Eliza Fricker has reclaimed her family’s narrative

The bestselling author, illustrator and advocate shares how shirking conventional systems can lead to success.

She’s got a knack for putting complex struggles into pictures and words – a talent only uncovered after eight years of battling the schooling system on behalf of her autistic child. It was 2020 when Eliza Fricker found herself in her slippers, settling into a rhythm that worked for her family, starting a blog called Missing the Mark.

“I started writing and drawing our experiences when my daughter was at home full time, unable to attend school,” writes Eliza in her book Can’t Not Won’t, an illustrated story of a family raising a child with pathological demand avoidance (PDA), instant Sunday Times Bestseller and recent addition to the Cambridge University reading list.

“Drawing and writing while in slippers at home all day gave me more than just time to heal and process, it connected me with a whole community of families just like ours, whose children struggle with school every day.”

Can’t Not Won’t is one of several books Eliza has authored, including her recently published memoir of “undiagnosed autistic childhood”, Thumbsucker. She’s also co-authored and illustrated numerous titles around education and neurodivergence – and works as an advocate and consultant for PDA, autism and learning.

Here, Eliza chats with us from her home in Brighton & Hove, the scene of her personal and professional reawakening.

Why is creating witty, warm, really well-designed resources something you had to do in the autism space?

It took a while, I have to say – probably seven or eight years of being in the system and trying to navigate it. But for me, it’s always been such an outlet to be able to use humour in times when there’s often quite a lot of stress. Alongside that, there is absurdity, often, in these situations.

My dad was a political cartoonist so it probably comes a lot from him, but it feels quite empowering to bring that absurdist element into it, as well. And it’s just a way for me to communicate. I know that word gets bandied around, “empowering”, but for me, being able to own that narrative and present it back to people [is empowering], because often when we’re navigating this sort of stuff, we don’t have very much ownership of what we’re doing and what we’re saying. So that felt really powerful – for me to be able to do that.

Last year Can’t Not Won’t became an instant Sunday Times Bestseller – and it’s everywhere! How has your life changed since it was published?

I mean, it’s quite strange because the flip side of that is when we were actually going through these experiences, it very much felt like there was no one else going through it. So to write a book that is then a Sunday Times Bestseller about something that is apparently quite “niche” – a child not going to school – I think there’s evidence there that maybe it’s affecting more families than we realise.

It’s been very busy, to say the least, since the publication of that book. I've actually got four books coming out this year. So yeah, it’s quite busy!

I want to rewind a bit now and ask you if there was a specific moment when you realised, I’m not just a parent, I’m also a carer to my daughter. I know she was officially diagnosed as autistic at seven, but I’m guessing you started releasing before then…

Yeah, it was really early on. And that’s something psychologist Dr Naomi Fisher and I have spoken about quite a lot in our webinar series, The Art of Low Demand Parenting. We’re opening up the conversation so that parents can look at this without the diagnosis. I mean, here in the UK, I heard the other day that it’s four or five years on the waitlist to get a diagnosis. So we're really trying to open this up for parents at any stage who are feeling like things are different. Because I think we know that really early on.

I remember when my daughter was two or three, when we were talking about having a birthday party and I was thinking, this will be too much for her. We’ve got our instincts, haven’t we? As parents.

So you knew something was up – but did you know much about autism?

I think we had bleak documentaries that were still peddled out on British TV that were from the ’70s or ’80s, mainly featuring boys who were very restricted in their independent living. It was only once I read an article called ‘I Stand Quietly: A Letter to My Daughter and to Everybody’, by Jill Finch in the Huffington Post, that I thought, wow, that really sounds like my daughter. That was really the start of thinking, okay, I think there is something else here.

I also think that when other parents are talking about things going on for their children – where they’re at, what milestones they're meeting – you start to kind of think, well, you know, I don’t put my child to bed and turn the light off and say, night night. I lay in that room for three hours every night.

Three hours is a long time. Did you do anything while you were lying there?

I did a lot of lying in the dark, staring at nothing. But later on, I started to use that time to read and relax. I realised that sitting there, arms folded, feeling resentful because we’re told that a child should go to bed, wasn’t helpful. So I started to use that space to relax as much as I could, but I think anyone would say those bedtimes are a test, because it’s the end of the day and you’ve done your innings.

I remember thinking, I just want one hour to watch telly, just give me an hour! An hour seemed incredibly precious at that time, when you just didn’t seem to have any time.

Oh, it is. That’s why we stay up later than we should – because we need that hour. Are you getting that hour, these days?

I’m getting more than that hour. I’ve got a teenager who sleeps til two in the afternoon if she can – it’s quite a flip when things change like that. I often say to families that it’s really good to look back and see how far you’ve come, particularly if you’re in that bit where you’re only getting little glimmers of green shoots and it’s very up and down. That's why writing things down can be really helpful, because you do forget how far you've come.

Your work so beautifully illustrates many of the ups and downs experienced by families in the autism community. What tends to inspire a new drawing?

In the early days it was actually rage. Often this came from reading things on Twitter. The “Bad Morning” that I drew which was really engaged with was in response to a teacher saying something glib. Something like, “If your child is struggling to go to school, you toughen up and you get them in.” And I was thinking, all right then, let’s show you what it’s like and now you tell me how to do that!

What was it like when your daughter got her autism diagnosis? How did that feel for you?

I mean, it was completely sterile and grey, to be honest. She was present in the room when I was asked to talk through all of it, which I found very difficult to do with her there And then it was really, simply, yeah, she’s autistic. We were just given some printed out pieces of paper and that was it. It was a very dull, grey, clinical experience. Very different from my own, actually.

What was it like, in comparison, when you received your autism diagnosis?

Again, this word gets bandied about a lot, but it was neuro-affirmative. It was very much looking at the impact the environment has, rather than locating the problem in the individual. It was done over about three different therapy sessions and it felt like this was a space I was being looked after in and supported. That was followed up with more therapy and in fact, I still see the same therapist now.

What compelled you to seek out your own diagnosis?

I’d been working more with people in the autism community and I found communication with them pretty easy. It just flowed. I can be quite clunky in my communication and can really struggle. I was a big masker and people pleaser before, and I didn’t feel the need with this group as much. It just felt more comfortable.

I was also talking to friends who are autistic and were saying, do you think you could be? They were people I could relate to, so it was something I started to sort of self-identify with. Then I was asked through some work that I was doing whether I wanted to have an assessment.

I had kind of convinced myself I was okay with self-identifying, but I’m glad that I went down this assessment route, because the exploratory nature of it really pushed me into some areas I hadn’t really talked about before.

It’s probably quite common for a lot of autistic adults to carry shame around that stuff – the things that we think we should have managed and weren’t able to. The overreactions to things. That creates quite a lot of early shame, I think, so it was good to get it out there.

Did things from your past suddenly make sense, once you got that diagnosis?

Yeah. I remember my mum talking about my childhood and saying she was quite miffed by a lot of stuff that was going on with me. Particularly around what they would have deemed, in the ’80s, as temper tantrums, that were actually meltdowns. She said she used to take me to the doctor a lot and they would always say “It’s because she’s very bright that she gets frustrated easily.” They had no idea then that I was an autistic girl. No idea.

You’ve had major struggles with the English education system not supporting your own daughter. Do you have any memories of school being a struggle, yourself?

I mean, I was a high-achiever. I was kind of a top-set student, but I had a lot of days off. I did have physical illness – I had a lot of tonsillitis – but I think, now, that was burnout. I was burnt out from school, but it wasn’t ever flagged because at that time, there wasn't any pressure on attendance.

My dad worked from home and I loved those days off. I would just completely chill out. Home was absolutely my safe space to offset that world out there completely.

How interesting that your own experience of parenthood – and deciding to homeschool your daughter – brought you back home again. This is what works for you and for your family, but I’m guessing the decision to go against the grain wasn’t easy…

Yeah, I mean I always say, when I chat to families about it, it feels that you’re going off a cliff edge. We are all conditioned about how to parent – and school is in us all. So it was a very mixed bag. There was an enormous sense of relief that we were not doing that anymore, but there was an enormous amount of sadness because my daughter didn’t want to be at home. She wanted to be her friends. She wanted those experiences.

It just, in the end, was not a choice we could make. She was actually too unwell to go anymore. Some children will say, every day, “Please homeschool me. Please can I stay at home.” But it’s not that way for a lot of children. Some children really want to be part of something. And that social drive is there and actually quite an incentive for them. So it’s often very, very complex.

I remember in meetings, we’d meet with professionals and they’d say, “But she likes going out and she likes being with friends”. And trying to explain to them, yeah, because that’s not school.

What advice do you have for parents of autistic children who are struggling in the school system?

Really think about the impact that it's having on your child and on your family, as a whole. If it's creating something that is making everyone quite sad, think about something else. Because your child is giving you all that information. If you are finding you are living in a house that is, daily, an unhappy one – whether that’s through meltdowns, controlling behaviour or worse – really think about that.

School isn’t the only way. I meet families every week who have been really creative about how they thought about that. It doesn't need to be home or school or even specialist school. There's loads of other things people are doing in hybrid kinds of ways. They’re doing it, they’re being really, really creative with it – and you can actually have a much, much nicer life.

What's difficult, when you’re in it, is that you just keep pushing. The narrative is very much keep going, keep going, they’ll get used to it – and not all of them will. Finding another way can be really quite wonderful for you as a family.

How do you feel about where your family scenario has landed you, career-wise?

It’s really fulfilling for me. It helps me explore things, learn more, understand more. It’s made things align – and I think that’s probably something a lot of neurodivergent people struggle with. I mean, I’m 44 now. It only took me until I was about 40 to figure this out! When we’re trying to fit in and do it the way other people do it, that’s when it goes skew-whiff for us.

I don’t want to sound like a privileged turd with all this stuff. I didn’t go to university, I didn’t leave home until I was 25. I’ve been a slow burner and it has been tricky, along the way, to watch people seemingly glide through life and do all these things and tick those boxes and be constantly thinking, why am I not able to do that?

It’s not been easy. So to now get to this age and be able to do the things that I want to do, in a way that works for me and us as a family, is a really good place to be.

Follow Eliza’s work at Missing the Mark and on Instagram and Facebook .