#43 | Struggles to finish class.

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RESOURCES

• The Art of Adulting Facebook Page
• SEEING AUTISM by Barb Avila
• TEACHING CHILDREN RESPONSIBILITY by Linda and Richard Eyre and their website: ValuesParenting.com
• Otter.ai
• THE FIVE THINGS WE CANNOT CHANGE by David Richo

Hi, it's Lynn, your adulting coach. I help autistic young adults and their families systemize adulting together.

Today's struggle comes from our newest member at The Art of Adulting.

Lisa's son is struggling to complete a class. She shares with us that it's an operating class that he's taking the second time he withdrew the first time. The first professor was too disorganized. So the new professor head of the computer science department gave him an incomplete. He still doesn't feel like the professor is willing to help him succeed. He needs this class for his senior project and to graduate with a BA.

So let's sort this one out together, using Barb Avila's system of first understanding what's going on. Then connecting with ourselves and with our autistic young adults. And then finally, figuring out what to practice to help move through this problem and create what we want in our lives.

So when we're trying to understand what's going on, we want to look at this from, "What would I be thinking if I had an autistic brain? Just do the very best we can understand what having an autistic brain what the difference that having an autistic brain makes.

So and we also want to keep in mind, the direction we're heading in? Stephen Covey is Covey is just a classic in the area of life design and he suggests that we need to know where we are going so that we better understand where we are now and so that the steps we take are always in the right direction.

So as we look at where we are now, we're understanding that there's something about the structure of this class, the way that our autistic young adult is thinking about it, and about the professor.  Kind of trying to break apart what's really happening in this situation.

We also want to keep in mind of course, that our objective is to help them practice the set of mental tools that help them manage their thoughts, emotions and actions. So they can achieve goals set by them for them. So that's important to keep in mind in terms of the way that we approach the problem.

Because as the parents of young adults, our role is to encourage to warn and to be consulted. I'll never forget Googling these three words, because I had first learned them from Richard and Linda Eyer, who wrote TEACHING YOUR CHILD RESPONSIBILITY.

 They borrowed this from the British monarchy is the Queen of England. This is her role she encourages. She warns and she's consulted, but she doesn't solve the problems. That's what parliament is floor. She doesn't create a laws. That's what her government is for, the government of England is for and I think it's a wonderful metaphor for us to separate ourselves from our role in what our autistic young adults role is.

And even though there could be some unpleasant consequences as a result of some of the choices that our young autistic young adults make, we need to make sure that they make those mistakes because that's how we learn.

So my suggestion is that we somehow facilitate a brain dump, a thought download, getting some of the thoughts out from his head, on a piece of paper or somewhere separate from him.

One of my favorite ways to do this, is to create a transcript of my young adult thoughts using Otter.ai. Actually, I should put that down here just so you have that option. Using otter.ai ott er.ai. It's an app you can download onto your phone or onto a laptop or desktop, and it will record the voice and transcribe it. It gives you 600 minutes free per month. So it's a great tool that doesn't cost you a thing unless you're like me and use it all the time.

13:01
So I highly suggest that we get all the thoughts that your son is having out on, you know out of him in recorded somewhere. Electronically is always helpful because then we can't lose them. Those thoughts.

Then we start to sift through those thoughts. And the way you know some of our kids have a hard time with telling us what's going on. In their heads because that you know input processing is the input, they're taking the input and fine the processing is doing well. But it's the output, the speaking, the recording what it is that they need to talk, you know the how the output is the hard part. For them.

So that's why while we're recording if they want to do this with us, we can just keep reflectively listening to them to get as many of their thoughts out as possible. You know, just sounds like it seems like or it sounds like that's how you open it and then you you reflect their feeling in one word and sometimes it's best just to say "uncomfortable versus comfortable," not try to get down to the nuances of the various emotions, although it is also helpful just to know this, you know, the six and there's lots of different versions of what the six major emotions are.

But reluctant, afraid, ashamed, lonely, frustrated, all of those feelings can also be reflected but one at a time. 

Because of this class of this professor of this assignment, whatever it is. That's that kind of reflective listening that helps them they're going to connect with our brain they feel more seen. And then you can just see them visibly relaxed when they feel like they're being heard. I'm really hoping that this process will help get a lot of the thoughts out onto the table.

Because what we're really shooting for is that our autistic young adults have confidence that they can solve their problems. And this is the continuum of the
virtues.

15:11
So we want to stay in the middle that's coined by Socrates a long time ago. So we want to stay in the middle we want to stay in the right amount of confidence. If we have too little confidence, that's where we have fear and lies. If we have too much confidence. That's where we get prideful and act out and it's also full of fear and lies. So what we really want to do is stay in this virtuous mean, in the middle, want to help them have the confidence that they know that they can tackle these problems.

So now that we've got it all out on the table, let's connect with them and BB advisors is always Barbarella advises us to when we're trying to get out of the crisis we want to get low. We want to get quiet. We want to get predictable.

We want to use short sentences. And if we can make some of our our words visible by taking notes or by using an otter app, that helps because then we have two senses taking in different information, the sight and the sound.

Our autistic young adults can focus together we can create joint attention on this problem, which you know is sometimes with the brains they get they're easily distracted. Especially if they're in a high emotional state. if they're very uncomfortable and highly energized on this.

And then if we can take the time, you know, we just have maybe we don't do this at one setting, but maybe we enable you just go to the first two where we separate out the fact from the story, the situation from the thought.

That we just separate out. Okay, let's go back up to the top and look at some of these thoughts.

• The professor was too disorganized. Is that a fact? I think it's the story.
• The new professor gave him an incomplete that's a fact we could prove that.
• He doesn't feel like the professor is willing to help him succeed. Yeah, that one's definitely the story.
• But the fact that he needs the class with a senior project and graduate with a BA that's a fact.

So as we separate out the thought from the story, we recognize that our stories are optional, and we can we can think of any situation a million ways. And there's got to be one that could be more helpful to them than that.

So we can help them sort things out between the situation, the facts, the thought the story, the emotion, what's going on inside (comfortable, uncomfortable), and then the actions what are the actions that that emotion inspires?

I know that when our autistic young adults are struggling with a class sometimes the emotion becomes resistance, avoiding critiquing, finding everything that's wrong with the way that things are going.

And that's the kind of brain we all have. We're always scanning out there of what is wrong outside of us. Trouble is trying to change what's outside of us is very frustrating.

It's much more powerful to change the way we're thinking and actively thinking, feeling and acting. Our TEA, our thoughts, emotions and actions are in our control are in our power to change.

So, when we practice this proactive partnering with our autistic young adults, what we're looking to do is to help them solve the problem.

But they're solving it because frankly, we don't any longer have the solution. It has to be the actions have to be taken by them so that the results can be created by them.

This is a real transition between what's going on what used to go on in school when things were clearly defined for us as to what needed to be done to now that they are in the post secondary education process and the work world, we have to understand, you know, we just, we just don't have the power any longer.

And it's not an easy thing to suggest to accept because we'd sure like to solve it. But in fact, we want them to solve it so that they have the practice creating these solutions that are going to work for them.

Because things are going to go wrong in life. These are the five things we cannot change from a book by David Richo.

1. Things change and they do you know, he will not always be enrolled in this class. There will be other things happening.
2. Things don't always go according to plan. He may have to take the class of third time. I mean, I'm hoping that's not the case, but it certainly could happen.
3. Life is not always fair. You do get assigned professors that just don't get it at all. And don't get you know what kind of brain he has and what works for him and they don't think that they should have to modify the way that they teach to accommodate. It just happens. You know.
4. Pain, this kind of pain is part of life, and
5. People are not loving and loyal all the time.

Those are the five things we have to accept and they're also outside of our control. So then it's how we think about it that matters.

And the way we think about it together can really create a solution. So if we talk about okay, we've got to get this class done. What are the specifics that need to be done? Let's get to the facts. How does he thinking about it? How do you think and feel about it in short, succinct sentences, hopefully with something visual to help create that joint attention where you, you know, OTTER it or write it down on a piece of paper scribe for him so that he notices that you are really paying attention to what's going on for him. Big, big connection tool. And then okay, where what can we agree that we're going to experiment, experiment with that just might work and see if it will, and go from there.

So I hope that this is helpful. I noticed that I forgot to put my end slide here. Hold on. We're gonna add it right here. Please come visit me at www.LynnCDavison.com/blog for a transcript of this video. And the resources that I've mentioned in here links to those. I really would love to help you work through these struggles that we've all had.

We definitely appreciate you sharing them with us because so many of us are in the middle of the exact same struggle you're in.

So join us at The Art of Adulting and welcome Lisa to our group, our program and I can't wait to meet you inside.

Bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai