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 Adults on Facebook
• SEEING AUTISM by Barb Avila: https://www.lynncdavison.com/pl/2147533610
• LISTEN UP OR LOSE OUT by Dorothy and Bob Bolton
• Mood Meter by Marc Brackett
• PERMISSION TO FEEL by Marc Brackett
• Collaborative Proactive Problem Solving Process by Dr. Ross Greene
• The Art of Adulting Course, Coaching and Community

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

Today's struggle comes from Parents of Autistic Adults on Facebook. Our Father says that his son cannot carry on a conversation. He's 15 years old, and he talks to his PC and posts videos and makes good grades, but he can't talk to others carry on a conversation. If he could do that he could make a friend. So he's asking for any ideas besides speech therapy, which hasn't helped for 12 years.

Yeah, I get it. You know? We've really invested a lot of time and energy into resources that may not have met our expectations in terms of leveling up our kids skills. And so I'm going to give you another option that is not speech therapy. And it's going to present it in the format that Barbara Avila from SEEING AUTISM, her book, seeing it as the processes where we understand what's going on, connect with ourselves and with that, and then figure out what to practice to take minor steps, mini steps to solve this problem.

UNDERSTAND

So first, start with understanding. And here's what I think happens with your autistic young adult. Just the thought of conversing with somebody else puts him right into the motivational triangle where he's going to avoid pain. He's going to stay safe, because just the idea of having a conversation with someone else live is really frightening to him. Instead, he's going to seek pleasure, where he knows he's safe, and conserve his energy for those actions. So it makes perfect sense that he's been avoiding having conversations all along.

And here's how Barb explains how this happened. Here's her quote from her book. What is noted in the research is that it is not until between a child's first and second birthday, that we begin to see the symptoms that qualify for an autism diagnosis. And by the time that an autism diagnosis is made there's been a cascade effect from that very early and basic social reciprocity. She explains that autistic babies are harder to console

3:15
She explains that autistic babies are harder to console. The link between them and their parent isn't as easily made. So there's no co-regulation occurring. And so that reciprocity word, the parents smiles and then the child smiles and that interaction doesn't happen as frequently as it does with a child with a non autistic brain.

She goes on to explain that, "It seems that the early back and forth social reciprocity weakens with the introduction of objects or topics." Because the autistic young adult or the autistic baby is more comfortable with things that are fixed. They lean toward that as opposed to leaning toward the social reciprocity.

"The curiosity to the caregiver gets lost or significantly reduced in the course of development. This challenge in to the reciprocity element of joint attention causes difficulties later in life when interactions increase in complexity," she explains.

And that's what's happening is more and more unpredictable as all conversations are, where we need to have flexible thinking and flexible reactions. She further explains and sorry, this is a very long slide, but I do I did want to include it because it was some insights. She works with a whole you know, all age ranges. of autistic individuals, and she said that she's more than some really information from autistic adults.

"Autistic adults give us a window into the processing difficulties associated with social engagements. They will often share that looking at faces, for example, can be distracting at best and anxiety producing at worst. They describe sensory input as coming in at all all at the same time without a proper filter. I imagine sensory information like a firehose of input that is so overwhelming that the person has to find ways to shut down shut out or fight the onslaught of information. And when they are simply managing the sensory overload. They are certainly not looking for any more information to add to the flood. They are no longer curious about their part.

So helpful Barb Avila, thank you very much.

And then again, in autism instead of social reciprocity and joint attention providing the child with reassurance they're left to their own devices because it doesn't provide an assurance. They turn toward the more predictable elements in the environment. And that's how they cope, feel safe, and grow.

And that's where we see the percentage of interests that characterize many of the autistic young adults that we love that characterize their, their childhood and young adulthood.

So another point that I'd like to make is that when we are in that social interactions are pretty complex. There's not only what's being said there's the nonverbals and there's the emotion in the tone of the what the speaker is saying.

Emotions can also be a big black box for people with autism. There's it's been described with this word alexithymia is is just when we break it down, it means without words or emotions. It just means when a person has difficulty identifying and expressing emotion is not anything nothing has gone wrong. Here, actually, about it's actually quite common. The research suggests that up to 13% of the population experienced alexithymia where the whole world of emotions is difficult to pin down with words. Make sense?

It's more common in men than female and like a lot. There's just a lot of information that suggests that this also makes this social interaction very confusing.

7:41
So that's where we need to connect with ourselves next and say, Okay, now that we know what's going on, what you know, how do we want to think about it?

And right now,

• I think that, from what I can tell our Father is saying that if he could carry on a conversation, he could finally make a friend. So what he's seeing is his son is isolated.
• And it kind of makes him feel I don't know, this is my guess, desperate. There's got to be a solution so that he can make connections with others. Now I just want to make an aside here is that we tend to really think that having friends is important. And yes, it is, I think until our participant has had some successes in this area, it's going to be difficult to step into that friendzone and let's just let go of our expectations. And see what we can do to create that reciprocal conversation with in our own family first, just the thought about how we want to approach it.

I'm wondering if we look at it from the perspective of the young adult. 

• His situation is you the dad.
• He wants me to make friends. T
• That probably makes him feel quite anxious.
• So he avoids it, and the whole topic
• So he stays anxious, so he doesn't level up his skills. It's a lagging. It's a lagging skill and an unsolved problem.

And I think it's really important thank you to the Father who brought this up because this happens with so many of our autistic young adults. So when they stay in a vicious cycle of inaction, there's just no skills, no friends, no results changes. Nothing changes, essentially.

So what we need to do is we need to be very strategic in the way that we decide how to practice the development of this skill so that we can solve this unsolved problem.

Keep in mind that you know, our end point is that we want them to not have these skills so that they can become adults.

Practicing the set of mental schools tools that help us manage our thoughts, emotions and actions so we can achieve goals set by us for us.

Because the barrier to him achieving this level of leveling up of his skills, his fear, and it's all based in his thinking.

So, just know that if we take the time to really understand what's going on with him, then we can then we can start taking really informed steps toward developing the skill.

And it really is important that we create joint attention with this, we need to get low we need to get quiet, we need to get predictable. So the tool that the action that really helped in my family was my son and I take walks every most afternoons unless we were going to the grocery store after work. I totally shut down in business at five o'clock. And we go and take a walk or go to the grocery store together. I'm committed to that it's been predictable for him. He knows he can count on me and then he talks to me in those walks.

That's what has been amazingly helpful in our relationship. We're connecting better. We're working on the skills I'm doing all the reflect all the listening that I can so that he feels heard and he is explaining to me what his thinking is, it's marvelous. So that's what we do.

And it's side by side also is the benefit of the walking so it's me talking to him, which can sometimes be overwhelming as was mentioned earlier, to the side by side and even in the winter, you know, and I have the hood on he can't even see my face. So it's just the words and the intonation and he's taking medicine to help out.

So I want to suggest that instead of focusing on having conversation, that the first step, the first skill that we teach is you're listening. Theoretically in any conversation between two people you spend half of you know we all spend half of our time listening. It's not a skill that is taught very often.

So my friend Dot and Bob Bolton, whom I've had the pleasure of meeting, wrote this book, LISTEN UP OR LOSE OUT and several others on listening skills and thoughts. She is no longer with us. Bob is still around.

They have really broken this down so that we can understand what just the listening part of, of communication of social reciprocity just the listening part, and I think this is the best part for our autistic adults to attack first,
because it doesn't require that they come up with the various nuanced responses. It just requires that they take the information in and do the best they can to create an active response.

But that's not so easy. So let's break it down. So here's where we, what's the benefit of listening is that we, you know, letting people know that I understand what they are saying, to me is a kind of oil that lubricates the entire communications process.

So this is the act of listening skill that I believe is the first skill that we teach, to try and create that social reciprocity that you're looking for.

And it breaks down into these three parts.

1. So first, you would say, "It sounds like..."
2. You're upset is the second part the emotion
3. "Because..." your dog died. I don't know, let me give me give me a better example,  because your internet is out. That happens.

So this is the reflective process. And I just want to say that it sounds simple, but it's not. Because what's required is that we ask our autistic young adults to take it in sort out the information that's going on, sum it up, and say it's the succinctly back in your in their own words. This is not easy.

This is why our autistic young adults are lagging their peers because first they're afraid of it. And second because we haven't broken it down.

We really need to get low and slow, and really break it down and get predictable for them to learn this.

1. So first they have to take it in,
2. then they have to sort it out.
3. Then they have to sum it up and
4. say it back simply in their own words.

I mean, it sounds like such an easy thing to do, but it's not at all. Another part the alexithymia complicates it because our autistic young adults have a hard time identifying emotions.

So I suggest we use this mood meter, where we ask them to explain you know where they are in the energy continuum, like are they really upset that will be high energy? Are they kind of not really that's low energy or they're comfortable or uncomfortable? And if they can just find their way in this mood meter. Here in one of these four quadrants, we can understand a lot better what's going on inside them.

And they can identify that in some other person. Are they comfortable or uncomfortable? Is it high energy or low energy? That's the only those are the two questions that they have to ask each other now this is from Marc Brackets, PERMISSION TO FEEL Book and he has actually led an entire effort across the at least this hemisphere as far as I know. To really level up emotional intelligence in schools he's developed an entire program. So when I read this book, I was so inspired that he was teaching these skills to everyone.

It just breaks it down. We need that help to break it down. And the eventually he argues that our kids, you know that some people can actually find all where they are like apathetic or engaged, easygoing or cheerful. But we I don't think we can expect this kind of complexity initially from our autistic adults.

I think we need to go back to the very simple, you know, where are you red, yellow? Green, blue. Is that high energy, low energy, is it comfortable, uncomfortable, because that's what they need to be able to do in that reflection step. It says, It seems like you're uncomfortable because life isn't going the way you want it to. So this is what we want to do. We want to teach them how to paraphrase. And this is not easy.

So again, we want to reflect the thoughts, ideas and opinions that were expressed in the Speaker's comments.

Paraphrasing is a challenge for our children as well. Do you can see all the building blocks that are needed in order to create an active listening skill that I believe is the first step in creating that conversation that you're looking for for your autistic young adult?

17:23
And I'm going to suggest that we really want to develop this skill. This is not one that is trivial, because it's going to be necessary at work, as well as at home. And it's going to be important that they be able to to at least listen well to whoever is hiring them. Otherwise they probably won't get hired. Or they won't be able to solve problems once they're at work. So I really encourage that listening is the first skill that we teach.

And so we will use Dr. Ross Greene's collaborative proactive problem solving process to do that. So it's collaborative so we because we do it together proactive because we do it at a regularly scheduled time, predictable time together.

We don't do it when emotions are heightened because we know that that means that the prefrontal cortex is offline because the limbic system that ensures our survival is really running the brain at that time.

So we look at you know, what is their STEAR Map first, which helps us understand where they're coming from. What's the situation and then we agreed on a situation here, right? What are their thoughts and emotions about that situation and how does that make them act? And then okay, what's the current result? We can really understand and have them help us understand where they are. That's helpful.

And then here's my steer map that helps them to understand your point of view. And this is where they would be doing a lot up reflecting here. They'd be reflectively listening in the third part of the step to the the fourth step of let's decide what we're going to practice first.

Why don't you just reflect a few statements with me when we're in the car, or when we take our walk, or we're, you know, have something to eat together? See if we can get them to to start practicing these skills in a very, very safe environment.

Slowly but surely build what's happening, you know, so that they can have a conversation so that they can recognize and at least put the face level words to their emotions where they're mad, sad, calm, brave. We can just get to some you know, a few emotions, comfortable, uncomfortable. High energy, low energy is our starting point.

And then we can just identify the color are you blue today? Are you red today? You know, are you seeing red, you seem blue, you seem green, you seem yellow, charged up, ready to go and interested.

You know, the more we can help our our autistic adults with this part of what I know that we can help them move along in that adulting objective and that is where they let me see if I can find it. There. It is where they practice the set of mental tools that help them manage their thoughts, emotions and actions so that they can achieve goals set by them. For them. That's our goal.

So please join me at LynnCDavison.com/blog for the transcript and resources I've mentioned in this video, and I'd love to see you in The Art of Adulting. This is what we work on together.

Bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai