My Son is a Champion: The Inspiring Story of a Child with Autism and His Mother Empowered by Sports

Abstract

This study examines how sport plays a transformative role at both individual and societal levels through the experience of a mother caring for a child diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Conducted using a narrative research approach, the study involved in-depth individual interviews with a single participant. The aim was to reveal how sport-beyond merely producing physical or behavioural outcomes for the child-transforms into a domain of meaning, empowerment, and resistance in the caregiving mother’s experience. The participant’s narrative demonstrates that sport contributes to the child’s anger management, social interaction, and routine-building skills, while simultaneously transforming the mother’s public visibility, social identity, and processes of subjectification. The analysis, framed within feminist care ethics, highlights how mothers encounter social norms in semi-public environments such as swimming pools and reveals that sport functions not only as a form of rehabilitation but also as a sphere where maternal labour becomes visible and a struggle for social recognition is enacted. The study underscores the need for qualitative data to better understand the experiences of individuals with ASD in social participation and makes an original contribution to the literature by illuminating the multi-layered meanings that participation in sport holds for families. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature India Private Limited 2026.