Refrigerator Moms

Refrigerator Moms Join us as we navigate the complexities of autism, share personal stories, and offer empowering perspectives on parenting autistic individuals.

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09/19/2026

Understanding how someone became who they are doesn’t absolve them of what they do next.

That’s one of the tensions at the heart of Yesteryear.

Caleb has spent much of his life being molded by other people—his father, Natalie, the communities he falls into. Kelley sees that history as important to understanding how he becomes the man we meet later in the book.

Julianna keeps coming back to something else: He’s still an adult with agency.

Both things can be true.

We can understand the forces that shape someone without pretending they have no responsibility for their choices. And we can question the beliefs someone claims without assuming those beliefs are what actually motivate them.

Which raises an interesting question about Caleb: At what point does being influenced become choosing?

09/18/2026

There’s something comforting about imagining that life used to be simpler.

Homemade bread. Kids running outside. A garden. Fewer screens. Less noise. A slower pace.

But nostalgia has a way of keeping the beautiful parts and quietly editing out the rest.

That’s part of what makes the trad wife fantasy in Yesteryear so interesting. It isn’t necessarily the desire for a simpler life that’s strange. It’s aspiring to a version of that life that may never have existed in the first place.

And social media adds another layer of absurdity: we’re watching someone perform an “off-the-grid” existence through one of the most decidedly on-the-grid technologies ever created.

Maybe the better question isn’t Why are people drawn to this?

It’s what are we actually longing for when we are?

09/17/2026

Social media doesn’t just show us people. It shows us characters.

The trad wife living an impossibly beautiful “simple” life. The manosphere personality with all the answers. The activist whose worldview always seems perfectly consistent.

Different ideologies. Same basic machinery.

Follow enough of one kind of content and eventually your feed becomes a world where everyone seems to agree, the exceptions disappear, and carefully constructed personas start looking like ordinary life.

That’s one of the things Yesteryear does particularly well: it asks what happens when we stop recognizing the performance as a performance.

Maybe the uncomfortable part isn’t realizing influencers are playing characters. It’s asking which characters we’ve chosen to believe.

09/15/2026

AI can make your writing polished. But polished isn’t the same as memorable.

When everyone has access to tools that can fix grammar, restructure sentences, and generate a perfectly competent paragraph, the thing that becomes more valuable is the part AI can’t manufacture: your specific experience.

“I became more confident” could belong to almost anyone.

What happened that made you more confident? What did you notice? What did you struggle with? What do you care about that someone else might find wonderfully specific—or even a little unusual?

For college applicants, including neurodivergent students, those details aren’t something to smooth away. They’re often where the real voice of the essay lives.

AI can help with the words. The story still has to be yours.

09/14/2026

An autism diagnosis can change the way a family sees the road ahead, but it can also reveal just how important grandparents can be along the way.

For Kelley’s parents, the diagnosis brought uncertainty, but it also became a commitment to learn, advocate, and be an integral part of their autistic grandson’s life.

The road may be long, but families don’t have to walk it alone. The support of grandparents can make a lasting difference.

09/14/2026

An accommodation can be exactly what a child needs right now—without being what they need forever.

Maybe co-sleeping gets your family through an especially difficult period. Maybe extra screen time helps during a major transition. Sometimes lowering a demand is the compassionate, practical choice.

But there’s another question worth asking: What’s our plan from here?

If an accommodation becomes permanent because changing it will be difficult, we may eventually leave our child with a much harder skill to learn—and ourselves with a much bigger problem to solve.

Supporting a child today and preparing them for tomorrow don’t have to be opposing goals. Sometimes the challenge is figuring out when support should stay in place, when it should evolve, and when it’s time to start building the next skill.

09/13/2026

Sometimes the smallest acts of kindness can make the biggest difference.

Beau, their autistic grandson has become a familiar and loved part of his community, and the people around him have shown just how meaningful acceptance can be.

When we take the time to understand someone and meet them with kindness, we can create a world where everyone feels like they belong.

He has taught his family that kindness truly goes a long way. Happy Grandparents Day!

09/12/2026

Sometimes a description fits your child perfectly. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve found the explanation.

That’s part of what makes conversations around Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) so complicated.

A parent may recognize their child immediately in descriptions of avoiding everyday demands. But what’s driving that resistance? Rigidity? Anxiety? A learned response? Difficulty with transitions? Something else—or several things at once?

That distinction matters, because how we understand a behavior can shape how we respond to it.

Since our original conversation about PDA, we’ve heard from more parents and professionals—and we’re revisiting what we’ve learned, what we still believe, and why we think families should keep asking questions rather than stopping at a label.

09/11/2026

Parenting without screens may have been easier when kids could disappear outside until dinner.

Most families don’t live in that world anymore.

Screens fill a very real gap: they entertain, occupy, and sometimes help regulate kids when parents simply can’t be “on” every minute of the day.

But understanding why we rely on screens doesn’t mean we have to accept unlimited use as inevitable.

The better question might be: What else can we intentionally put back into that space?

It doesn’t have to mean recreating a 1980s childhood. It just means making sure the screen isn’t the only answer.

09/11/2026

“Screen time” is a pretty useless category when you think about it.

A child video chatting with Grandma, learning a new skill, creating something, and endlessly scrolling algorithm-driven content are all technically on a screen—but they’re not doing the same thing.

Instead of only asking “How many hours?”, it may be more useful to ask: What is my child actually doing during those hours?

In our newest episode, we’re revisiting three of our most talked-about topics—screen time, PDA, and college readiness—and pulling out the ideas we think parents should keep thinking about.

🎧 Watch or listen to the newest episode of Refrigerator Moms!

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