For decades, support for parents of Autistic children has been dominated by compliance-based methods, outsider perspectives, and an unspoken pressure to ‘fix’ difference. Courses were created without Autistic insight, delivered without lived experience, and often left parents feeling overwhelmed, ashamed, or uncertain.
But things are changing — not because mainstream systems decided to do better, but because Autistic people have been quietly, consistently building better alternatives.
One of those alternatives is Cothú — a parenting programme designed, led, and delivered by Autistic professionals who are also parents themselves.
And when Autistic people lead the work — especially those who have lived both sides of the parenting dynamic — everything changes.
Support Becomes Nurture, Not Compliance
Traditional courses tend to centre on behaviours: how to manage them, reduce them, control them. The message to parents is clear — something is wrong, and it’s your job to correct it.
Cothú turns this on its head.
When Autistic parents design the support, the goal isn’t compliance — it’s connection. We focus on nurturing relationships, not extinguishing stims. We empower parents to understand their child’s sensory world, not suppress it. We remove the guilt, shame, and fear — and replace them with trust, pride, and clarity.
Support becomes an act of solidarity, not surveillance.
We Centre Lived Experience — Not Assumptions
When you’ve lived as an Autistic person — and parented as one — you bring a depth of insight no textbook can match.
You know how it feels to be misunderstood. You know what it’s like to mask, to burn out, to be told you’re “too much” — and to worry your child might go through the same. You know the weight of trying to parent from love while unlearning everything the world told you to do.
Cothú isn’t just informed by Autistic voices — it’s led by people who have raised Autistic children while being Autistic themselves. That means parents aren’t just being given strategies. They’re being shown how to see their child differently — and how to see themselves differently too.
It’s Built for Real Families — Especially Neurodivergent Ones
Another difference when Autistic people lead? We know that many parents of Autistic kids are Neurodivergent too.
So we design for them — because we are them.
And that shift alone changes everything.
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We Don’t Dilute. We Don’t Disguise. We Don’t Do “Neurodiversity Lite.”
Let’s name it plainly: there’s a growing market of so-called neurodiversity-informed programmes that sprinkle in a few buzzwords while still clinging to deficit models.
That’s not Cothú.
We don’t repackage compliance as connection. We don’t use Autistic language to mask non-Autistic goals. We don’t tiptoe around the realities of trauma, exclusion, or ableism.
We lead with clarity, compassion, and courage. And we invite others to do the same.
A Different Future Begins Here
When Autistic people lead parenting support — especially those who know what it means to both parent and be parented Autistically — families don’t just learn. They heal. They reconnect. They begin to write a new story — one where their child is celebrated, not corrected.
That’s what Cothú offers.
Not a toolkit for fixing children. But a pathway to seeing them clearly — and supporting them proudly.
📣 Want to be part of this? We’re training professionals to become licensed Cothú facilitators now.
Because parenting support should never be about making Autistic kids easier to manage. It should be about helping them — and their families — thrive.
👉 Learn more here
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