When my daughter was first diagnosed as autistic, I did what I’m sure many parents do: I delved far too deeply into the online rabbit hole of misinformation, anecdotal stories and personal accounts from autistic people and other parents in our situation.

I wanted to know everything I could. I wanted to start planning for anything and everything that might happen.

For anyone considering this particular avenue of research, it is a terrible idea.

Not only is every social media platform I use now full of “you might like” posts and suggested products designed to soothe, calm or otherwise manage behaviours adults find difficult—none of which work—but I have also created a remarkably personal doom-scrolling experience. My For You page now appears determined to predict every possible way my child’s future could go wrong.

According to the algorithm, she will grow up to have poor relationships, terrible mental health and a dependence on questionable coping mechanisms.

In short, I have inadvertently created my own online hell, with algorithms specifically designed to play on my worst fears.

Go me.

The internet now spends endless hours trying to convince me that my daughter will grow up with poor self-esteem, multiple forms of depression and an obsession with collecting cats as though they’re Pokémon.

None of this does anything helpful for my own anxiety, depression or current cat collection.

The only thing that eases me away from the nearest adoption shelter—and prevents an emergency trip to Costco to bulk-buy kitty litter—is listening to my daughter as she narrates absolutely everything she is doing.

She tells me about the house she is building in Minecraft. It’s purple.

She tells me about the videos she is watching on YouTube Kids, which are mostly about how to build better houses in Minecraft.

She tells me why mashed potato should be served in cubes.

I still don’t entirely understand the logic behind that one. Surely, once mashed potato has become structurally sound enough to be cut into cubes, it has ceased to fulfil the basic requirements of mashed potato.

This is apparently irrelevant.

I’m blaming Minecraft.

During one of these narrations, she informed me that she was “Minecraft rich” and that “being rich is a good thing”.

She then announced that she intended to become rich in real life as well—a goal I vehemently approve of.

On another occasion, she happily planted an entire collection of flowers while telling me that she was “the most beautiful girl in the world and so deserves flowers”.

I didn’t argue.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with her self-confidence.

This is a child who assumes she is beautiful, intelligent and destined for considerable financial success. She doesn’t think she needs to earn flowers through good behaviour, academic achievement or by making herself smaller and more convenient for other people. She deserves flowers because she is wonderful and flowers are nice.

Frankly, I’m taking notes.

The internet keeps warning me that autistic girls are particularly vulnerable to low self-esteem—that years of being misunderstood, corrected, excluded or encouraged to hide the parts of themselves that other people find inconvenient can gradually teach them that they are somehow wrong.

I don’t dismiss that risk. I understand why so many autistic adults speak about masking, burnout, anxiety and the lasting damage caused by spending years trying to perform an acceptable version of themselves.

But those accounts are not prophecies.

They are not a script my daughter is destined to follow simply because she shares a diagnosis with the people whose experiences I am reading.

Right now, I am not looking at a child who believes she is less than anyone else. I am looking at a child who expects the world to recognise her magnificence and is mildly surprised whenever it fails to do so.

Perhaps my job isn’t to build her self-confidence from scratch.

Perhaps it is to protect what is already there.

That doesn’t mean convincing her that she will never struggle or pretending the world will always treat her fairly. It means ensuring she knows that finding something difficult does not make her a failure. Needing support does not make her a burden. Communicating differently does not mean she has nothing worth saying.

It means teaching her that there is a difference between being asked to learn and being told to become someone else.

It means listening when she tells me that something hurts, overwhelms her or simply doesn’t make sense. It means resisting the pressure to measure her against children whose minds and bodies work differently from hers. It means making sure that home remains somewhere she does not have to perform.

It doesn’t mean stopping her from failing. She needs to learn how to pick herself up after losing a game, how to struggle and how to keep going. Every child needs resilience, but that doesn’t mean you can’t stand beside them, offering encouragement and cheering their effort.

Frankly, watching the mental gymnastics she performs to convince me that she actually won at chess or Connect Four is far more entertaining than simply handing her the victory.

Most importantly, it means paying more attention to the child in front of me than to the endless procession of strangers selected for me by an algorithm.

The internet knows that I have an autistic daughter.

It knows that I worry about her future. It knows which frightening stories will make me stop scrolling, which products I might buy at two in the morning and which fears will keep me clicking through to the next video.

What it does not know is her.

It doesn’t know about the purple Minecraft house, the cubed mashed potato or the flowers she planted in tribute to her own beauty.

It doesn’t hear her plans for becoming rich.

It doesn’t see a little girl who knows exactly who she is and currently sees no reason why the rest of the world shouldn’t be delighted by her.

The algorithm may have built me a personalised vision of hell, but my daughter is busy building something else entirely.

Hers is purple, full of flowers and, judging by the number of diamonds she has collected, extremely well funded.

My husband has just informed me that she is playing in something called Creative mode, so she has literally infinite resources.

Sounds even better.

I don’t know if this is because of her recent obsession with Minecraft, a sudden fear of nuclear war, or a deep, unsatisfied desire to become a mountain troll, but recently my daughter presented me with several pages from her journal and a Very Serious Expression.

I was expected to understand the gravity of the situation from the marks she had made across several pages and provide constructive feedback beyond my usual parenting staples of, “Hmm,” and, “That’s wonderful.”

This posed a problem.

Because I think I would have had more success translating the Voynich Manuscript than whatever I was looking at.

After I had been staring blankly at it for several seconds, she huffed, removed the fluffy purple notebook from my hands and rotated it 180 degrees.

The new angle did nothing for its legibility.

With the exasperated tone I had previously assumed was reserved for preteens, she explained that these were the schematics for the new underground “secret room” she expected us to build in the back garden.

Well, I say us.

“Daddy works, so he’ll only be able to help on his lunch break and weekends. And I’ll want to play on my iPad. So you, Mummy…”

Wait.

What?

At what point did I qualify in engineering, construction, architecture or anything even remotely related that would make me adjacently qualified to project-manage such an undertaking?

Apparently, while I wasn’t paying attention, I became the principal contractor for a major subterranean infrastructure project.

While my brain was still rebooting from this revelation, she continued explaining the plans.

There would be bedrooms. Living rooms. A hospital. Two gardens.

Two.

Space for stores. Energy generation. Bathrooms. Waste disposal.

Honestly, I was impressed. It was more thoroughly planned than a lot of prepper bunkers.

She explained that the access shaft would have a ladder and a lifting mechanism so that the pets could be lowered down in their crates and harnesses. When I suggested stairs, I was informed that stairs would be completely impractical because of the space restrictions.

Obviously.

There isn’t room for stairs.

There is, however, apparently ample room for trees, chickens and a fully equipped hospital wing complete with X-ray machines.

When I asked where, exactly, she proposed putting this underground metropolis, she looked at me as though I were the idiot.

“Under the house and garden.”

Obviously.

Why didn’t I think of that?

I then made the mistake of asking who was actually going to build it.

She was very clear that she would “help, of course,” although presumably only when this didn’t interfere with her iPad commitments.

After giving the matter some serious consideration, she conceded that we might need to hire some professional assistance.

Ten builders.

For 70 days.

I don’t know whether to be more concerned that she thinks ten builders can excavate and construct a self-sufficient underground compound beneath an existing house in ten weeks, or that she apparently thinks I can fill in the gaps.

Finally, I asked the obvious question.

Why on Earth would we do any of this?

She blinked at me.

“Because it would be cool.”

And there it was.

The entire planning application.

The environmental impact assessment.

The business case.

Because it would be cool.

I feel this ranks only marginally above “because it’s there” as a justification for undertaking a massive engineering project.

No one is ever to teach my child the phrase YOLO.

Under any circumstances.

In the meantime, does anyone know where I can hire a digger?

Or the Paw Patrol?

I have touched on before the stereotypical idea that autistic people lack imagination.

I initially wrote “ASD sufferers” there, hated it immediately, stared at it for a while and eventually settled on “autistic people”, which is both considerably less depressing and doesn’t make autism sound like a particularly nasty bout of flu.

Anyway.

I have also mentioned before that, based on my experience with my daughter, the idea that autistic people lack imagination is absolute nonsense.

Recently, she has decided to provide further evidence.

For years now, she has insisted that several of the cuddly toys at her grandparents’ house are alive. Not metaphorically alive. Not “we pretend they’re alive while we’re playing” alive.

Alive.

They have names. They have personalities. They have relationships with members of the family. They apparently have their own motivations, preferences and, in at least one case, an extensive disciplinary record.

Jeremy is a bear who belongs to Grandma. He is generally reasonably well behaved and, as far as I can tell, causes very little trouble.

Pa has Percy.

Percy is a penguin.

Percy is frequently being potty trained, trying to find food or being put on the naughty step for some infraction that I have never entirely understood. Sometimes Pa ends up on the naughty step with him.

I have learned not to ask.

There are clearly complicated things happening within the social structure of my in-laws’ house and, frankly, I don’t need to understand all of them.

Recently, however, she has taken things to an entirely new level.

She has decreed—with all the authority of a medieval monarch handing out parcels of conquered land—that they now have their own pet unicorns.

There was no consultation process.

They were simply informed.

These unicorns are invisible to everyone except her and live either in her playroom at home or in her bedroom at her grandparents’ house. Each unicorn is a different colour. Each has its own personality. Each also has a different superpower, because apparently simply being an invisible unicorn is no longer sufficiently magical.

For reference, hers is purple and called Candyfloss. Grandma’s is pink and called Peppercorn, while Pa’s is blue and called Sky—which is a little confusing because she also has a number of Paw Patrol plushies bearing the same name.

Following so far?

Well done. Think yourself lucky. We get quizzed on this at least weekly.

Now we come to transport.

Obviously, if the unicorns live at both houses, they need to travel between them.

They travel on the roof of the car.

We drive a Honda Jazz.

I have no idea how three full-sized unicorns are supposed to fit on the roof of a Honda Jazz. I struggle to imagine three Labradors fitting comfortably up there, never mind three mythical horses complete with horns, saddles and supernatural abilities.

Nevertheless, this is where they go.

They are also, I have been assured, tied securely to the roof so they don’t fall off.

The idea that animals can be secured with a rope and will then obediently stay put is a concept I blame Minecraft for entirely. I don’t actually know if this is correct, but I have to blame screen time for something.

This raised questions that I should have known better than to voice.

I once made the mistake of asking whether the unicorns stood upright on the roof while we drove, or whether they were tied down on their backs.

The withering look I received could have melted steel.

No answer was forthcoming.

To this day, I remain unsure of the travelling orientation of the unicorns.

Personally, I feel this is relevant information. If I am driving down the A19 at sixty miles an hour with three invisible unicorns strapped to a Honda Jazz, I would like at least a basic understanding of the aerodynamics involved.

Apparently this makes me difficult.

When we arrive at her grandparents’ house, my daughter dutifully unties the unicorns and leads them inside.

Again, there are logistical issues here.

How do you get three full-sized unicorns through a standard front door?

How do you get them upstairs?

How do three unicorns fit into one bedroom?

Where do they go to the toilet?

Do they require hay?

What happens if one of them stands in front of the wardrobe?

These are all perfectly reasonable questions.

The answer is the same for every single one.

“They’re MAGICAL!”

Of course they are.

How stupid of me.

This arrangement has been going on for some time now, and the rest of the family has largely learned to accept that we are supporting the care and transportation of several invisible magical equines whose rules we neither understand nor are permitted to question.

I often watch in bemused sympathy as my daughter leads unicorns and grandparents on walks around the neighbourhood, insisting that Grandma and Pa hold the leads properly as they go. I sometimes wonder what their neighbours think. More importantly, I wonder which neighbour has the most interesting doorbell-camera footage of two grown adults sheepishly leading imaginary unicorns behind a four-foot child proceeding down the street with all the authority of a military general.

Grandma, however, recently made a serious error.

Last week she came downstairs after interacting with my daughter and the unicorns looking thoroughly exasperated.

She had been told off.

Apparently, she had put the saddle on the wrong end of her unicorn.

Grandma’s entirely reasonable defence was:

“I CAN’T BLOODY SEE IT!”

This argument was dismissed with a contemptuous wave of the hand.

Because apparently invisibility does not excuse incompetence.

You have a unicorn. You have responsibilities.

Learn which end is which.

Frankly, I’m relieved I haven’t been assigned one.

I don’t think I could cope with the pressure. I’d inevitably feed it the wrong thing, accidentally leave it behind at Tesco or strap it to the Honda Jazz backwards and spend the entire journey being silently judged.

No.

I’m quite happy with my own imaginary pet.

I only have a black horse.

It has flame powers.

And apparently it spends its time roasting the slugs in the garden.

Which is ridiculous, obviously.

Although considerably more useful than a unicorn.

My daughter has recently entered that stage of development where she would rather spend her time fixated on a ten-inch screen than have anything to do with another human being.

I would like to say this is a phase she will grow out of, but realistically her father spends his working life staring at three screens and has successfully worked with the same two colleagues, across two different companies, for around a decade without ever actually meeting either of them.

Meanwhile, I spend my days either attempting to shovel sustenance down our daughter’s throat or attached to my own screen writing books, help guides and blog posts.

So genetically, the odds of her ever resurfacing into the real world are not in her favour.

Her first proper foray into the virtual world is, as I suspect is the case for many children of Gen Z onwards, Minecraft.

What I know about Minecraft could be written on the back of a postage stamp — something most of Gen Z probably wouldn’t recognise — with room to spare.

Most of my knowledge comes from teaching in the early part of this century.

And doesn’t that sentence make me feel old.

Back then, I occasionally had to settle disputes between friendship groups because someone had pushed somebody else’s sheep into a lava pit in retaliation for the theft of an Ender Pearl.

That sentence makes as little cognitive sense to me now as I’m sure it does to many of you.

I dealt with these situations in much the same way I dealt with most teenage arguments: adopting the facial expression of someone who completely understood the gravity of the situation while internally wondering why on earth anyone cared about a fictional sheep.

Apparently they cared deeply.

Fast-forward several years and Minecraft has returned to haunt me through my own offspring.

For the past few weeks, I have been making vaguely encouraging noises whenever an iPad is shoved approximately three inches from my face and I am instructed to admire various cuboid forms.

They are all purple.

Purple is her favourite colour, and therefore I assume that if my daughter ever becomes an architect, entire cities are going to look like they were designed by Ribena.

I have been shown a house.

A bed.

A maze.

Several caves.

And, on one memorable occasion, a guard horse wearing armour.

I did not have the heart to tell her that the guard horse looked suspiciously like a llama.

There also appeared to be a pig chasing a carrot on a stick in the background.

I didn’t ask.

There are some things a mother simply does not need to know.

Fortunately, her father has downloaded Minecraft himself and has become our resident translator.

He has reassured me of two important things.

Firstly, everything she is saying apparently makes sense. Words are coming out of her mouth that sound like the deranged babblings of someone several days into a fever dream, but apparently Endermen, Creepers, Redstone and Nether Portals are all legitimate things and not evidence that I need to contact a medical professional.

Secondly — and considerably more importantly — she is playing in a mode that does not allow her to interact with other humans.

Because while we are happy for her to disappear into her bizarre cube world, we are not happy for her to disappear into the internet.

There is a difference.

Yes, we want her to have friends.

Yes, eventually the online world is going to become part of how she communicates with those friends.

But her father and I have been around since the birth of the modern internet.

We know what people online are like.

We remember chat rooms.

We remember forums.

We remember being teenagers online while our parents had absolutely no idea what we were doing because they thought the computer was basically an expensive typewriter.

Frankly, the fact that our generation survived early internet access with nothing more serious than questionable usernames and an encyclopaedic knowledge of MSN Messenger emoticons is something of a miracle.

Our daughter is eight.

She is autistic.

She can be extremely literal, incredibly trusting and utterly convinced that everyone else is operating according to the same rules she is.

That makes the internet something we have to introduce carefully, rather than simply opening the door and hoping for the best.

And the statistics aren’t particularly reassuring.

Official UK data has repeatedly shown that a significant proportion of children experience bullying or harmful behaviour online. Research also suggests that autistic and other neurodivergent children can be particularly vulnerable to cyberbullying and online exploitation.

And bullying isn’t even the thing that frightens me most.

Children being contacted by adults online isn’t some hysterical parental fantasy. Grooming existed when we were teenagers sitting in chat rooms listening to the dial-up modem scream, and it exists now.

The technology has changed.

Human beings, unfortunately, have not.

So no, our eight-year-old isn’t allowed unrestricted internet access.

She isn’t allowed to chat with strangers.

She isn’t allowed into games where random people can contact her.

And anything with a chat box immediately makes me suspicious.

Maybe some people will think we’re overprotective.

I’m fine with that.

Because I don’t need to understand what an Ender Pearl does to understand safeguarding.

I don’t need to know why someone would build a purple cave, why a pig is chasing a carrot or why my daughter’s heavily armoured guard horse appears to be a llama.

I just need to understand the difference between allowing her to explore something she loves and giving strangers access to her while she does it.

So Minecraft stays.

I will continue to admire purple cuboid structures while having absolutely no idea what I’m looking at.

Her father will continue translating sentences involving Creepers, Endermen and whatever the hell Redstone is.

Our daughter can build houses, dig caves, construct mazes and apparently assemble an entire private security force consisting of badly identified livestock.

She can disappear into her bizarre little cube world to her heart’s content.

She just can’t talk to strangers while she’s there.

After all, her father and I survived the birth of the internet.

We remember what we were doing when our parents weren’t looking.

She doesn’t stand a chance.

My daughter can argue with air.

I’d like to say that’s a metaphor, but I have genuinely heard her, alone in a room, having a full-blown argument when there was literally nothing there to argue with.

I like to think she’s simply honing her skills for a future career in politics.

Or law.

Either way, she’s developing an impressive ability to argue a point with absolute confidence regardless of whether reality wishes to participate.

I just wish she’d restrict herself to debating vacant spaces.

When she asks me to “play”, that innocent little four-letter word can mean any number of things.

Sometimes it genuinely means playing. Play-Doh. Colouring. Making bracelets. Water beads.

Sometimes it means body doubling. For anyone unfamiliar with the wonderful weirdness of neurodivergence, this is the inexplicable need for another human to simply exist in the same room while you do something else. In my daughter’s case, this usually involves me sitting nearby while she loudly disagrees with a YouTube video about Minecraft or cake decorating.

Then there’s the third category.

The dolls.

This isn’t really playing so much as being employed as a full-sized, unpaid, programmable puppet.

You’ll be handed several dolls before receiving a rapid-fire briefing on their names, ages, family relationships, favourite colours, pets, occupations, children and emotional baggage.

I hope you were taking notes.

There will be a quiz.

She then launches into a storyline that obeys neither the laws of physics, logic, time, nor child welfare.

Your role is to deliver whichever line has been assigned to your designated doll at precisely the correct moment.

Ad-libbing is forbidden.

Character development is forbidden.

Creative input is forbidden.

Any deviation from the approved script, however minor, will be met with the sort of withering look usually reserved for war criminals, and correction at sound levels that requires ear protection.

If you ever find yourself arguing with her, I’d like to offer some advice.

Don’t.

Whatever the subject, whatever your qualifications, however many decades of experience you have…

…you’re going to lose.

Accept it with dignity and move on.

I have a degree in Marine Biology.

I have nevertheless been informed, with complete certainty, that mermaids are real.

When I politely questioned the evidence, she informed me that if I didn’t believe she was a mermaid, she’d simply sit at the bottom of the swimming pool until I admitted I was wrong.

Approximately ten seconds later she resurfaced, looked me dead in the eye and explained that the room was actually upside down, the pool began at the ceiling, and therefore we were all standing on our heads.

You can’t really argue with that level of commitment.

My father-in-law spent his entire career working in colour printing.

Apparently decades of professional experience pale into insignificance when compared with a five-minute episode of Colourblocks.

My husband once made the fatal mistake of adding an unscripted line during one of her doll epics. Three generations were living in the doll’s house, a toddler had somehow become stranded on the roof, and he dared to improvise.

She immediately informed him that under no circumstances was he to add his own thoughts.

Attempting to salvage some parental dignity, he replied, “Philosophers are still debating whether free will even exists.”

Without missing a beat she replied,

“Philosophers don’t exist.”

That, as they say, was game over.

He laughed so hard he couldn’t continue.

To my knowledge, only one thing has ever defeated her in an argument.

The faucet at the gym. She came back from washing her hands absolutely soaked.

“What happened?” I asked.

She looked thoroughly offended.

“The tap was angry at me.”

Honestly…

…I can’t say I blame it.