#50 | In first relationship with a user?

Watch the webclass, "4-Part Roadmap to Encourage Adulting Actions."

Get the Preview of the workbook, When Autism Grows Up by Lynn C Davison, Adulting Coach, Available in Fall 2022.

Download, "The Quick Start Guide to STEAR Mapping"

RESOURCES:

• Parents of Autistic Young Adults on Facebook
• SEEING AUTISM by Barb Avila: https://www.lynncdavison.com/pl/2147533610
• ValuesParenting.com by Linda and Richard Eyre
• Your Quick Start Guide to STEAR Mapping by Lynn C Davison
• LISTEN UP OR LOSE OUT by Dorothy and Robert Bolton
• THE POWER OF SHOWING UP by Drs. Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson

I'm Lynn, you're adulting coach, I help autistic young adults and their families systemize adulting together.

Thank you for watching this video.

Today's struggle comes from the Parents of Adults with Asperger's on Facebook. Our Mom is concerned that her 24 year old daughter is in her first relationship with a user.

0:40 Let's use Barb Avila's process from her book SEEING AUTISM of first understanding what's happening and connecting with ourselves and our autistic young aults then deciding where to practice to make the situation better for everybody.

0:59
When we look at what's going on, I think it's really important for us to keep in mind what we are trying to accomplish, keeping the end in mind and what we want to do of course with our autistic and adults, is encourage them to practice adulting.

It's practicing the set of mental tools that help us manage our thoughts, emotions and actions. So we can achieve goals set by us. For us. That's what we want to encourage our autistic adults to practice.

And the end in mind for us is also to be the kind of parent of a young adult that is going to operate in a way that creates a long term interdependent connection. We love our children all the way down to their toes. And we want to do whatever we can to be the kind of person that they want to connect with.

The three roles that I find helpful for me to remind myself is that I want to encourage, I want to warn and I want to be consulted. And the reason for the crown is that Linda and Richard Eyre from ValuesParenting.org introduced me to this concept.

2:27
Then when I went back to find the source from Linda and Richard Eyre's ValuesParenting.com website of encouraging, warning and being consulted and discovered that they perhaps had might have borrowed this concept from the monarchs rights. Yes, the Queen of England has these three roles as well. And thinking about it as a crown for me, makes makes me kind of giggle.

2:56
I love the fact that we can, you know, be this kind of parent for our young adult and think of it in a way that that tickles us as well.

I mean, when you think about it, Queen Elizabeth does not legislate actions. She does not you know take over any actions in the country of England but certainly after seeing all of these, all of the heads of state in England for all those years, all the Prime Minister's for all those years. She has a perspective that very few people have and you know, is there to encourage to warn and to be consulted by them.

3:41
So, the tool that I want to use is the STEAR Map. It's where we separate the situation, which is out of our control, from our thoughts, our emotions, our actions, and our results. We understand that this is in our control, he T*E*A part. These, the part of this your map is definitely within our control. So what I did was it's a long post, it has a lot of comments.

4:11
So what I tried to do was find all of the facts.

4:15
That's where we have the situation and the facts don't hurt us. Okay.

The first one is she did not respond to text. And in fact, she told her mom that she was someplace that she wasn't that we can we could document that we can prove in a court of law, that she said she was at a friend's house and yet she was not.

4:37
She also said that she had a seizure that night, and that's why she wasn't responding to those texts. We can prove that she said that.

And we can also prove that she said, "Do not come and get me,"and the sister found the address where she was staying. They decided to go to get her but it turns out that daughter and the girlfriend drove back to the house.

They observed the daughter driving her girlfriend around and buying meals at restaurants. That's a fact. We can definitely say that that happened.

The girlfriend dropped off the daughter at home and drove the car back to her house. It's the parents car that the daughter is using. The daughter's new girlfriend drove the car back to her house and the parents went and got it. Those are all facts.

5:32
The daughter also said, "I hate you for what you did." We can prove that as well. Anybody could take a video and definitely the daughter said those words.

They also confirmed that there was $200 transferred out of her account into another private banking account.

5:49
That's a fact.

5:51
And the sister said that the daughter said she's leaving our house as soon as she can. That's a little tough in terms of a fact but I'm going to give it to her because I we can put the words that came out of the daughter's mouth in quotes and say that that was said by someone else. And anytime somebody else does something, it goes in the situation line. It's something we cannot control.

6:25
I think we gave her that one.

The daughter also said these words, "I'm an adult and I don't have to tell you anything."

6:33
Interesting and the mom found out that a new girlfriend has a record.

That's so it's really helpful for us to separate out. What are the facts?

And then what are our thoughts about those facts? What's the story that was spinning?

And here's where we're going to connect with ourselves. And look at how are we interpreting the facts of the situation.

Mom asked the question, Am I overreacting? And she also said about the daughter that she's stubborn and won't listen to me. Interesting that thought.

7:11
She also found crude pictures holding up her middle finger at the camera using hateful words and swearing terribly. That's about the new girlfriend. That's a thought. Because of all the adjectives in there: the 'crude' pictures with the words 'swearing terribly.' Those are our opinions about the words that were said in the pictures that were posted.

And so it's really important that we take the time to sort of separate that out because the thoughts and that's what we're we're looking at here are the thoughts that our mom is having about this situation are certainly inspiring some emotions and she also says, "I know I can't stop it. And I'm afraid of making her run even more if I say the wrong thing."

8:04
So there's a lot of fear happening in this scenario. At least that's the emotion that I feel when I read these sentences from the mom from the mom's mind. She's just very concerned and who wouldn't be in this situation?

So many of the other people that commented on this post talked about how their children had been used by other people and to varying degrees. And how horribly difficult it is because you realize that you just don't have control over the situation. You can only have control over the way you think feel and act, which produce a result.

8:45
So here's what I suggest.

8:49
I suggest that we get slow, low and loving. Our autistic adults really appreciate it when we regulate ourselves because then they're more able to regulate themselves.

So let's, when we slow things down, when we take our emotions down as low as we can and we really act from the emotion of loving, our autistic young adults are definitely more likely to respond in a connecting way.

So here's the challenge. We need to keep the situation the same and put different thoughts in our STEAR Maps to see what they create.

So let's take the situation of the daughter is in the relationship. And my favorite thought is, "I wonder what she wants." What is her intention? What is she trying to get out of this situation?

And you know, it makes perfect sense at 24 years old that she would begin experimenting with various types of relationships. Our kids tend to, you know, on the social skills area, they tend to lag their peers. So they're going to start experimenting with relationships in their 20s as opposed to their non autistic peers doing it more in the school age years, you know, high school and the first four years after five years after high school. Our kids tend to just lag in that area. So it makes sense that this is her first relationship.

And it's, you know, we can we just need to be curious about it. What is she getting out of this relationship? Sounds like companionship, sounds like somebody who will validate what her thoughts are and help her have a relationship which is I know a goal for so many of our autistic young adults.

So what if we can come at that with curiosity in love? We want to learn listen to discover what she's learning in this situation, what she's getting out of this situation, so that we learn what she wants.

And it's, I just find that this approach has really worked well in the conflicting situations that we have in our house. Where we're just not real excited about the actions that our autistic young adults are taking. In fact, we wish they wouldn't do what they're doing. And yet they're gonna do them and we just can't legislate anymore. We have to step back into that encouraging and worrying and being consulted role, because they're old enough.

I mean, there were many comments that said, you know, you could go get guardianship, it's not appropriate or you know, there's a lot of options of actions that we could take and we just want to step back and say is that going to help them become the kind of, do the adulting work that they need to do, so that they can make decisions that work for them when we're gone.

You know, are we staying in our lane where we're being encouraging and learning and keeping the connection strong, so that they will come to us and consult with us and I just hope that happens in this situation. Because it's like the mom is just nuts about her daughter just absolutely loves her to pieces and really wants the right thing for her.

It's hard for the autistic young adult to see that right now. Because of several have had mentioned in the post, the cascading effect of having an autistic brain particularly in the social area means that she's lagging in terms of her skills are lagging, and that's where these unsolved problems come from. We're going again to Dr. Ross Greene in his lagging skills and unsolved problems, the suggestion that whenever there's an unsolved problem, there's a lagging skill there.

13:02
So the practice that I advocate is that we reflectively listen with our autistic young adults as often as we can daily things we want to catch ourselves reflecting every single day or any encounter that we have with them.

And that decision to reflectively listen is an active decision. It's not an easy practice, sometimes when we know that we're triggered. But if we can, if we can get to that slow, low, loving place, we want to do it. We want to reflectively listen.

It's a three part formula. It's very quick. It says it seems like you can use other words like I think I'm seeing or you seem very you feel it seems like you feel upset because we took the car back to our driveway.

13:55
And then you double zip the lip and listen, again, to more of the thoughts and emotions that are coming out. Of our autistic adults. We really have to let the floodgates open and let their thoughts and ideas pour out onto us and continue to listen.

Because all they're saying are words. Our daughter is saying words and we can decide how we want to think how we want to feel, how we want to act, and so that we produce a result that we want, which is to stay connected with them, with with our children, so that they will come to us and be consulting, be willing to consult with us on the things that they're going to face throughout their life. We just don't want to cut off that role. We want them to feel comfortable coming to us.

Because, of course, we know we have their best interests at heart. We just know that and we're probably the only person in the whole world that definitely always has their best interests at heart. So we really want them to consult with us.

In the inside while we're listening to our artistic adults, we want to take in what they're saying we want to sort it out. We want to sum it up. And we want to say it back succinctly. To them in our own words.

This is a process of, of assimilating what's happening, just get into the essence of what it is that they want us to know. What's happening. What is their intention with their words. We don't want to pare it. We want to say it back in a very succinct sense.

And that's because reflective listening will really help our young adults feel deem safe and secure in our presence. These four concepts come from THE POWER OF SHOWING UP by doctors Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson. It's a wonderful book that is really well researched in how we connect with each other.

And when our autistic young adults feel safe, see, soothed and secure a trust that us more and they're more willing to consult with us. It also helps them with their own self regulation.

Just being seen by another person helps our brain calm down with that whole spin cycle of thoughts that are going on. But if somebody is really loving the seeing us and hearing what we have to say that there's that you can visibly see their bodies react, just relax when they feel seen, safe, soothed and secure in our presence.

And that just helps us stay connected with them, helps us help them think things through so that they understand you know that they want to act the way that will make them feel good in the long run. And we are doing our best to act as a loving, kind absolutely nuts about the parents that we are.

17:12
So if we can just practice this skill, it will help everyone.

I think that we want to take it one step further than so we want to use Dr. Ross Greene's collaborative proactive problem solving process.

1. So we start with okay, what is the situation? And any one of those facts that I outlined at the beginning of this video? Could we could start with any one of those facts because they are provable? They're just facts. They they can be proven. They don't hurt anybody. It's we can all agree on them and let's start with where we can agree.
2. Then we ask our autistic and adults what are their thoughts, emotions, and how do they act when they were in that situation? And what was the result for them, not the result for us, but the result for them. And that's really important that they understand that it's their thinking, emotions and actions that are creating the results in their lives. That's how we get them, we encourage them to become the adults and practice being the adults while we're still here. Before our runway runs out. We want them to practice being adults as often as we can and we want to keep encouraging that because their skill levels will improve over time. They will become better at making the decisions that align with who they really are at their core, the identity that is most precious to them.
3. So then we present our STEAR Map and because we've done our homework ahead of time we present it in a slow, low and loving way. So we've succinctly tell them our position we don't ramble on for five minutes because we know that they don't have the attention span for that. We present our information as succinctly and as lovingly and as slowly giving them time to process as we possibly can with our emotions, our emotions centered and anchored in who we want to show up as as their parent. We want to show up you know, with a crown on our head with with love and curiosity.

So that's my suggestion. In this situation. I realize that so many of us in my household as well, will watch our autistic young adults get in relationships that we realize are not good for them. In the long run, the results are not going to be what they intended. But sometimes, as long as, you know, if it's at all possible, we have to let it kind of run its course and just be there for them while it does. I know it's hard.

You just want to go in and yank them out of that situation and tell them they can't do that. But wow. When they make the mistakes and they learn from their own actions, you know, from the results that they create that they are responsible for that result. You have really helped them improve that skill that they need to become the adult that you want them to be before our runway runs out.

20:36
So please visit me at www.LynnCDavison.com/blog blog for a transcript of this video and links to the resources that I've referred to here. I'm so happy to be here helping in any way that I can for all of us who have autistic chemicals that we love.

21:00
All the way down to their toes.

21:03
Bye for now

Transcribed by https://otter.ai