It was a Tuesday evening. Nothing special about it. Kya was on the sofa, I was next to her, the TV was on but neither of us was really watching it. She shifted slightly, leaned into me, and wrapped her arms around mine. A proper cuddle. Full commitment. She buried her face into my sleeve and squeezed.
If you’d told me five years ago that Kya would become a hugger, I’d have smiled politely and said nothing. Because back then, she wasn’t. She didn’t like being held. She’d stiffen if you picked her up. Kisses were tolerated at best, avoided when possible. Physical contact was something she endured, not something she sought out. And we respected that completely.
But something changed. Not overnight – gradually, on her own terms, in her own time. A hand placed on my arm. Then a lean. Then one evening, out of nowhere, a full hug. Arms around me, head against my chest, holding on like she’d been doing it her whole life. I didn’t move. I barely breathed. I just stood there thinking, oh. There you are.
Now? She’s a super hugger. That’s genuinely the only way to describe it. She doesn’t do half-hugs or polite hugs or quick squeezes. When Kya hugs you, she means it. Both arms. Full grip. Face pressed right in. And she’ll hold on for as long as she wants, which is usually longer than you expect. You learn to just stand still and let it happen.
Kisses are different – and completely Kya. She doesn’t kiss you. She expects you to kiss her. She’ll lean her forehead toward me or her mum, tilt slightly, and wait. That’s the signal. You kiss her forehead, she closes her eyes for a second, and then she’s off. With Nanny, she holds out her hand – palm up, like royalty – and waits for a kiss on the back of it. No words. No request. She just presents the hand and you know exactly what’s expected. She loves being kissed. She just prefers to receive rather than give, and honestly, there’s something brilliant about that. She knows what she wants and she’s taught everyone around her exactly how to deliver it.
People ask me what it’s like being an autism dad and I never quite know how to answer. They want the big stories. But our life isn’t a film. It’s mostly Tuesdays. And the best moments are the ones nobody else would even clock.
Like last week, when I was making dinner and heard her laughing in the other room. Not a polite laugh or a social laugh – a proper, full, involuntary laugh at something on her tablet. I don’t know what she was watching. I didn’t go and check. I just stood at the kitchen counter, holding a wooden spoon, grinning like an idiot, because the sound of her genuine laughter is one of the best sounds I’ve ever heard.
Or the morning she came downstairs and handed me a sock. Just one sock. No reason. No context. She placed it on the table next to my coffee, looked at me, and walked off. I still don’t know what it meant. Maybe nothing. Maybe she’d found it and thought it was mine. Maybe she just wanted to give me something. Either way, that sock is still on my bedside table. I can’t bring myself to move it.
There are harder moments too, of course. Days when she’s overwhelmed and I can’t fix it. Days when she can’t tell me what’s wrong and I have to guess. Days when I get it wrong, and the guilt sits in my chest like a stone. I don’t want to pretend those days don’t exist, because they do, and they’re part of this journey too.
But they’re not the whole story. Not even close. The whole story is the Tuesday hugs and the unexplained socks and the laughter from the other room and the forehead tilted toward you, waiting. It’s the way she lines up her shoes by the door every night. The way she taps my hand twice when she wants a drink. The way she falls asleep in exactly the same position, every single night, like a small, perfect ritual.
Someone once told me that the best parts of parenting are the bits you don’t photograph. I think about that a lot. I didn’t take a picture of that first hug or the sock or the laugh. I don’t have proof that any of them happened. But I carry them with me everywhere.
The quiet bits. That’s where the real story lives.
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