The joke wasn’t really about the spider

This week I’ve been reflecting on something that happened years ago.

I was talking to another parent recently about something that had happened at school for their child, and it resurfaced an old memory for me.

At the time, my child was barely managing school. Attendance was patchy. Some days were impossible. On this particular day they had managed the morning only, which at that point felt huge.

What I know now, looking back, is how much energy it took just to get there. The masking. The effort. The constant trying to fit in. To look like everyone else. To not feel different.

That day, something happened at lunchtime. On the surface, it was small.

A few children played a joke. They told my child there was a spider on their head and laughed. My child panicked and ran to a teaching assistant to check. There was nothing there. Then they went back and it happened again, only this time they were told it was poisonous. Again, they ran back to check.

By the time I picked them up, they were furious. Scowling. Shouting. Completely dysregulated. They told me they never wanted to go back to school and that I needed to find them a new one.

And as I sat in the car listening, trying to piece it together, I realised this wasn’t about a spider. It was about not understanding.

Not understanding why everyone was laughing. Not understanding the joke. Not understanding the invisible social rules that everyone else seemed to follow without even thinking.

And then that awful moment of realising the joke was on you. That you were the joke. That’s the bit that broke me.

Because to so many adults, this would have looked like harmless banter. Kids being kids. Nothing major. But for my child, it was humiliation. Confusion. Panic. Pain.

That’s the thing about autistic literal thinking. Sometimes there’s a gap between what is said and what is meant, and that gap can feel enormous. Painful, even.

And when your child is already working so hard to mask, to fit in, to survive an environment that doesn’t feel safe to them, moments like this can leave deep marks.

That fallout came home. It always does, and as parents, we’re the ones holding it. The ones co-regulating. The ones listening, piecing it together, trying to make sense of what happened.

Trying to explain that maybe the other children didn’t mean harm, while also knowing that intent doesn’t erase impact.

That’s a hard place to sit. Because it hurts them, and it hurts us too. That ache when you realise your child has been wounded by something other people might never even notice.

Something invisible. Something “small”. But not small to them.

Not small to you.

So if you’re holding that kind of fallout right now, from school, from friendships, from misunderstandings that seem tiny on the outside but huge on the inside, I just want to say that I see it. I know how much you carry. And I know how hard it is to keep being the safe place after the world has felt unsafe.

Back then, we took downtime. We co-regulated. We did the things that felt safe and familiar.

Not to fix it. But to remind my child they were safe, understood and loved.

Sometimes that’s what they need.

And sometimes that’s enough.