Not long before my wife and I had our first child, we had dinner with another married couple — both writers — who at the time had a toddler of their own. I asked them for some advice. Instead, they gave me a caution. “Don’t write about your kid,” they said. “Being a parent is going to change your life, and it’s all you’re going to be able to think about. You’re going to want to turn those experiences and feelings into words. But there’s nothing you can say that hasn’t been said already, and probably better.”

I have two children now — a son and a daughter, both adolescents — and over the past decade-plus, I’ve ignored my friends’ advice on multiple occasions. My son, who’s on the autism spectrum, has inspired about a half-dozen or so essays (which isn’t that excessive, given that he’s now 14); and I’ve penned the occasional piece about my daughter, who shares a lot of my nerdy enthusiasms. Still, every time I sit down to write about children or parenting, I remember that conversation from 15 years ago.

I think about it even more during my daily perusal of the internet, which sometimes seems choked with articles penned by new moms and dads, all feeling overwhelmed and transformed — just as I once was, and just as our friends warned me I’d be.

Outside of websites specifically devoted to raising kids, the published discourse about child rearing in the mainstream media seems dominated by panicked think pieces, many of the “Holy crap, what just happened to my life?” variety.

I do wonder if the glut of anxious “oh no, what now?” articles gives the wrong idea about what raising kids is like

Type “having a baby” into Google, and auto-complete suggests “changes everything.” That search then turns up 14 million hits and page after page of laments about how infants and toddlers mess up work, sleep, TV watching, sex, being a cool person … you name it.

All these heaping piles of verbiage serve a purpose. They’re therapeutic for the author, undoubtedly. And for anyone dealing with similar situations — and unaware of the millions of words that have been penned on the topic over the centuries — stumbling on an article that articulates that vague sense of dissatisfaction can be both reassuring and revelatory.

Plus, some of those pieces are good! Gifted writers can transform even the most played-out subject into something worthwhile. My friend Nathan Rabin, for example, writes movingly and entertainingly about being a stay-at-home dad at the website Mom.me. (In fact, if you’re an acquaintance of mine and you’ve ever written one of these kinds of pieces, let’s just pretend that I’m not talking about you, if only for the sake of cordiality.)

But the preponderance of these articles reminds me a little of what eco-essayist Bill McKibben has written about our excess of professional nature photography. We really don’t need all that many new pictures of birds and bears each year, because there’s really not much new to see. And in the process of tramping through the wilderness to get the prettiest shot, photographers could be harming habitats and warping our understanding of the environment.

I don’t think parenting essays are destroying childhood. But I do wonder if the glut of anxious “oh no, what now?” articles gives the wrong idea about what raising kids is like.

Here, to my mind, is the problem:

Early childhood is just one chapter in a long, long book

Every parent’s experiences are different, with ebbs and flows of joy and despair that hit at different times. But by and large, new mothers and fathers endure three distinct patches of deep, deep regret:

1) During the first few months, when the novelty’s worn off and the baby becomes a noisy, smelly lump of unhappiness.

2) Around the age of 2, when the barely articulate toddler still needs help with almost everything, and gets sloppy drunk on the power of ordering adults around.

3) Around the age of 3, when the child’s growing independence has him or her questioning whether mealtime etiquette or sleeping schedules must be respected.

Each of these phases seems to last forever. But they’re really more like a few months, with the occasional relapse. (The relapses are the worst.) Babies become more likable once they start to smile, at which point getting up in the middle of the night to take care of them becomes more rewarding. Toddlers are maddening because they can be sweet one minute and satanic the next, but if parents hold the line on discipline and structure, eventually nature takes its course. Children mature.

Parents, too, grow into the job. What might initially seem unnatural — like being charged with sustaining the life of a tiny human being — becomes second nature through repetition. Later, as children become more capable of feeding, dressing, cleaning, and entertaining themselves, their moms and dads get back small chunks of time that they hadn’t even noticed they’d been losing to daily child maintenance. Suddenly they can read a long book again, or catch up on their Netflix queue.

Then, guess what? If all goes well, those folks get to spend 15 or so more years living in a home alongside reasonably well-behaved sons and daughters, who develop personalities and passions of their own and become active participants in whatever adventures the family has.

So to sum up: That’s roughly three or four years of mind-numbing kiddie shows and young parents feeling like they’re losing their identities, followed by a lifetime of rich, often highly rewarding relationships, marked by some of the most lasting memories that anyone can make.

Which of these stages of parenting really deserves more emphasis?

Obsessing over exhaustion and existential anxiety scares off potential parents

I have many friends who don’t have kids — some intentionally, some not — and I’d never tell any of them that having children is a crucial, essential part of the human experience. Life offers a lot of opportunities. Being a parent is just one of a multitude of possible paths; and it’s one that comes with costs and limitations that many are just fine doing without.

But while it’s presumptuous (and rude) to say, “Oh, you’ll change your mind one day” to anyone who insists they don’t want kids, the reason why the childless-by-choice deal with doubters is that people do change their minds, all the time. I’ve known plenty who were once adamant about never becoming a parent until one day, almost out of the blue, they started to entertain the possibility.

If you’re curious whether you should see a movie, never lean too heavily on the opinion of someone who’s only seen the first five minutes

So this bit is directed at those who are warming to the idea of spawning, and not to those who are a hard “nope.” Don’t hesitate just because the early years have such bad PR. All those essays from new moms who worry that they lack maternal instincts? Or from new dads who complain that they haven’t gone out to a bar with their buddies in months? They’re undoubtedly coming from a place of sincerity — and the experiences they relate are genuine — but the perspective is often limited.

It’s never a bad idea to be prepared for all the downsides of something so life-changing. But if you’re curious whether you should see a movie, never lean too heavily on the opinion of someone who’s only seen the first five minutes.

Focusing on the very young shortchanges their older peers

Boys and girls develop quirks and habits fairly early, but it’s nothing like what happens later on, when they become artsy 8-year-olds, bookish 10-year-olds, athletic 12-year-olds, or what have you. Little kids turn their folks’ brains to mush because they require a lot of dull routine, which — coupled with how demanding they can be — can make them, frankly, kind of hard to like sometimes.

It’s this side of children that’s too often the public face of youth. Either the little ones themselves are making a scene in a restaurant or airport or their parents are writing exasperated blog posts about them. The quieter, calmer, more multifaceted kids don’t get the same kind of exposure, either out in the world or on the web.

The non-print media doesn’t help in this regard. In sitcoms and TV dramas — or at least those not aimed at preadolescents — children are typically presented as obnoxiously precocious, whiny, and self-absorbed. It’s not hard to trace a line from the popular depiction of annoying toddlers and snotty teens to the pervasive complaints about spoiled, egotistical “millennials,” who’ve been warped by years of technology-aided instant gratification and our convoluted, coddling educational system.

And that’s incredibly unfair. What I see every day — not just with my son and daughter but with their classmates — is a rising generation that’s kind, curious, and creative, making amazing use of resources I never had at their age. Yes, they’re glued to their phones, but on those screens these kids are talking to each other, taking quizzes, reading the news, or sharing things they’ve made … all traits of well-rounded individuals.

There are upsides aplenty to parenting kids once they get over the toddler hump: teaching them about life and culture, reliving some of the best experiences of youth through their eyes, curating their experiences of holidays, and so on. Plus, as children age they typically get smarter and funnier, and develop actual talents. Soccer games and school concerts are a grind at the elementary level; later, they’re a genuine pleasure.

It’s easy to groan about the awfulness of “these kids today,” but getting to know them personally reveals another, more hopeful story. If nothing else, it shows that there are plenty of reasons to feel good about our leaders of tomorrow.

Who knows this? Parents do, whether they write it down for posterity or not.

There are so many other tales to tell

Here’s something else that many parents know: Nearly every age between 4 and 14 is “a great age.” And there are even extended stretches of babyhood and toddlerhood that are absolutely delightful. (Babies who sleep through the night, nap twice a day, and can sit up and play enthusiastically when they’re awake? They’re the absolute best.)

I don’t mean to give the impression that everything goes smoothly after the age of 4 for every parent — or any parent. Kids can be the source of all kinds of worry: They cost money, they get sick, they wreck the house, they pick fights with their siblings, they get bullied, they have their hearts broken, and they have all kinds of other problems that get piled onto whatever else adults are going through. And sometimes, no matter how much they love each other, the generations just butt heads, day after day.

My own children are in their early teenage years, which means there are challenges ahead that I haven’t faced yet. But while there’s plenty of writing out there about raising teens — in self-help books, family magazines, and blogs — it’s more of the “dos and don’ts” variety. Once kids are old enough to get report cards, there seems to be a lot less soul searching by their folks.

And that’s all I’m really seeking: a little variety. There’s nothing inherently wrong with writers having the umpteenth insight into the dreadful grind of the terrible twos. But every time I come across one of the articles, I want it to be accompanied by the same author tackling the subject of parenting four, six, and 10 years later. I want the follow-ups. Because from personal experience and thousands of other articles, by now I’m pretty sure I know how those toddler years are going to go.

Noel Murray is a freelance writer living in Arkansas with his wife and two kids. His articles about film, TV, music, and comics appear regularly in the A.V. Club, Rolling Stone, and the Los Angeles Times.

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Ever since kindergarten, my son, Archer, has been “in the system.” Before he started school, my wife and I notified the district that he’d been diagnosed with autism. Each year since then — Archer is wrapping up eighth grade — we’ve met with his teachers and school administrators to work out an Individualized Education Program, determining how many hours a week he’d be pulled out of class for one-on-one therapies and how much leeway his teachers should allow him to fidget, pace, or calm himself by humming softly.

Like most other parents of kids with autism spectrum disorders, my wife and I can expect to continue having these meetings until Archer graduates from high school. The Individualized Education Program has changed as he’s matured and his social skills have improved, but until Archer turns 18, his teachers will know about his disorder, and we’ll have the right to call meetings and make special requests on his behalf. That’s the way the system works, and it’s been working very well for autism spectrum kids across the country for years now.

“We make the assumption that high schools are getting students ready for college, and they’re not”

The bad news is that the familiar patterns of care that have proved so effective at moving autistic students through their primary and secondary education may actually end up hindering them if they choose to go to college — or even into the workforce.

“We make the erroneous assumption that high schools are getting students ready for college, and they’re not really,” said Dr. Gerard Hoefling, who works with the Autism Support Program at Drexel University. “That’s not their primary task. High schools do a wonderful job of getting students ready to graduate from high school.”

Fortunately, there are steps that parents, colleges, and autism spectrum students themselves can take to ease the transition from high school to college. Nearly all of them focus on helping students like Archer to become independent self-advocates — the same goal most parents have for their neurotypical kids, too.

The problem with high school

The exact number of men and women on the spectrum attending college today is hard to pin down, because there are few incentives at the moment for those students to register with disability services. Circa 2008, autism researchers estimated that anywhere from 1 to 2 percent of the university population had autism, Asperger’s, or some pervasive developmental disorder. Autism spectrum diagnoses have only risen since then.

Jane Brown, co-director of the organization College Autism Spectrum, described the big problem with how students on the autism spectrum transition from high school to college: “Up through high school, parents are advocates and CEO of their child’s education.”

But not only are universities not inclined to allow parents to stay in that driver’s seat, they’re legally bound in some cases to shut parents out. Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, once students turn 18, they become the stewards of their own records, from grades to whatever special learning tools and accommodations they might request.

In high school, the laws are geared toward making sure that all children, regardless of any disability, have a right to “a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment.” Colleges are under no such obligation to make sure students learn and thrive. They have to provide certain resources for people on the autistic spectrum, but it’s not their responsibility to make sure those resources get used.

How to bridge this disconnect between the structure of high school and the expectations of college? Dr. Susan White, co-director of Virginia Tech’s Autism Clinic, suggested that while parents of neurotypical kids usually start thinking seriously about college when their children enter their junior year of high school, it would help if parents of children on the spectrum started much sooner, asking the questions, “What are the life skills they’re going to need, and how can they start developing more independence?”

Over and over, the people I talked to about the challenges facing autistic and Asperger’s students in college said that “self-advocacy” was the biggest issue. Many of these teens have never known what was being requested on their behalf when they were in high school, and so don’t know what to ask for in college. Worse, due to the nature of the disorder, they lack the social skills to talk to peers or adapt to their situation.

“Students on the spectrum don’t pick things up just from watching,” Brown said. “That nonverbal social learning often is not a strength.”

There are some scattered materials online about how kids on the spectrum get ready for adulthood. Lisa Goring, the executive vice president of programs and services at Autism Speaks, recommends her organization’s online guides to transitioning from adolescence, postsecondary education, and joining the workforce. In an earlier Vox article, I wrote about the 10 things I’m trying to teach my 13-year-old autist: I mainly want him to be able to stay fed, get where he needs to be, and exhibit enough self-awareness about his quirks so he doesn’t unnerve the neurotypical.

But according to nearly everyone I spoke to about this topic, the number-one thing I should be doing for Archer is something I hadn’t even considered: making sure he’s in the room when my wife and I have our annual meetings with his school.

If more kids on the spectrum were aware of how much special leeway they were being given in elementary and secondary school, they’d know themselves what they need to work on. It’s hard to have a serious, potentially embarrassing personal conversation with any adolescent, but it’s especially important that parents talk with their autism spectrum children about the nature of their disorder and how they can manage it.

How to improve the transition: start preparing early

When I mention Archer to Brown, she good-naturedly nags, “You’re starting to get him ready for college now, right?”

Brown has a 23-year-old on the spectrum, and understands the confusion and frustration parents face when they’re handing college freshmen over to institutions that may see them as just another face in the crowd. She estimates that the average university disability services administrator has a caseload of between 150 and 600 students, and can’t hover over these kids’ shoulders in the way parents were used to in elementary and high school.

That said, she does believe colleges are doing a good job of adjusting to the needs of autistic students. They can’t substantially alter the requirements of a class that autists and the neurotypical alike are taking, but she thinks they do their best to “level the playing field.”

The average disability services administrator has a caseload of between 150 and 600 students

“You maybe give them extended time on an exam,” she says, “Or put them in a reduced-distraction environment. You might give them a note-taker. They have access to tutors and writing centers. And some colleges have specific programs for ASD students.”

As a counterpoint, though, Brown adds, “I don’t think there’s enough work being done on transition.”

Hoefling and his Drexel Autism Support Program colleague David Hallowell agree with that, and have been actively working to bridge that gap by talking to students at local secondary schools and making sure the program is aware of potential candidates when they apply.

Hoefling says, “There’s clearly a market and a need. And I think that speaks to the fact that a lot of that information’s not out there.”

“If you need a program, go to a place with a program”

Brown says it’s only natural for unusually bright autistic or Asperger’s kids to want to go to one of the most academically challenging schools in the country. But once they arrive, they often find that their intelligence alone doesn’t set them apart, and that even their quirks are harder to discern — which has the cumulative effect of making them dangerously invisible.

She recommends that parents take a closer look at places like the Rochester Institute of Technology, which tries not just to meet the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act but to exceed them, by fostering a real community among students on the spectrum. RIT has peer coaching and special small-group seminars focused on the challenges of living independently. As a result, according to Brown, the university has 100 students enrolled in its Spectrum Support Program, and nearly 100 more self-identified ASD students on campus who aren’t in the program.

It’s very simple, Brown says: “If you need a program, go to a place with a program.”

At Drexel, Hallowell and Hoefling are overseeing one of the more successful programs, the largest component of which is a one-to-one mentorship, with neurotypical students helping students on the spectrum determine and articulate their own needs.

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Hallowell explains, “These students know what their fears are. They know what their challenges are going to be. It’s important to treat them as autonomous learners. These are not individuals that need to be ‘saved.’ These are not individuals who are sick or broken and in need of being ‘fixed.’ These are fully functional, capable, healthy individuals who need some support in navigating what is a very complex social system. Our goal here is not to continue to infantilize them. Our goal is to help support them in reaching whatever goal it is they’d like to set for themselves.”

In high school, therapists work with spectrum students to meet generalized, quantified objectives like “recognizes facial expressions” and “gives appropriate response when asked a direct question.” Those same therapists meet regularly with teachers, and can intercede if the child has an outburst in class.

Programs like Drexel’s, on the other hand, make it clear from the outset that they won’t be mediating between the students and the faculty or administration. Instead, they offer informal social gatherings and client-driven counseling in which the students often come up with the areas where they want to improve, whether it’s something as simple as time management or something as complex as making friends.

Why colleges should recruit students on the spectrum

Hallowell and Hoefling say Drexel’s Autism Support Program serves students from across the different academic disciplines, but given my own son’s facility with math and computer programming — fairly common gifts for autists and Aspies — I wondered whether any of the top schools for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (a.k.a. STEM) were actively recruiting within the ASD ranks.

It’s one thing to offer to provide an exceptional level of accommodation, like RIT; it’s something else entirely to see students on the spectrum as an asset to an institution, with unique gifts that may not register in test scores or interviews. If a Stanford or an MIT wants only the best of the best in the STEM fields, are they calling around to high schools looking for kids who may have trouble holding eye contact but can solve complicated equations in their heads?

When I reached out to the media relations departments of some of those universities, the most common response I received was along the lines of, “We’ve never thought about that.”

“We should be trying not only to accommodate but to recruit and entice these very gifted students”

Brown at College Autism Spectrum answers, “I don’t know that any schools are looking expressly at the autism population and saying, ‘Gee, these people are better at this.'” She does note that some tech firms have been thinking along those lines. (STEM Force Technology and Denmark’s Specialisterne, to name two.)

On the flip side, Dr. Susan White, co-director of Virginia Tech’s Autism Clinic, said she’s been trying to encourage colleges to think of programs for students on the spectrum as recruiting tools. “I don’t think most facilities have the manpower, or perhaps the forethought, to do that kind of thing,” she said. “But yes, we could and should be trying not only to accommodate but to recruit and entice these very gifted students.”

White added that one reason to create an inclusive, nurturing environment for people with ASD is that it’s part of the university’s mission to foster diversity — including “neurodiversity.” Hallowell and Hoefling are on board with that idea.

Hallowell said, “It’s kind of like tech firms that don’t offer domestic partnership benefits. You’re not going to have any employees. These kinds of support programs can be a competitive differentiator.”

All parents want the same thing for their kids: independence

In my essay about what I want my son to learn before college, I wrote that ultimately my anxieties are right in line with those of any parent. The same is true when it comes to the way parents, students, and universities interact. Brown notes that even neurotypical students need help with self-advocacy — knowing when it’s appropriate to ask for extra help with a class or an assignment — and Goring says she learned a lot about detaching when her neurotypical child left for college.

Goring said, “We can’t see the grades if they don’t want us to, and we really don’t have any control, even though we’re paying all that money.” Virginia Tech’s White sees this, too. “From the parents’ side, they can feel stuck, like the door’s closing in their faces.”

Drexel’s Hoefling agrees that high schools and colleges could do better at helping parents let go. As for what his program’s mentors are doing to help ASD students, he says, “A lot of it is just general problems that any late adolescent or early adult might encounter when they’re making the transition to college. Some of it is academic. One of the first things we do is try to make sure the student is on sound academic footing, because we’re not going to be able to help them if they’re not here. After that, a lot of it is helping students acquire adequate interpersonal skills and self-advocacy, which is something that’s not that unusual for students not on the spectrum, but is more nuanced for students with ASD.”

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He goes on to tell the story of a student who asked his mentor with help on learning “how to flirt,” and how they debated internally about whether that was appropriate. Finally they determined, “That’s just an elaborate type of interpersonal communication, and it’s what young adults should be doing, developing the skills to form more intimate relationships. He’s calling it flirting, but really it’s just a different type of friendship.”

Because people on the spectrum process and express information and emotions differently than the neurotypical, their struggles can magnify issues that everyone deals with. How do we make friends? How do we manage our time? How do we ask for what we need? How do we lead lives that are both productive and personally satisfying? These are questions that are often internalized but unspoken — which means they often go unanswered, leaving people feeling stymied and depressed.

The success of early intervention programs for autistic kids hasn’t just had the effect of helping with the “mainstreaming” of primary and secondary students with autism. It’s also forced teachers and administrators to think about how different children learn and mature in different ways. Now, as the rising autism spectrum generation heads into young adulthood, parents and institutions alike have another opportunity to reevaluate the ways they operate, through atypical eyes.