LSSW, MAT

I knew how to help anxious children. I did not know how to help my own son.

When Declan was three, he was asked to leave his second preschool. The reasons shifted by the day: hitting, kicking a peer, running from his teacher, collapsing inconsolably on the floor when asked to move from a preferred activity to a non-preferred one. I was a prekindergarten teacher at that school. I was also treating highly anxious young children in my private practice. Triggers, transitions, and regulation were my professional language. And still I was lost.

Part of what confused me was how well Declan did at home. He was calm, affectionate, and happy at play places and social gatherings. My husband and I were meeting his sensory and emotional needs without realizing that was what we were doing. School, though, was undoing him.

Then I learned how his school was handling those moments. Staff were pulling him from the classroom, bringing him to the Director's office, and leaving him there for most of the day. When he cried and protested, he was told he would be staying longer. The school was neither qualified nor willing to meet his needs. The final straw came when the Director called my son a "nightmare" and suggested he had "some kind of neurological issue." Declan and I both left.

What followed was months of searching. I enrolled him in public school and had him evaluated for an IEP. He received an autism diagnosis. I found a neuro-affirming child therapist, an occupational therapist, and the right psychiatrist. Finding qualified professionals took far longer than it should have, because no one seemed to know how to help him. Once the school pushed him out, we were on our own, and my family had to figure out each next step unassisted.

That was nearly ten years ago. Declan is twelve now, and we are still navigating, but with hard-won wisdom.

My second son, Harris, now eight, was also diagnosed with autism at three. His presentation looks different from his brother's. He has a significant speech delay and faces motoric and sensory challenges. Both boys need a great deal of support, advocacy, and love. Supporting them is my privilege, and I also know the emotional cost of parenting children the wider world does not understand.

That cost, and that gap, reshaped my career. I now specialize in working therapeutically with families and children on complex journeys of their own. I offer neuro-affirming play therapy for neurodiverse children, support and coaching for caregivers, and therapy for neurodiverse adolescents and young adults. My approach is psychodynamic and neuro-affirming, because I believe a child's behavior is communication, and our job is to understand it rather than extinguish it.

I try to give families what I could not find: comprehensive, informed support that begins with the assumption that their child is not broken and they are not failing.

If you are in the early, frightening stretch of this road, I hope you hear this from someone who has walked it: you are not alone, your instincts matter, and the right people exist, even when they take months to find.

My role is to offer therapeutic support and guidance to you and your family as you navigate this path. Because it is my path too, and it is one I walk with my clients, side by side.

Danya Maloon, LCSW, LSSW, MAT, is a licensed social worker offering neuro-affirming therapy at McConaghie Counseling.