Parenting already comes with pressure. Parenting a neurodivergent child can add another layer: appointments, school concerns, evaluations, services, behavior challenges, academic expectations, and the constant question of whether you are doing enough.
For many parents, that question becomes exhausting.
In this episode of Stress-Free IEP, special education attorney Frances Shefter and clinical psychologist Dr. Julie Davelman explored a different way of thinking about parenting—one that focuses less on perfection and more on skills, evidence, repair, and helping the child in front of you actually thrive.
“Good Enough” Parenting Is Better Than an Impossible Standard
Parents are surrounded by examples of what they supposedly should be doing.
Someone else’s child has tutoring. Another child is playing three sports. Another family seems to have perfect routines, perfect grades, homemade meals, and endless patience.
It becomes easy to conclude that if another parent is doing something differently, they must be doing it right—and you must be doing it wrong.
Dr. Davelman challenged that idea with the concept of “good enough parenting.” The problem, she explained, is that many parents have quietly replaced “good enough” with “exceptional.”
Exceptional parenting becomes the baseline. Anything less feels like failure.
But children do not require a parent who gives them uninterrupted attention every minute of the day. Going to work, making a phone call, needing help, becoming frustrated, or making a mistake does not automatically mean you have harmed your child.
Frances described the conflict many working parents know well: when she is with her children, she can feel guilty about work; when she is working, she can feel guilty about not being with her children.
There may never be a perfect balance.
Instead, families can ask a more useful question: What is the priority in this moment?
One day, the priority may be an important work meeting. Another day, it may be your child’s school play. Choosing one necessarily means not choosing something else at that particular moment.
That is not failure. That is life.
You Are Allowed to Make a Different Decision Now
Parents navigating IEPs and school problems often carry another kind of guilt: regret about decisions they made months or even years earlier.
Maybe they agreed to something in an IEP meeting.
Maybe they trusted an explanation from the school.
Maybe they waited before requesting an evaluation.
Maybe they did not realize their child needed a particular service.
Frances tells families something important in those moments: you made the best decision you could with the information you had at the time.
New information can lead to a new decision.
That does not require spending the rest of the process punishing yourself for the old one.
Parents also have an opportunity to model this for their children. Frances described going back to her own children and acknowledging when she overreacted or chose a consequence that no longer seemed appropriate.
That teaches something valuable: adults make mistakes, adults can apologize, and relationships can be repaired.
Children do not need perfection modeled for them. They need to see what healthy recovery from imperfection looks like.
Parent the Child You Actually Have
One of the strongest ideas from the conversation was deceptively simple:
Not the child you imagined before becoming a parent.
Not the neighbor’s child.
Not the sibling who responds completely differently.
And not the child social media makes you believe yours should become.
Two children in the same family can have dramatically different capacities. One may finish school, attend activities, come home, and complete two hours of homework without falling apart. Another may become overwhelmed after one activity.
Treating those children identically is not necessarily fairness.
Especially for neurodivergent children, parents may need to stop asking, “What should a child this age be able to handle?” and start asking, “What can my child handle, and what helps my child function at their best?”
Sometimes “more” is not another activity or another academic program.
More might mean:
- more quiet time,
- more sleep,
- more structure,
- more recovery time,
- more direct instruction,
- more emotional support,
- more opportunities to practice a missing skill,
- or more appropriate accommodations at school.
The goal should not simply be to create a child who can survive a demanding environment.
The better question is: Where will this child thrive?
A Behavior Problem May Actually Be a Skill Problem
This idea has enormous implications at home—and at school.
Dr. Davelman explained that you cannot punish a lack of a skill.
Consider a child with poor frustration tolerance. When overwhelmed, the child may yell, push, shut down, throw something, or refuse a task.
A consequence might still be appropriate for certain behavior. But a consequence alone does not teach the child how to respond differently the next time frustration appears.
If the missing skill is still missing, the next difficult situation may produce the exact same response.
The simplest analogy is reading: punishing a struggling reader will not make that child a stronger reader.
The child needs instruction.
Frances connected that principle directly to school discipline and students with IEPs.
Schools sometimes respond to behavior with detention or suspension even when the behavior may be connected to an unmet disability-related need or a skill the student has not yet developed.
Worse, removal from school can sometimes unintentionally reinforce the behavior.
Imagine a student becomes overwhelmed by a difficult assignment, flips a desk, and gets sent home for two days. The child may have just learned that an extreme behavior is an effective way to escape the difficult task.
The underlying problem has not been solved.
Families and schools therefore need to look beyond:
“How do we stop this behavior?”
and investigate:
“What is this behavior telling us, and what skill or support is missing?”
That shift can completely change the intervention.
Grades Are Data, Not a Definition of Your Child
The conversation also challenged the way parents think about academic success.
A child can know the material and still struggle with completing assignments. Another may earn strong grades through memorization but lack the independent learning skills needed later.
So what does it actually mean to be successful in school?
Dr. Davelman suggested focusing heavily on skills:
Can the student read effectively? Take notes? Ask for help? Determine whether they understand something? Study? Organize information? Learn from mistakes? Adapt?
Frances connected this to her own experience becoming an attorney. Lawyers do not simply memorize every law. Legal education teaches them how to analyze information, locate authority, interpret it, and apply it.
Learning how to learn can matter much more over a lifetime than being able to reproduce information for one test.
That does not make grades meaningless. It means grades should not become the only measurement parents use to decide whether a child is capable, successful, or thriving.
Resilience Requires the Opportunity to Struggle
There is also danger in protecting children from every possible failure.
Dr. Davelman noted that the student who has always received straight A’s may be completely unprepared for the first B.
Resilience develops by encountering manageable challenges and discovering that mistakes are survivable.
The same is true outside school.
Eventually, a document will have an error. A deadline will be missed. Someone will make a bad decision. A plan will fail.
Children need experience with the next part:
What do I do now?
That is why focusing exclusively on achievement can miss some of the most important abilities children need as adults—problem-solving, recovery, self-awareness, resourcefulness, communication, and knowing when to ask for help.
Replace “Why?” With “How?”
One of the most practical ideas from the episode can be used almost immediately.
When something goes wrong, parents frequently ask:
“Why did you do that?”
But “why” can quickly sound accusatory and put a child on the defensive.
Dr. Davelman suggested replacing it with how.
Instead of:
“Why did you make that decision?”
try:
“How did you get to that decision?”
Instead of demanding a justification, the question invites the child to explain the process.
That allows the adult and child to identify where things went off track.
The same approach can be useful when navigating difficult school situations. Rather than getting trapped in blame, parents can ask questions that uncover the process, assumptions, missing information, and next steps.
The Goal Is Not Perfect Parenting
Parents of neurodivergent children are often asked to become case managers, advocates, researchers, schedulers, emotional supports, transportation coordinators, and school-system experts—while continuing to be parents.
Perfection is not a realistic standard.
A more useful goal is to understand the child you have, notice what the evidence is actually telling you, teach missing skills, ask for help, repair mistakes, and make the best decision you can with the information available today.
And when tomorrow brings new information?
You are allowed to make a different decision.
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More content like this: https://shefterlaw.com/learning-center/
Visit Julie’s website: https://www.abramspsychservices.com/dr-julie-davelman