The Filter Between Us: Neurodivergent Family Therapy for a Parent and Adult Child

A parent with ADHD and an adult AuDHD child come to family therapy after years of strain. The child hears the parent's advice as control. The parent reads the child's pauses as coldness, and after enough years of it, as rejection. Both of them are sure they already know what the other person means.

In neurodivergent family therapy this is a common starting point. Both readings usually turn out to be misreadings, and misreadings can be worked with in a way that a verdict cannot.

The first thing I name in a session like this is what the room is for. Two adults are present to repair or connect. Nobody is there to win an argument, and I say so plainly, because parents and adult children often walk in carrying cases they have been rehearsing for a decade. Both people are well past the years when a parent could simply decide for a child. That shift changes what a conversation between them can be, and it also removes the old structure that used to settle disagreements.

While each person is building a case, neither one can hear intent. So before anyone responds, I ask each of them to say back what they heard the other person say. I do not ask what they think the other person meant, and I do not ask for a rebuttal. Just what they heard.

The distance between what was said and what landed is usually where the work sits. A parent describes something they said as an expression of care. The adult child says it back as criticism. Neither one knew the sentence had two versions until that moment.

Say this parent grew up poor, which is common enough in this pattern. Poverty is sociological, and it also lives in the body. The closest comparison I have is being hunted. You never get to rest, and there is always another bill arriving before the last one is settled. Someone raised that way learns to scan for danger and keeps scanning long after the danger has passed.

When a child of such a parent leaves home and starts making choices the parent would not have made, the advice comes out of that scanning. The parent is trying to hand over the deal they never got, and underneath it sits a specific fear of watching their child fall into the hardship they spent a life climbing out of.

What the adult child receives is a stream of instructions from someone who seems to doubt they can run their own life. The worry and the reception belong to the same exchange, and the exchange only makes sense once the child knows where it started. Asked whether they knew that history, most adult children say they did not.

It is rare in family therapy for adult children to know their parents' origin story, and that makes developmental sense. A parent cannot safely tell a five-year-old that the rent might not get paid, or that some nights there was not enough to eat. Information like that makes a child feel unsafe. Protective parents hold it back, often for decades, and many never find a moment when it feels right to share.

Children tend to see parents as something close to deities, the people who own the house and decide yes or no. By the time a child is able to see a parent as a person, usually somewhere between 14 and 22, the early history has long since gone quiet. Adolescence and early adulthood bring individuation, the process of separating from parents and forming an independent self. Individuation also opens a path toward something closer to a peer relationship with a parent, a working relationship between two adults. Many families never take that path because the backstory was never shared, and the adult child is still relating to the version of the parent they built at age seven.

One tool I use here is a structured interview. The adult child asks the parent small, concrete questions:

• Where did you live when you were five?
• Where were you born?
• What were your mom's and dad's favorite meals?
• What is your favorite memory from childhood?
• What were your grandparents like?

The questions are small on purpose. Specific details make a parent human in a way that broad summaries cannot, and they give the adult child context for behavior that previously looked arbitrary or controlling.

Asked why they came to session, a parent will often name something practical first, such as access to grandchildren or an end to the tension at holidays. Those are real and reasonable wants. Asked directly about the relationship itself, the answer usually expands, and the parent says they want to know their adult child as well.

Adult children often hear the first answer and stop listening, because it confirms what they already suspected, that the parent is there for something other than them. Asking the parent to expand, and then asking the adult child what they heard in the expansion, is often the first moment the child hears that they are wanted for themselves.

In many of these families, much of the disconnection turns out to come from neurotype. The adult child is autistic, or AuDHD, and the parent has never been told, or has been told and has no framework for what it means.

The double empathy problem, described by autistic researcher Damian Milton in 2012, holds that communication between people of different neurotypes breaks down in both directions. Older models placed the whole communication problem on the autistic person. Milton's framing places it between two people who process information differently, and it holds that empathy is present on both sides. Each person interprets the other through the reference points they have, and those reference points do not match.

Processing time is one of the most frequent points of friction. Many autistic people need longer to take in what was said and form a reply. In real time that pause can read as cold or dismissive. The listener fills the silence with an interpretation, and the interpretation is often "you don't care."

Monotropism, a theory developed by Dinah Murray and colleagues, adds another layer. Monotropic attention concentrates on fewer channels at a time, with more depth in each. Shifting that attention quickly to a new topic or a new emotional demand takes real effort. From the outside, the difficulty of shifting can look like inflexibility or stubbornness, when the person is still finishing the last thought.

Many autistic adults also describe years of going along with whatever was asked of them. When you cannot respond at the pace a conversation demands, agreeing is often the quickest way through it. Over time that becomes a form of masking. When someone learns they are autistic later in life, they often begin sorting out which parts of themselves were their own and which parts were accommodation to everyone around them. Relationships tend to experience that sorting as sudden resistance. From the inside it is a person finally able to say what was true all along. I wrote more about this in Why You Lose People When You Stop Masking.

The parent's ADHD produces a similar pause for a different reason. Attention in ADHD oscillates, so an incoming message can land during a stretch of inattention and need to be caught up on later. ADHD also affects time sense, which can show up as lateness or as walking into a room with no memory of why. It also pulls strongly toward novelty. I sometimes describe people with ADHD as hobby collectors, deeply interested in a subject until the next one arrives.

An AuDHD person carries both profiles at once. Autism leans toward routine and predictability, and ADHD leans toward speed and flexibility. Of the two, autism tends to be the more rigid neurotype, and that rigidity works on ADHD a little like kryptonite. Living with both is an ongoing internal negotiation. In a family conversation, one person's need for sameness and time runs straight into the other's pace, and into a tendency to say the next thing before the last one has settled.

The main tool is curiosity at the moment of misreading. When a parent notices themselves interpreting an adult child as cold, they can wonder out loud whether a processing pause is happening, and ask about it. They might say, "When you said that, I felt dismissed. Is that what you meant?" The question slows the exchange enough for the other person to catch up, and it hands over the interpretation to confirm or correct instead of leaving anyone to assume.

The adult child's part is permission to say "I don't know yet," or "I'm buying time because I need to think about it," and to come back to the conversation once their processing has caught up. Most parents would much rather hear "I'm not sure" than sit alone with a silence they have to interpret.

Both of these tools work in both directions. Each person has a preferred way to receive information. Knowing each other's neurotype gives each of them a more accurate filter for what the other person likely means.

Family therapy is rarely a single session, and continuing is a decision both adults have to consent to. Before going deep into specific conflicts, the neurotype piece needs to be on the table. If it is not, every later conversation gets run through the same misreadings, and each misreading adds weight to the story each person already believes about the other.

Two neurotypes in one family call for a different filter when each person listens, and that filter can be learned.

What is neurodivergent family therapy? Neurodivergent family therapy is family therapy that accounts for differences in how each family member processes information, including autism and ADHD, and people who are AuDHD. It treats communication breakdowns as a mismatch between neurotypes and works on both sides of the exchange.

Can family therapy help an adult child and a parent with different neurotypes? Yes. Sessions focus on repair and on learning how each person's neurotype shapes the way messages are sent and received. Many families also benefit from learning the parent's origin story, which adult children rarely know.

What is the double empathy problem in families? The double empathy problem, described by Damian Milton, holds that communication between people of different neurotypes breaks down in both directions. In families, it often shows up as a parent reading an autistic adult child as cold while the child reads the parent as intrusive or critical.

Why does my autistic adult child seem cold when we talk? Many autistic people need more time to process what was said before they can respond. That pause can look like distance or disinterest. Asking whether a pause is processing time, and allowing space to return to the topic later, often changes how the conversation feels on both sides.

• Family therapy between adults works toward repair, and saying back what you heard comes before any response.
• A parent's advice often comes from fear rooted in their own history, and an adult child may receive it as control.
• Most adult children never hear their parents' origin story, for developmentally sound reasons, and a structured interview can fill that gap.
• A parent who names something practical first may also want the relationship itself, and asking them to expand can bring that out.
• The double empathy problem describes a breakdown in both directions between neurotypes, with empathy present on both sides.
• Autistic processing time and ADHD attention shifts can both produce pauses that the other person misreads, and monotropic attention can look like inflexibility.
• Checking your interpretation out loud, and allowing time to process, gives both people a way back into the conversation.

Content on this site is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Nothing here creates a therapist-client relationship. If you are in crisis, call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) or go to your nearest emergency room.

This piece describes patterns that recur across many years of practice. No client, session, or family is described here, and any resemblance to a particular family is a resemblance to a common pattern.

For a related perspective on cross-neurotype communication, see Damian Milton's original 2012 paper "On the ontological status of autism: the 'double empathy problem'" in Disability & Society.

Well wishes. 🙏

Mx. Love C. Dialogos, LMFT Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist | Buddhist Chaplain Pronouns: They/Them