If you’re a neurodivergent parent raising neurodivergent kids, you already know:
Traditional work isn’t designed for us.
Traditional business advice isn’t either.
That’s why this conversation with my marketing mentor and cozy-business evangelist Laura Robinson felt so grounding. For years, Laura has helped me shape a business that supports my life rather than the other way around.
This is the conversation I wish I had a decade ago, back when I thought grit and sacrifice were the only way to run a business while raising a neurodivergent child.
Spoiler: You don’t need more grit. You need more permission.
When Business Begins Out of Necessity, Not Ambition
Laura’s story isn’t the shiny “I had a dream and built a business!” narrative we’re sold online. It started in crisis.
“Our second son was in and out of the hospital from birth. I’d had two C-sections, appendicitis, pleurisy, a major bereavement… I was as broken as I could possibly be.”
Corporate work became impossible. But her family still had a £600 monthly shortfall even after cutting every expense. So she did what neurodivergent parents do every day: she adapted.
Laura became a freelance copywriter, stitching together work in tiny pockets of time, while moving in and out of hospitals, appointments, and SENCO (special education) meetings.
“The thought that I could’ve had a job was ridiculous. I’d walk in the front door and the school would call: ‘We need you back.’ This happened constantly.”
By the time her kids were 10 and 12, everything fell apart again. So she did the next impossible thing: She pulled both kids out of school and began home educating. (Which, for many of us, is both unthinkable and relatable.)
Laura describes spending ten years believing she’d have more time or predictability just around the bend…
“I kept thinking: when this happens, then I can work more.
When they’re older, then it’ll get easier. Spoiler: it didn’t.”
Her kids are 18 and 20 now.
“It’s not easier. It’s exactly the same level of chaos.”
So she stopped waiting and created the “Comfy Business” philosophy:
Build a business that fits the life you actually have, not the life you think you should have.
This mindset is a lifeline for neurodivergent parents who are hanging on by a thread.
Neurodivergence, Chronic Illness, and Changing Needs Every Day
Laura has chronic neurological and vascular conditions whose symptoms mirror ADHD: executive dysfunction, dysregulation, and shifting capacity.
“Every morning I wake up and think: Who am I today?
What does my brain want?
What is my body doing?
I have to play each day as it comes.”
This is such a familiar experience for autistic, ADHD, and chronically ill parents — the constant recalibration of capacity and the impossibility of consistency as demanded by conventional business norms. So she built a business around inconsistency.
What I love most about Laura’s work is her unwavering commitment to joy and ease.
“Everything I sell, everything I write, every bit of marketing — it all has to build me up, not drain me.”
Does this feel good? Or does it feel like a ‘should’?
She asks this simple question and it has changed my business. If it’s a ‘should’, she helps you find another way.
She teaches business owners (especially us sensory-sensitive, capacity-fluid ones) to follow desire and energy instead of rules:
Don’t post five times a week because someone said so.
Don’t chase 10k months if you don’t want the life required to maintain them.
Don’t build a business that burns you out more than your day job did.
What’s the point of working for yourself if you recreate the same systems that broke you?
Parenting, Neurodivergence, and Finding Joy in the Smallest Things
I asked Laura to share a parenting memory that brings her joy. She didn’t pick a milestone. She didn’t pick a holiday.
She picked this:
“When they were little, they’d run between the garden tap and the warm air vent of the tumble dryer. Wet hands in the cold water, then warm air. Back and forth for ages. They thought it was magic.”
That kind of joy: simple, sensory, delightfully boring, is the heartbeat of neurodivergent family life.
And it mirrors her approach to business:
Do the simple thing.
Do the joyful thing.
Do the thing that works for your family — even if it seems strange to everyone else.
Laura’s Advice for Neurodivergent Families
I asked Laura what she wished other parents knew. Her answer is brilliant:
“Don’t wait for someone to tell you the ‘right way.’
If something doesn’t work for your family, do it differently.”
Breakfast together too overwhelming?
She lets her kids eat in their rooms.
Christmas morning surprises triggered anxiety?
Her son previews his gifts early in December, then they get put away until Christmas.
No book says to do it that way. No therapist prescribed it. They simply made up the version of life that worked for them.
Your Life is Hard Enough!
We don’t need more rules.
We don’t need to work harder.
We don’t need to earn our worth through suffering.
We need support, softness, and strategies that fit the lives we actually have.
If you’re a neurodivergent parent who needs to create work that’ll sustain you, not drain you, I hope this conversation helps.
Where to Find Laura (& Get Her Book Free)
Laura is giving you the entire e-book of The Comfy Business Playbook for free at:
👉 worditude.co.uk/podcast
👉 The Comfy Business Newsletter: gentle reminders that yes, it’s okay to do your business your way. (Also, occasional seal rescue pics!)
A kinder future for our kids begins with kindness toward ourselves.
