What is your most rewarding moment as a parent?

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Hey all

I just want to focus on something else for once. My kids are not diagnosed and I have not seen any evidence suggesting they might be. I am the parent on the spectrum. So I ask other parents (regardless of diagnosis or suspicion) what was the best parenting moment of your life?

This can be funny, exciting, hard lesson you learned or anything else you can think of.

What a great thread idea.

I'm a mom of many (more than 6, fewer than 12); everyone is on the spectrum. Most of my children haven't yet reached adulthood, and there have been too many rewarding moments to count, even now. Every triumph from either side of parenting (mine or kiddo) is rewarding. Those moments will only grow in number as the years go by, I'm sure....

• My first baby nursing on her own, after months of struggle. My own personal time, cumulatively nursing babies, reaching 20 years.
• My mostly-nonverbal Level 3 teen recognizing the danger of his baby brother climbing the ladder to the attic and, without prompting, quickly but gently plucking him off the ladder and safely putting him down on the floor.
• My family all together at a restaurant or church, and older folks approaching us to compliment the kids' behavior and our family size.
• My older kids delighting in the baby's milestones, and expressing desires that we be blessed with more.
• When reading and math click with each one of them. When toilet training clicks.
• My first date with my husband, after nearly 2 decades of being unable to leave the kids with anyone, and the 3 developmentally-older kids saying, "You should go on more dates! We like taking care of the little ones."
• My Level 3 son saying, "Mommy." Every time. It's one of the few non-food words he says.
• My oldest hanging out with friends without my supervision, going to her first formal dance, and getting her first job.
• My developmentally-oldest son, around 10-12 years old at the time, leading a troop of his little brothers out in the front yard, armed with a bow and arrow set, declaring that they're going rabbit hunting in our suburban neighborhood. [I had to stop this, obviously, lol.]
• My kids banding together and searching the neighborhood when one of their siblings went missing.
• My son asking his brothers, "Who will take care of [Level 3 brother] when Mommy and Daddy die?" And one of them saying, "I will! No, WE will! It'll be okay."
• When I came out of a very dark place, as a mom of 4 at the time, avoiding the temptation to end myself. Went on to be blessed with many more beautiful and kind little humans who wouldn't have graced this earth, if I hadn't come out of that.

Well I couldn't look after my daughter when she was little but she came back to live with me when she was 15 or 16

Anyway to watch her grow into an amazing young woman and hold down a really good job after getting 2 degrees from a top university is so rewarding but then I always say she's a credit to herself because she had such a tough start in life and she's made it work to her advantage

She's "right on" man

Oh yeah she does have an autism diagnosis and she waiting for an adhd diagnosis as well

Recent one: my daughter finally started speaking my language last week.

We're raising her bilingual and I'm the only native Swedish speaker around atm. She's 3 and a half and has so far only communicated in her mom's language (Japanese), but now she's finally gained the courage to speak to me directly. Five word sentences came out just like that...

You're a proud daddy

Too much sometimes... If I overshare to other dads at work (or God forbid, middle age men without kids) they silently hate me. Trick is to look absolutely exhausted so at least they feel you pay some price for it..

(I am absolutely exhausted 90% of the time though)

When my daughter was about 4 we were out somewhere and she lost her temper with me about something that I don't recall. There were loads of people around and she was shouting very loudly and she called me a 'pompous windbag'.

It went from quite an uncomfortable situation to a very funny one and several people complimented her vocabulary. I was pretty proud of her that day.

That's your name from now on I hope you know

I mean, she wasn't wrong.

Yeah she's very perceptive and that is definitely something to be proud of as a parent

My daughter makes a lot of effort on her appearance and she gets compliments wherever we go and that makes me feel proud