08/21/2026
My latest blog- so very hard to write- please take a minute to read this post- as your kids go back to school, as you wrap up your summer, and especially if you know my sweet Anderson Shope.
The Quiet Survivors of Autism
For the first time in what feels like her entire life, Anderson isn’t going back to school. She just said this to me yesterday and it made me think.
No back-to-school shopping. No new schedule. No first day.
She is a college graduate now, standing at the beginning of her adult life, and maybe that’s why I have found myself thinking so much about the little girl she used to be.
And about the childhood she actually had.
There is so much conversation about children with autism. About their struggles, their behaviors, their needs and their futures.
But we don’t talk nearly enough about the other children growing up inside those families.
The siblings.
The quiet survivors of autism.
Anderson grew up in what, looking back, sometimes felt like a war zone.
That is difficult for me to write because I love my son more than words could ever explain. Dylan didn’t choose autism. He didn’t choose the behaviors that came with it.
But Anderson didn’t choose any of it either.
There were years when I was barely surviving. I didn’t sleep. Dylan’s behaviors were intense and unpredictable. Anderson watched her brother hit me. She watched her dad and me fight under the enormous stress we were living with. She watched furniture get broken and holes get kicked into walls.
And somehow, in the middle of all of that, there was this little girl growing up.
She learned very early that a fun family outing could change in seconds.
We would leave the house excited to do something together, and so many times we would leave early because Dylan was having a tantrum or couldn’t handle being there.
A simple trip to the grocery store wasn’t simple.
Dylan might take off his clothes, open food in the aisles or run away. People would stare.
And Anderson was standing there too.
She spent so much of her childhood being watched because of something her brother was doing.
I don’t know that I ever fully understood what that must have felt like for her.
While I was trying to keep Dylan safe, trying to calm him down, trying to ignore the stares and just get all of us through another moment, she was taking it all in.
She was always along for the ride.
And she wasn’t the one with the disability.
I remember watching other families on Facebook. Vacations. Siblings laughing together. Summer adventures. Families seemingly just picking up and going somewhere without calculating every possible thing that could go wrong.
I wanted those things for her.
I wanted them for all of us.
When Anderson was 13, she watched her brother move out of our home.
Think about that for a minute.
Her brother was still like a child, the needs of a toddler and suddenly he didn’t live with us anymore.
And then autism took something else from her.
Because Dylan couldn’t come back to our house without becoming confused about why he couldn’t stay, we eventually made another incredibly difficult decision.
We moved.
Anderson had to leave the beautiful home she grew up in—the home I brought her home from the hospital to, the neighborhood where her friends lived, the place that was hers. She loved that house as much as I did.
She was in high school, and we moved to a condo community filled mostly with retired adults.
She never loved that condo.
And when I think about that now, my heart breaks a little.
At the time, I was making the best decisions I knew how to make for our family. So much of our life was about figuring out what Dylan needed and then rearranging everything around it.
But Anderson was rearranging her life too.
She just didn’t get a vote.
That’s the part I think we miss when we talk about autism.
There are siblings all over the world who learn to adapt before they are old enough to understand why they have to.
They learn that plans change.
They learn that Mom and Dad’s attention sometimes has to go somewhere else.
They learn to ignore strangers staring.
They learn to explain their sibling.
They learn to wait.
They learn to adjust.
They learn to be okay.
And sometimes I wonder how often we stopped to ask if they actually were.
I can’t go back and give Anderson a different childhood.
And if I am being truthful, there are parts of her childhood that I wish had been easier. There are things I wish she hadn’t seen. Experiences I wish she could have had. Moments when I wish I could have divided myself in two and given both of my children everything they needed.
But I also look at the woman standing in front of me today.
And I am in awe of her.
She has a level of compassion that can’t be taught in a classroom.
She notices people other people overlook.
She has empathy because she has lived empathy.
And the love she has for her brother is something I will never be able to adequately put into words.
After everything autism took from her childhood, she never blamed Dylan.
She loves him fiercely.
Maybe that’s what amazes me most.
People have told me over the years that God gave Dylan to me because He knew I could handle it.
I’ve never really believed that.
There were plenty of days I couldn’t handle it.
But I do believe God knew I would need Anderson.
That little girl lived through the hardest years of my life right beside me.
She saw things I wish she hadn’t.
She gave up things she shouldn’t have had to.
She grew up differently because autism entered our family before she was even old enough to understand what the word meant.
And somehow, she turned all of it into compassion instead of resentment.
Strength instead of bitterness.
Love instead of anger.
Today, she is a college graduate with her whole life ahead of her, and I know she is destined to do unbelievable things.
But as everyone heads back to school this year and my little girl isn’t one of them anymore, I keep thinking about all those first days that came before this one.
And I wish I could go back and tell that little girl something.
I see you.
I see what you gave up.
I see how much you adjusted.
I see all the times you were scared, embarrassed, disappointed or simply expected to understand.
I see how much you loved your brother through all of it.
And I see now what I couldn’t always see then:
Autism didn’t just shape Dylan’s life.
It shaped yours too.
You may have been the quiet one in our family’s autism story.
But you were never the small part of it.
Anderson, you didn’t just grow up alongside autism.
You survived its hardest days with us.
And in so many ways, my beautiful girl, you saved me.
Dylan’s House
Amy Less Shope
Kevin Shope
