#81 | To Drive or Not? That Brings Up A Lot!

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

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RESOURCES

Linda and Richard Eyre: ValuesParenting.org: https://valuesparenting.com/

To drive or not? That brings up a lot.

Hi, I'm Lynn Davison, your adulting coach.

This struggle was posted in one of the Facebook page of Supporting Moms of Autistic Teens and Young Adults. It is a really good question, because sometimes we don't fully consider whether or not we have to do something. I'd like to explain what I mean by that.

But first let's remind ourselves always, that our goal is to encourage our autistic young adults to practice the set of mental tools that help them manage their thoughts, their emotions, and their actions, so that they achieve goals set for them. This is how they self advocate and claim a life they love.

It's really smart. To encourage all of that executive functioning in our autistic young adults in a systematic way, just as if we were their coach, helping them to improve their game.

And like any good coach, we are there to encourage them, to warn them of mistakes and potential triggers that might get them off track and to be consulted by them. Those are our three roles.

Ironically, they are the same three roles that the Majesty the Queen of England performs. That's where this idea came from. I originally heard it from Richard and Linda Eyres at valuesparenting.org. They found it at Walter Bagehot's, the British Constitution. So sometimes I need to remind myself to put my crown on my head. And I think it's a great image to help me remember that I want to perform in my parenting. 

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That's because a coach trains someone intensively. That's my intention: to make sure I do everything I can, before I meet my maker, to ensure that my autistic young adults have the tools, the strategies, and the practice to become the self-reliant adult I know they can become.

I look at it from an IMAP Perspective. This is my 4-Part Roadmap.

1. We focus on identity first. Who are we at our best to find peace and making progress in pieces because it's going to be incremental. And that is what guides us to when we're triggered is where are we at our core? Who do we want to show up as when we are at our best?
2. Then I look at my mindset, what are the thoughts that are behind the emotions that my brain offers whenever I think about my adult driving. There's a lot of them when you consider the risks associated with driving and the skills that are necessary. And we look at our young adults and realize that they're just not there yet, if they haven't yet learned how to drive.
3. Okay, so then now what do we do? We need to take the actions, to decide what they are. So that we take a step toward what we can say, we do take toward making this decision.
4. And then let's look at the people we could recruit to help us achieve this goal. My favorite recruits in this adventure was Don from DriveOn here in Rochester, New York. And if I could call him and send him to each one of you who are interested in having your young adult drive, I would because he made it possible for our family and I'm so grateful to him for that.

So let's consider what is going on in both of us when we consider this question. And we always are noticing what our brain offers us. That's consistent with the motivational triad because that's how our brains are wired.

Our midbrain in particular is motivated to seek pleasure and to avoid pain and to conserve energy. It wants us to stay where we are. It wants us to keep practicing what we always practice, keep thinking what we've always thought because it conserves energy. And that seems like a good idea.

Except it was a great idea in the caveman days when we had to then 99% of our time surviving that made sense to keep looking at these three things so that we would survive to propagate. And we did.

If we just follow those default thoughts that our brain offers us all the time, we're going to stay stuck because we're a stay where we've always been, doing what we've always done.

Today, instead of seeking pleasure through instant gratification, we need to delay gratification. We need to embrace pain, the progress pain that it takes to get where we want to go next. Like whenever I work out, the aches that I feel in my muscles. That's telling me that I'm making progress strengthening my body, Of course, instead of conserving energy, we need to expend energy, a lot of energy, experimenting on all the different options but there are ways for us to kick back to take action to create what we love.

So with that in mind, we have to remember that we either drive our thoughts or our thoughts drive us. So let's start there.

1. First, we know what our identity is as a mom, we want to have that crown on our head and encourage adulting actions and encourage that self advocacy in our young adults.
2. So the next step then is to figure out, "What are the thoughts that are going on in my head?" That's a thought download? We just externalize our thinking by recording it. You know, open up your notes app on your phone, create a Google doc on your Google Drive. Record and transcribe your thoughts using otter.ai you get 600 free minutes each month. That'll be enough so that any way we can take our thoughts out of our heads and record them is what we want to do to look at that because we can't look at them when they're just that ticker tape playing on in our head; that thin cycle of thoughts where we can't tell one from the other. We need to get that out, get them recorded so that we can look at what they are creating in our lives.
3. I love this process, because it says okay, yeah positive thinking and yeah, you know, law of attraction. Yeah, we become what we think about. BUT HOW??? This is how we use a STEAR Map to slow things down. Especially for those of us who need a longer processing time and a slower processing speed. We slow things down.
1. And we look at okay, what's the situation? The situation is the decision to drive or not?
2. What are our thoughts? I have always found it so helpful to lay them out in a sheet. Just put just that row is just one thought after the other. And then once I look at those thoughts that I've downloaded in the step before.
3. What are the emotions that each one of those thoughts creates? The situation is the same. It's my thinking that changes. What are the emotions that those thoughts inspire? And some people will argue whether first of the emotions is the chicken or the egg discussion, right? In my opinion, what's important is getting it down, recording it somewhere.
4. And we look at those actions and how they flavor our results. If we go at the driving process, fearfully. We're going to take different actions and produce different results than if we approached the driving decision.
5. Confidence. That's going to flavor our actions in a different way and produce different results. You see why that's so important to slow things down. And look at what the thoughts are that our minds are creating. You know, the situation is always outside of our control, but our thoughts, our emotions, and our action, our reaction are ours and we can decide in advance intentionally what those are going to be that produce the results we have in our lives. 

Golden process. And then of course, once we recentered on what is the thought that we believe is going to produce the result that we want, because they always tie back to each other. That's the one we choose to practice, or the set of thoughts that we choose to practice. That's when we say to ourselves I know we can figure this out or I'm afraid and that's okay. Or is really resistant to this idea of driving. And that's okay. Maybe it would be better to use mass transit and then drive and that's okay. Maybe because we live in a place that doesn't offer easily accessed mass transit. Maybe this is something we have to figure out. All those thoughts are going to drive different emotions and actions and results. And we have to pick the one that's going to work best for us and then practice that and help our autistic adults as their coach to figure this out as well. 

Now, obviously, this can take some time, and that's fine. Because when we take the time to do this in a way that was true. It’s not something that we just decided to look at through rose colored glasses.It's really something that's true to us; a thought that's true to them. When they figure out what thoughts are true to them, and how they want to show up and what actions they want to take, that's what really sticks. That’s where we make progress. 

So then we step into the collaborative proactive solutions process that Dr. Ross Green illustrates beautifully for free on his LivesintheBalance.org website. As we look just at the facts, remember that's the part that we cannot control. That's what's outside of our control are just the facts. Then we look at their STEAR map,  what's going on with them and we listen and reflect and listen and reflect and listen and reflect until it's enough. Until they feel heard, until they feel seen and safe and smooth, that we know what's going on for them. So they can feel secure in going into this problem solving process with us. We've made it predictable for them, that they can share what's going on. And they know that even if they say something that takes us off or triggers us or whatever, we'll come back to center ourselves, and we'll continue to work on the process together. 

When we do this over and over and over and over again with our autistic young adults, then they know they can consult with us to find a solution that works for them. How important it is that we have a lot more miles on our tires than they do. And it would be in their best interest to ask us what we think. And we need to understand that they might not always agree with what we say and will resist, especially in the beginning many of the options that we offer them, and that's okay; we can move on from there. We at least have heard each other, we have a clear open channel that helps us connect over and over again. And that's really what we want to do. We are part of that group who is going to close the gap; who's autistic graduates say they're going to live independently. 80% of the 50,000 that graduate every year say they're going to live independently and the 25% of Autistic 30 year olds who do so today. We're going to close that gap. We're going to be the people that the families that do that, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to do everything themselves. We can garner the kinds of resources that you need and gather up the people that are going to give them the right support at the right time and make them to help them make it on their own. This is possible and notice we do better when we do it together. 

So the next step is of course, we share our STEAR map. We make sure that it's short and clear. Because we know that the attention span, what we're thinking can be limited. And we also want to just know exactly where we are on that. So we've done our work ahead of time. And then we agree to experiment. We use the scientific method, something we were all taught in school, where we gather up our data come up with a hypothesis, do the experiment and learn what happened. And when we do those, that scientific process again, we're taking it and we're recording it outside and looking at it and saying how can we solve this problem together? How can we make progress in this area of you to create a life that you love? I know we can do this together. So let's do it. Let's let's figure this out through an experiment. And we're not always going to get it right. We take what we can learn from and move on to the next experiment, just as Thomas Edison did 1000s of times before He created the lightbulb. 

And so many other people have made our lives better by being willing to experiment and learn from the mistakes. Just think of the number of mistakes their work in Gone with the Wind, that movie, I'm sure it's such a classic and it's different. Every time they set up the camera to shoot the shot. It wasn't right the first time. They had to cast till they got the perfect shot that was then perfectly edited into this beautiful story that has lived long past many of the members of the cast and production staff. So that's what I kind of think of if I were to take a look at my life as a movie, I'm gonna have a lot of mistakes. But as long as I'm willing to help myself and in my autistic young adults learn from those mistakes, we progress together. 

So, this is the conclusion. Basically to drive or not to try is up to you and your autistic young adult. And in fact, the mom who inspired this post at Facebook, that they chose not to have her drive. Interesting. That option is available and thought about that myself because I live in an area where mass transit just isn't an option for our kids to get where they need to go to work. And I didn't want to have to drive them every single day for the rest of their lives. But in their case, it's probably going to work.They found the solution at least for now that works best for them. 

So please join us there or come visit me at my website/blog for a transcript and the resources that I mentioned in this video. Bye for now.