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. In neurodivergent family therapy this is a common starting point, and both readings usually turn out to be misreadings that can be worked with.

The first thing I name is what the session is for. Two adults are in the room to repair or connect, and nobody is there to win an argument. Parents and adult children often arrive with cases they have been rehearsing for years, and while each person is building a case, neither one can hear intent.

So I ask each of them to say back what they heard the other person say, before any response. The distance between what was said and what landed is usually where the work sits.

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 or another creditor waiting. Someone raised that way keeps scanning for danger long after it has passed.

When a child of such a parent leaves home and makes 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, afraid of watching their child struggle the way they did. 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.

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 the housing was not secure. Information like that makes a child feel unsafe, so parents hold it back.

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 can see a parent as a person, usually somewhere between 14 and 22, the early history has gone quiet. Individuation opens a path toward something closer to a peer relationship, and many families never take it because the backstory was never shared.

One tool I use is a structured interview. The adult child asks small, concrete questions. Where did you live when you were five? What did your parents like to eat? What were your grandparents like? What is your favorite memory from childhood? Specific details make a parent human in a way general summaries cannot.

In many of these families, much of the disconnection turns out to come from neurotype, and the parent has no framework for what that 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. Empathy is present on both sides. The breakdown comes from how information is sent and received, with each person interpreting the other through their own reference points.

Processing time is a frequent point of friction. Many autistic people need longer to take in what was said and form a reply, and 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."

The parent's ADHD produces a similar pause for a different reason. Attention oscillates, so a message can land during a stretch of inattention. ADHD also affects time sense, and it pulls toward novelty. I sometimes call people with ADHD hobby collectors.

An AuDHD person carries both profiles. Autism leans toward routine and predictability, and ADHD leans toward speed and flexibility, so living with both is an ongoing negotiation. In a family conversation, one person's need for sameness runs straight into the other's pace.

The main tool is curiosity at the moment of misreading. A parent can 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.

The child's part is permission to say "I don't know yet" and come back to the conversation once they have processed it. Most parents would rather hear that than sit alone with a silence they have to interpret.

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

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Well wishes. 🙏

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