Most of the mistakes on this list were made by people who cared a great deal. That is what makes them worth writing about.
Nearly every item below has come up in an intake call or a session since we opened our doors in Colorado. A parent describes something they have been doing for months, usually on advice from someone they trusted, and it turns out to be working against the thing they want most.
Note that none of this is a judgment. Autism advice is contradictory, loud, and frequently sold by people with something to gain. Knowing what not to do with an autistic child is often more useful than another list of strategies, because removing one harmful habit tends to produce faster change than adding three new techniques.
Each item below includes what to do instead, because a list of prohibitions on its own is not much help at seven on a Sunday evening.
1. Do Not Try to Stop Stimming
Rocking, hand flapping, spinning, humming, and finger flicking are regulatory behaviors. They help a child manage sensory input, excitement, and stress, and they are doing a job.
A mother in Denver told us recently that she had been gently holding her son’s hands down for months because a relative said it would help him fit in at school. He had started biting his sleeve instead. The regulation need did not disappear when the behavior did.
Suppressing stimming removes a coping tool and typically produces a replacement that is harder to live with. Our fuller explainer on stimming covers why it happens and when it is worth a second look.
What to Do Instead
Leave it alone unless it is unsafe, physically damaging, or genuinely blocking something your child wants to do. If a stim is unsafe, such as head banging or skin picking, the goal is a safer behavior that meets the same need rather than nothing at all.
2. Do Not Force Eye Contact
Requiring a child to look at you before you respond is still common advice, and it rests on a mistaken assumption. For many autistic people, eye contact is not a neutral act of attention. It is effortful, sometimes physically uncomfortable, and it competes with listening.
A father in Aurora described his daughter as ignoring him. In session it became clear she was listening closely with her body turned away, and repeating instructions back under her breath. She had been giving him her full attention in a form he had been taught not to recognize.
What to Do Instead
Judge attention by response rather than gaze. If your child follows the instruction, they were listening. Getting down to their level, using their name once, and pausing gives most children a better chance than “look at me” ever will.
3. Do Not Discipline a Meltdown
A meltdown is a nervous system past capacity. Language processing drops, and the behavior continues even after the original trigger is removed. A consequence delivered mid-meltdown adds demand to a system that has none available.
Parents in Lakewood asked us why time-outs had stopped working after two weeks of getting worse. What we found was that consequences were arriving during the episode, not after, which was extending each one rather than shortening it.
Worth knowing separately: when you change how you respond to a behavior, it often intensifies before it improves. Our piece on extinction bursts explains why that stage is expected rather than a sign of failure.
What to Do Instead
Reduce input. Fewer words, less light and noise, more space, and wait. Teach and problem-solve later, once your child can process language again. If a limit is genuinely being tested rather than a meltdown occurring, hold it calmly and follow through.
4. Do Not Talk About Your Child as Though They Cannot Hear You
Waiting rooms, IEP meetings, and kitchen tables are full of conversations about a child conducted three feet from that child. Receptive understanding often exceeds what a child can express, and many autistic adults describe remembering these conversations vividly.
A teenager we worked with in Boulder repeated a phrase his mother had used about him during a phone call, word for word, several weeks later. He had understood all of it.
What to Do Instead
Assume your child hears and understands everything. Step out of the room for adult conversations. Where possible, include your child in discussions about them at a level they can access, which is also a foundation for self-advocacy later.
5. Do Not Delay AAC While Waiting for Speech
The belief that offering a communication device will reduce a child’s motivation to speak is persistent and unsupported by the research. Withholding a communication system does not accelerate speech. It leaves a child without a way to be understood in the meantime.
A family in Fort Collins had been told to wait another year before trying a device. Their four-year-old had no reliable way to say no, and most of the behavior they had called defiance turned out to be refusal with no other outlet.
Teaching a reliable way to request, refuse, and ask for help is the core of functional communication training, and it can run alongside speech therapy rather than replacing it.
What to Do Instead
Introduce a communication system now, in whatever form fits: pictures, signs, a device, or a combination. Ask your speech-language pathologist about AAC directly if it has not been raised.
6. Do Not Assume Nonspeaking Means Not Understanding
Speech and comprehension are separate abilities. A child who does not talk may follow complex conversation, read, and understand far more than their expressive language suggests.
A grandmother in Longmont had been simplifying everything she said to her grandson to two-word phrases. When his team started speaking to him normally, he began responding to detail nobody realized he was tracking.
What to Do Instead
Speak to your child at their age level rather than their speech level. Presume competence and adjust downward only if there is evidence you need to. For younger children, early intervention can assess receptive language properly rather than inferring it from what a child says.
7. Do Not Use Special Interests as Leverage
Removing a deep interest as punishment is one of the most common and most counterproductive strategies we see. Special interests are regulating, motivating, and frequently the strongest bridge into learning and connection.
A boy in Loveland lost access to his train books after a hard week at school. His behavior worsened noticeably, which is what tends to happen when the main source of regulation is withdrawn during the week regulation is most needed.
Interests are also useful fuel. Sensory and movement outlets serve a related purpose, and our roundup of Colorado sensory gyms covers places families use for that.
What to Do Instead
Build interests into learning rather than holding them hostage. Count trains, read about trains, write about trains. Keep the interest available and use other consequences if a consequence is genuinely warranted.
8. Do Not Treat Every Behavior as a Behavior Problem
New or escalating behavior frequently has a medical or sensory cause. Constipation, reflux, ear infections, dental pain, poor sleep, and seizure activity all show up as behavior in children who cannot easily report symptoms.
A family in Greeley spent weeks on a behavior plan for sudden aggression that resolved within days of treating a painful ear infection nobody had checked for.
Toileting is a frequent example of the same pattern, where a medical issue gets read as refusal. Our guide to potty training covers how to tell them apart. If the vocabulary in this area is unfamiliar, our guide to ABA explains how behavior analysts think about causes.
What to Do Instead
Rule out pain and illness before building a plan, particularly when a behavior appears suddenly in a child who was previously settled. Mention the behavior change to your pediatrician explicitly rather than describing it as a discipline issue.
9. Do Not Take “Fine at School” at Face Value
Many autistic children mask at school, holding themselves together through the day and releasing at home. Parents then hear that everything is fine while facing daily meltdowns at 3:45.
A mother in Castle Rock was told her son had no difficulties at all. He was also refusing to get out of the car most mornings, which was not appearing in any school report.
Masking has a cost, and after-school collapse is usually the bill arriving. Our guide to partnering with your child’s teacher covers how to raise this without putting the school on the defensive.
What to Do Instead
Report what you see at home as data rather than as a contradiction. Ask about unstructured parts of the day specifically. When difficulty is clearly inside the building, school-based support can work in the setting where it occurs.
10. Do Not Spring Changes Without Warning
Unannounced changes are one of the most reliable triggers of distress, and one of the most avoidable. A different route, a substitute teacher, or a cancelled plan can undo an otherwise good day.
A family in Parker tracked their daughter’s hardest days for a month and found almost all of them followed an unexpected schedule change nobody had thought to mention.
Predictability at the start of the day does a great deal of the work, which our guide to low-sensory mornings covers. For the beginning of a school year specifically, planning around first-day jitters is worth doing early.
One safety note: sudden distress in an unfamiliar place raises the risk of a child leaving quickly. If that has happened even once, our piece on why children elope is worth reading before the next outing.
What to Do Instead
Give warnings in the same words each time. Use a visual schedule your child can see. When plans change unexpectedly, name the change out loud and say what is happening instead, even if there is no time to prepare properly.
11. Do Not Pursue Unproven or Dangerous Treatments
There is no cure for autism, and products claiming to provide one are misleading by definition. Some carry real risk.
Chlorine dioxide products, sold as Miracle Mineral Solution, MMS, or the Chlorine Dioxide Protocol, become a bleaching agent when mixed as directed. The FDA warns consumers not to drink them, citing reports of severe vomiting, life-threatening low blood pressure from dehydration, and acute liver failure. Chelation therapy for autism is likewise unapproved and has been linked to deaths.
Parents have one fewer reference point here than they did a year ago. The FDA’s consumer page titled Be Aware of Potentially Dangerous Products and Therapies that Claim to Treat Autism was retired at the end of 2025, which HHS described as routine removal of dated content. An archived copy remains available online.
A father in Colorado Springs asked us about a supplement protocol he had found in a parent group. It is a fair question to bring to a clinician, and it is a much better use of a session than most families expect.
What to Do Instead
Run anything you are considering past your pediatrician before starting it, including supplements. Be wary of the words cure, detox, miracle, and secret formula. If a child has ingested something concerning, the Colorado Poison Center is free and staffed around the clock at 1-800-222-1222. For what does have support, the National Clearinghouse on Autism Evidence and Practice maintains the current list of evidence-based practices.
12. Do Not Assume Everyone Uses the Same Language
Some people prefer identity-first language, as in autistic child. Others prefer person-first, as in child with autism. Many autistic adults and self-advocacy organizations favor identity-first, while a good deal of clinical and medical writing still uses person-first.
A parent in Pueblo apologized to us for using the wrong word, having been corrected twice in one week by two people who disagreed with each other.
Neither preference is a moral failing, and this article uses both, since the title reflects how families search and the body follows our house style. What causes harm is insisting that your preference is the only acceptable one.
What to Do Instead
Ask, then follow. When your child can express a preference, theirs outranks everyone else’s. Related language worth retiring: high functioning and low functioning, which tend to obscure the specific support a person needs.
13. Do Not Try to Carry It Alone
Parent exhaustion is not a side issue. It determines whether any plan survives past week two, and it is the variable most often left out of the conversation entirely.
A single mother in Thornton told us she had not had an evening off since the previous summer. Every strategy we might have suggested would have failed on that foundation, so the first thing we worked on was respite rather than behavior.
Our article on parent burnout exists because this is common rather than exceptional. If funding is the barrier, our starting guide to Colorado Medicaid waivers explains programs that many families qualify for without realizing it.
What to Do Instead
Ask for help earlier than feels justified. Parent training gives you a plan rather than more strategies to hold in your head. In-home sessions target the routines where things break down. If a weekday cannot absorb anything more, weekend availability exists for exactly that. And daycare-based support carries the plan into childcare so it does not rest entirely on you.
A Note on Restraint and Seclusion
One item deserves separating from the list, because it applies to the adults outside your home as much as to you.
Restraint must never be used as punishment or to gain compliance. Colorado’s rules are explicit on this point, and restraint is permitted only in an emergency after less restrictive alternatives have failed. CDE’s behavior resources set out the requirements and the positive alternatives school teams are directed toward.
If your child has been restrained at school, you are entitled to written notification on defined timelines. Ask for it in writing, keep the copies, and share them with your clinical team.
Reading a list like this can leave you cataloguing everything you have done wrong. That is not the point of it.
Every parent works from the advice available at the time, and much of the advice around autism is confidently wrong. Noticing a pattern and changing it is the entire job.
If you take one thing from this, take the underlying question. Before responding to a behavior, ask what it is doing for your child. That single habit prevents most of the thirteen mistakes above without needing to remember any of them.
Reach out to Achieve ABA Therapy Group. If something on this list sounds like your house, we can help you work out what to change first.
FAQs
Is it wrong to say autistic child instead of child with autism?
Neither is wrong. Many autistic adults and self-advocacy groups prefer identity-first language, while much clinical writing uses person-first. Ask the person or family involved and follow their preference, and give your child’s own preference the most weight once they can express one.
Should I ever stop my child from stimming?
Only when it is unsafe, causing physical damage, or preventing something your child wants to do. Even then the goal is a safer behavior meeting the same need rather than removing the behavior outright.
My child seems fine at school but falls apart at home. What does that mean?
It often reflects masking, where a child holds themselves together through the school day and releases at home where it is safe. What you see at home is real information, not a contradiction of the school’s report.
How do I know whether a treatment I found online is safe?
Run it past your pediatrician before starting, including supplements. Treat the words cure, detox, miracle, and secret formula as warning signs, and be cautious of anything sold directly by the person recommending it.
Is it too late if I have been doing some of these things?
No. Most of these patterns come from advice parents were given in good faith, and changing course tends to produce noticeable improvement within weeks rather than months.
What is the single most useful change to make first?
For most families, stopping consequences delivered during meltdowns. It is the change that produces the fastest visible difference and it costs nothing to start tonight.
Sources
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Danger: Don’t Drink Miracle Mineral Solution or Similar Products: https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/danger-dont-drink-miracle-mineral-solution-or-similar-products
- ProPublica. Reporting on the retirement of the FDA consumer page Be Aware of Potentially Dangerous Products and Therapies that Claim to Treat Autism, December 2025: https://www.propublica.org/article/rfk-jr-fda-removes-autism-treatments-warning
- Colorado Poison Center, Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Safety, Denver Health. 1-800-222-1222: https://www.copoisoncenter.org/
- Colorado Department of Education, Office of Special Education. Behavior resources, including restraint and seclusion requirements and positive behavior supports: https://ed.cde.state.co.us/cdesped/resources/behavior
- Steinbrenner JR, Hume K, Odom SL, et al. Evidence-Based Practices for Children, Youth, and Young Adults with Autism. National Clearinghouse on Autism Evidence and Practice, UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, 2020: https://ncaep.fpg.unc.edu/
- Prizant BM, Duchan JF (1981) and Prizant BM (1983) on the communicative functions of echolalia, for the sections on comprehension and communication