The TikTok Moms Who Pulled Me Out Of My Loneliness

We had just deboarded the airplane in Portland when I became aware, through finely calibrated, repetition-honed instincts, that my son was about to lose his f*cking mind. He’d been a champion the entire flight, watching Puppy Dog Pals and mainlining cheese puffs, and I’d let my guard down, scrolled my phone, believing that we’d make it out alive. But something suddenly shifted. He had reached some mysterious internal limit, and I knew I had minutes — if not seconds — to get him past the security lines.

To the outside observer, autistic meltdowns can look like ordinary tantrums, especially with a younger kid. When he wrung his small hand away from mine and stopped walking in the middle of the terminal, streams of travelers parted to avoid him and I sensed their disapproval of us both.

I took a step toward him. He took a step back. I crouched down and held out his iPad. He snatched it and threw it at my head. I shuffled behind him and spread my arms, cutting off his natural path, and began herding him back in the right direction — the way you herd chickens back into their coop. We made it across the Rubicon of the security exit, and he immediately tried to re-enter it. To avert intervention, I scooped him up in a kind of sideways fireman’s carry, pulling my suitcase with two fingers while he screamed at full volume and kicked and hit me and pulled at my hair.

I could see my parents waiting for us beyond the security line, and I could see that both of them were uncomfortably disassociating, staring at the ground. Everyone else seemed to just be open-mouthed staring at us, and as my own personal regulation was not exactly at its peak after traveling solo all morning, I might have said something unkind and not appropriate to say in public or in front of children. Something along the lines of “Keep staring you fucking assholes.”

Parenting an autistic kid can be very isolating; in the beginning, when the information about my son’s brain was still new, I isolated myself. The subject matter in my baby group chat got harder for me to relate to as the babies turned 2; the moms were pulling ahead of us, into more complicated, toddler-level problems. Their concerns seemed petty to me; I longed for their problems. This came to a head when they all got pregnant again — it seemed like proof that we were existing in separate timelines. I muted the thread, RSVP’d “maybe” to the playground birthday parties, and skipped a catching-up dinner. When a mom friend asked how my son was doing, I answered, unfairly: “He’s still autistic.”

When I told my own mom that I was lonely, she mentioned a piece called Welcome to Holland. Had I read it? I had. Written in 1987 by the mother of a child with Down syndrome, it uses geography to explain the experience. “When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip — to Italy,” the piece begins. But the airplane lands, instead, in Holland. “They haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place,” it clarifies — it’s just different. And in fact, while Holland is less flashy than Italy, it’s special in its own way. It has tulips. It has Rembrandts.

The tone of the piece is both sad and brave, a combination that I find irritating or heartbreaking depending on my mood. I understand why parents of kids with disabilities feel seen by it, but to be clear, I do not like this essay. I think it allows parents of “normal” kids to feel comfortably removed from divergent experiences; it reinforces the isolation it’s meant to bridge.

During the first year after my son’s diagnosis, people who loved me often asked if I’d found “a support group” — somewhere I could connect with other parents of autistic kids. I think they felt out of their depth. They meant well, but it only underlined the feeling of alienation for me, the sense that I was charting new territory, somewhere they couldn’t reach me. Somewhere much farther away than Holland.

I did not find a support group. And I did not find solace in a mawkish essay from 1987. Instead, I found autistic-parenting TikTok.

Every night, after my son fell asleep, I crept out into the living room and watched TikToks and cried. I developed strong, parasocial bonds with other moms of autistic children. The moms looked into their phone’s camera and said that they were exhausted, or that they were so proud, or that today we would be going through the Starbucks drive-thru together.

I didn’t find it right away. TikTok’s algorithm knew I was interested in autism, so at first I was served videos about recognizing autistic traits in your toddler or curing them through heavy metal cleanses. One night, I almost ordered a DIY chelation kit and decided I needed to retrain my feed. I watched sorority girls fight through medical-grade hangovers to apply layer after layer of makeup. I learned what clothes I should avoid wearing because they were dead giveaways about my age. I learned so many things to do with cottage cheese.

But then at some point I was served a video of a child my son’s age, saying his own name for the first time. I watched it six, seven, 15 times. The algorithm rethought its strategy, serving me more of the same. A video of a mom crying because her autistic son finally mastered utensils. A mom explaining how she gave her son haircuts without freaking him out. How they worked on safety in parking lots. A boy holding autumn leaves up to his face and then dropping them one by one, a familiar look of rapture on his face.

Every night, after my son fell asleep, I crept out into the living room and watched TikToks and cried. I developed strong, parasocial bonds with other moms of autistic children. The moms looked into their phone’s camera and said that they were exhausted, or that they were so proud, or that today we would be going through the Starbucks drive-thru together.

I learned their Chick-fil-A orders, noticed their manicure updates, related to their hours spent on hold with insurance companies. I knew everything about each kid’s special interest, and progress in speech therapy, and ill-fated family trips to Target. I watched them navigate grandparents and social workers and other moms at the park. Sometimes I caught myself comparing — trying to figure out how old a kid was, whether his receptive language delay or social skills were better or worse than my son’s. Sometimes, coming across the mom of an older kid, I’d find myself going deep into their post history — trying to see what they’d been like at my son’s age, hoping they could help me predict the future. But mostly, I tapped the heart button, and my actual heart ached in a painful, beautiful way, and I cried, and scrolled, and tapped, and ached, and cried.

To become a parent is, inevitably and absolutely, a trip to parts unknown.

I watched a mom doing morning affirmations with her son in the mirror. “I am strong!” she said. Her son copied her movement, flexing his arm, and grinned. “I am kind!” she said, holding her heart. “I am capable! I am autistic!”

It shifted something in me. It showed me a version of parenting that I wanted very badly — it modeled joy. It normalized joy.

Space for joy returned something vital to my worldview: generosity. I could enjoy my son, and I could also see how all children were fascinating, and challenging, and that it was impossible to predict what they’d need or who they’d be. Because as much as expecting parents hope for one, there is no “Italy.” No one is going on the trip they packed for; no one has properly packed. Whether your child is neurotypical or neurodivergent, adopted or born via surrogacy or conceived completely by accident, physically healthy or chronically ill, you will be disoriented. To become a parent is, inevitably and absolutely, a trip to parts unknown.

My son and I flew to Portland again last month, and he was a total pro — lines were patiently waited through, birdies and trucks identified, and no iPads were thrown. I know that comparison is supposedly the thief of joy, but in this case, my joy was fueled. As I reported back to my mom: He wasn’t even the worst kid on the plane.

Margaret Jones is a writer and communications professional in San Francisco. She holds an MFA in nonfiction from the New School.