The Autism Mom Coach

Your autistic child comes home from school yelling, disappears into their bedroom, or follows you around asking the same question repeatedly. Each situation requires a different response, but your automatic reactions may be making those difficult after-school hours even harder.
In this episode, Lisa Candera, The Autism Mom Coach, explains how to respond to three common after-school patterns: the Collider, the Cocooner, and the Clinger. Drawing on her personal parenting experience and coaching work, Lisa introduces opposite action, a skill she learned during her son's OCD therapy, to help autism moms interrupt their automatic reactions and decide what needs immediate attention and what can wait.
In this episode, you'll learn:
How to respond when your autistic child comes home angry, argumentative, withdrawn, or demanding constant attention.
Why providing more attention, asking more questions, or offering repeated reassurance can sometimes make after-school dysregulation worse.
How to recognize your own reactions and use opposite action to determine when to engage, when to establish boundaries, and what can wait.

Learn how to stop turning one difficult afternoon into a series of unnecessary battles by identifying what actually needs your attention and responding deliberately rather than reacting automatically.
Ready to create your own Meltdown Action Plan?
Join Lisa for MAP Live on October 8 at 7 PM Eastern, a live 90-minute workshop where you'll create a personalized plan for managing your triggers and responding to your child's meltdowns before, during, and after they happen.
Register for MAP Live Here.

After-school meltdowns don't always look like meltdowns. Some autistic children come home yelling, arguing, or provoking their siblings. Others head straight to their bedrooms and refuse to talk. And some follow Mom from room to room, asking repeated questions or needing constant reassurance.
In this episode, Lisa Candera, The Autism Mom Coach, introduces three after-school patterns: the Collider, the Cocooner, and the Clinger. She explains how these patterns can change as autistic children grow into teenagers and young adults, and why understanding your child's pattern can help you recognize your own reactions before the afternoon goes off the rails.
In this episode, you'll learn:
How to recognize the three after-school patterns and what they may tell you about your child's dysregulation.
Why after-school dysregulation can look like defiance, withdrawal, or excessive reassurance-seeking, particularly as autistic children enter adolescence.
How to identify your own predictable responses to your child's behavior, whether that means correcting, pursuing, or repeatedly reassuring them.

Before you decide how to handle the yelling, the slammed bedroom door, or the tenth question about Saturday, pay attention to what happens when your child gets home and what you do next. In the next episode, we'll tackle the practical question: What needs to happen now, and what can wait.

Build Your Meltdown Action Plan (MAP) Live Workshop
Want a plan for your child's meltdowns? Join Lisa for MAP Live on October 8 @ 7PM EST.
In this 90-minute workshop, we'll identify YOUR triggers, understand your reactions, and build a personalized plan for what to do before, during, and after your child's meltdowns.
You will walk away knowing what to do, and what not to do during a meltdown and a clear strategy for staying in control while your child is spinning out.
Early bird: $10 until September 25 | regular pricing: $20.
Register for MAP Live Here.

You get the call, the email, or the communication log, and now you are holding information about your autistic child's school day that they do not know you have. The question is whether to bring it up at home, and if you do, when and how. In this episode, Lisa Candera, The Autism Mom Coach, walks through the three-part decision tree she uses to make that call, with examples from her own experience with her son and from clients parenting kids in elementary school through high school.
In this episode, you'll learn:
How to decide whether the information you received is actually a problem, or just information about an ordinary school day.
Why your own regulation comes before your child's in deciding when to have the conversation.
What changes when you stop trying to let your child know that you know and start trying to understand the behavior.

The goal is not to get in front of every incident. It is to decide, on purpose, which ones are worth bringing home.
LIVE Workshop: Discover How To Build A Meltdown Action Plan for Your Child With Autism Using My Before, During, and After Method In 90 Minutes.
Thursday, October 8, 2026 · 7:00–8:30 PM ET · Live on Zoom
Price: $10 through October 1, then $20
Bring your child's specific triggers. Leave with a plan centered on your own regulation that you can actually use the next time it happens.
Register Here.

Ben turns 19 days after this episode airs, which means Lisa has now spent a full year parenting an autistic adult. She spent sixteen years preparing for his 18th birthday (the will, the special needs trust, the conservatorship petition, the placement research) and none of it prepared her for what the milestone actually felt like. In this episode she shares what that first year taught her.
In this episode, you'll learn:
Why you can prepare mentally and tactically for your child turning 18, but not emotionally, and what that gap feels like when it finally lands.
Why your role as the parent becomes more important after 18, not less, when your child moves to a new placement with an entirely new team and no IEP table to keep everyone informed.
Why passing the baton is so difficult when you have been your child's point person for regulation.

A year in, Lisa still does not know exactly where the line is between stepping back and stepping in. This episode is what she has learned so far, not a set of answers.

Feeling like a failure as an autism mom can become the default when you are constantly measuring yourself against impossible standards. In this episode of The Autism Mom Coach, Lisa breaks down how those expectations get created, why they keep you feeling like you are always coming up short, and how to replace them with standards that actually make sense for the life you are living.
In this episode, you'll learn:
How to catch the unrealistic “should” expectations that make every hard day feel like evidence you are doing something wrong.
How to set expectations around what you can actually control instead of your child’s behavior, progress, emotions, or outcomes.
How to make your expectations specific and achievable so you have something useful to work toward instead of another impossible standard to miss.

Autism parenting gives you plenty of opportunities to judge yourself. This episode gives you a better way to measure your effort, your progress, and the way you want to show up for your child.