Beyond Authoritative Parenting: A More Human Way to Raise Neurodivergent Children
Rehumanising Parenting is a response to a culture that has slowly reduced parenting to technique, compliance, and optimisation. It is a return to relationship, nervous system awareness, and shared humanity.
To understand why this matters, we need to look at the models many of us were given.
When I was a young parent, I was obsessed with being a good parent to my children.
As an AuDHD person and an educator, I love deep research, especially about things I care deeply about, so I religiously read all the parenting books, watched the videos, and attended lectures and parenting classes.
You could say that good parenting became my special interest.
In one of the parenting courses I attended, we were taught the three styles of parenting, based on the research of Diana Baumrind in the 1960s, later expanded by Maccoby and Martin.
Authoritative.
Authoritarian.
Permissive.
Or, framed more crudely:
the brick wall,
the backbone,
the jellyfish.
Two Wrongs and One Right Way to Parent
In the way that these lessons were delivered, the message was clear. You did not want to be the brick wall or the jellyfish.
Those parents, we were told, harm their children.
There was one “right” way to parent, and two wrong ones.
What I absorbed, beneath the language, was not guidance, but judgment and shame.
What this framework quietly did was, although it claimed certainty, it flattened complexity and pathologised parenting.
It delivered a quiet, powerful message: If you are trying to control, struggling, adapting, softening, or overwhelmed, something is wrong with you.
There was no space in this model for trauma.
No room for neurodivergence, lived experience or acknowledgement of capacity or what it was like to parent on empty, or to parent children living beyond their stress threshold.
These models did not emerge in a vacuum. They were shaped by behaviourist psychology, Western ideals of independence, and an emphasis on measurable outcomes. They prioritise social compliance and self-regulation within existing systems, not necessarily nervous system safety, neurodivergence, or relational nuance.
Authoritative parenting is built on the idea that children feel safest when adults provide consistent structure and clear boundaries, and that parents should lead from a position of authority. It assumes that over time, children will internalise those limits, learn to regulate themselves, and adapt to social expectations. Too much control is seen as harmful, too little guidance is also seen as harmful, and the “healthy middle”, warmth combined with firm limits, is considered the ideal balance.
Authoritative parenting is frequently upheld as the ideal. Yet for children with PDA, whose nervous systems may experience hierarchy and imposed authority as a threat to autonomy, and therefore safety, even balanced, well-intentioned structure can activate protection rather than cooperation.
At its core, this model rests on the assumption that all children fundamentally need the same things, and that if parents simply “get it right,” outcomes will follow. It places the emphasis on the parent adopting the correct stance, rather than on adapting to the child in front of them.
Although it’s often described as relationship-based, it remains rooted in a hierarchy where authority is assumed to regulate.
What stands out to me is that it leaves very little room for true responsiveness to the child you actually have, to their nervous system, or to your own. It prioritises maintaining structure over attuning to capacity.
Very little guidance invites parents to pause and ask:
What are your strengths, not just your shortcomings?
What do you already do instinctively when you feel safe and resourced?
What has shaped you, your nervous system, your history, your culture, your grief, and what are you carrying right now?
What support would allow you to show up with more steadiness, rather than more strain?
And perhaps most importantly:
What would change if we allowed those answers to guide our parenting, instead of trying to override them?
Our culture does not honour the intelligence of adaptation, name survival strategies as information rather than failure, or acknowledge that rigidity, collapse, or inconsistency often emerge under pressure or limited capacity, not from lack of care.
Instead, we are told there was one correct way to parent. The by-product of this being that if we couldn’t meet it, shame would do the rest.
When parents internalise the belief that there is one correct way to parent, every deviation becomes a personal failure. Over time, this erodes self-trust. It teaches parents to override instinct in favour of external authority, even when that authority does not understand their child.
Where Does Low-Demand Parenting Fit in the Current “Parenting Styles” Framework?
Because authoritative parenting is so widely accepted as the “right” way to parent, anything outside of it is often seen as risky. This is one of the main reasons parents struggle to move toward low-demand parenting, and why they receive so much judgment when they do.
Low-demand parenting is regularly confused with permissive parenting.
If you look up permissive parenting, it’s often described as warm but lacking boundaries, “a parent who avoids conflict, doesn’t enforce rules, and leaves their child without guidance.” The assumption is that without a firm structure, children will lack accountability and struggle long-term.
But low-demand parenting isn’t about stepping back or abandoning boundaries. It’s about adjusting demands when a child’s nervous system is already overloaded. It recognises that behaviour is often a stress signal, not defiance. And that pushing harder on a child, especially a neurodivergent child in burnout, doesn’t build resilience; it increases stress.
Boundaries still exist in low-demand parenting. They’re just flexible and responsive to capacity. They’re based on safety, not hierarchy.
Low-demand parenting is not the absence of structure. It is the strategic lowering of non-essential demands to preserve capacity, protect mental health, and build long-term resilience. It assumes that autonomy, safety, and connection are the foundations from which responsibility grows, not the rewards for compliance.
The problem is that most mainstream parenting models assume that structure must be externally enforced in order for children to thrive. Low-demand parenting challenges that idea. It asks whether safety and regulation might be the foundation for growth, rather than pressure.
When authoritative parenting is treated as the only responsible model, lowering demands can look like “giving in.” But for many neurodivergent families, it’s actually thoughtful, intentional care.
And this is where Rehumanising Parenting begins, not with control or compliance, but with relationship, context, and the nervous systems in front of us.
What is Rehumanising Parenting?
Rehumanising Parenting is the practice of placing humanity, rather than performance, control, or compliance, at the centre of how we relate to our children and ourselves.
It asks something radically different from mainstream parenting models.
It says there is no single way to parent because there is no single kind of child, nervous system, family, or life context. Parenting is not a performance to perfect, but a relationship to tend.
When we centre humanity at the core of parenting, responsiveness is not weakness, and flexibility is not failure.
Because the truth is that parents are not strategies to optimise or techniques to master, we are humans in a relationship with other humans. No child, and no parent, has ever thrived under shame, tight control, or constant comparison.
Rehumanising Parenting recognises context. It honours capacity. It understands behaviour as communication rather than character.
In practice, this might look like lowering expectations during burnout instead of escalating consequences. It might look like adapting school demands to fit your child’s capacity. It might look like understanding what is actually going on for the child during a meltdown and prioritising repair over punishment. It might look like listening to your own exhaustion and capacity, instead of pushing through to meet an external standard or framework.
When we stop contorting ourselves to fit narrow frameworks, something softens. We begin listening again, to the child in front of us, and to the quieter wisdom within ourselves.
Rehumanising Parenting is not a new strategy. It is a reclamation. It is not about raising perfectly behaved children. It is about raising well-supported humans, including ourselves.
Rehumanising Parenting is not something we practice alone.
It takes courage to question old frameworks, to trust your instincts, and to soften when the world tells you to tighten.
If this way of seeing parenting resonates with you, you’re warmly invited to explore From Burnout to Balance, my parent community where we practice this work together, slowly, relationally, and without shame.
You don’t have to figure this out in isolation. There is space for you here.
The Person Who Wrote This Blog
Tanya Valentin is a neuro-affirming family coach, writer, and community leader supporting parents of neurodivergent children through burnout recovery.
Drawing on lived experience, nervous-system-informed practice, and relational facilitation, her work explores grief, identity, and the quiet return to self-trust.
She is the founder of the supportive community who are parenting neurodivergent children and teens in burnout, From Burnout to Balance.
Have you enjoyed reading this blog? Subscribe and receive fresh reflections, parenting resources and validation every time I push publish.
