#29 | Not Willing To Self-Advocate

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

• SEEING AUTISM by Barb Avila: https://www.lynncdavison.com/pl/2147533610
• STEAR Map Phone Wallpaper
• Self Advocacy: Improve Your Life By Speaking Up at BetterUp.com
• FLEXIBLE MINDSETS IN SCHOOL by Susannah Cole
• Proactive Collaborative Problem Solving Process by Dr. Ross Greene
• ATOMIC HABITS by James Clear
• Summary of PEOPLE SKILLS by Robert Bolton

Hey everyone, it's Lynn Davison. I help autistic young adults and their families. systemize adulting together. Thank you for watching this video.

Today's question comes from Nicole Garcelon Smith. Her son is not willing to self advocate. Let's, let's look at what she's thinking.

Nicole thinks that he doesn't ask questions of the professor that he's taking a course from, that he's inflexible with the teachers feedback, that and he'll never be a self advocate. So he won't be successful in his life. And those are pretty scary thoughts.

So, let's sort this out using the process again, that Barb Avila advocates in her book, SEEING AUTISM,

1. Where we try to understand what's going on first
2. Then connect with ourselves and with what could be going on with our autistic young adult.
3. And then what practice could we put in place that would help this particular situation?

So first, let's look at what's going on.

What is self advocacy? The definition I found is the ability to speak up on your behalf effectively. That means that you've identified your needs and you understand where the gap is between where you are and what you're getting, and you want to close them.

It also, because of our kids, involves how and when we want to, they want to self disclose their autism and how it affects their learning. One of the people that I've studied advocates that we be able to express in one sentence, what how their autism affects our autistic young adults, and we should know that sentence so that we can offer it at any time in a way that it could be helpful for them getting what they need from the situation.

I wonder if we did this with our autistic young adults and had a sentence prepared that they had already rehearsed? If perhaps it might be easier for them to identify where the gap is between what they have and what they need.

I advocate that all of this can be taught including those self-advocacy skills that are needed for our young adults to get what they need out of life. What they should  have what's not, you know, all that difficult to provide so that the playing field can be a little bit more level for them, and they can create a life that they love.

CONNECT

So now that we understand what's involved in self advocacy, let's connect with them and with ourselves and see what's going on. And we'll use what I think is going on with Nicole. And, you know, hopefully it's close enough that it makes sense.

So the situation is they got some feedback on an assignment. Her son got some feedback on an assignment that he had submitted. And Nicole's thought, is that he should listen to the feedback and revise and resubmit his work. I mean, that makes perfect sense. He should listen to the feedback, revise and resubmit his work. That's why he's in school so it makes perfect sense.

And so she feels a sense of urgency. Let's get this done. Let's turn it in. Let's do what we can to really get out of this course what you need to know in order to you know, do do a good job and learn what is important to know in this course.

So she suggested to him that he should do this. And unfortunately, she's disappointed because he's not doing this on his own. He's not proactively doing it when she suggests that she gets a lot of resistance. So let's just notice what's happening there. Is that the result is disappointment.

And here's another thought that seems to be happening in this situation. There's teacher feedback, so the situation is the same. That's the part that's outside of our control. And here's what's inside of our control the 'T' "He may never self advocate."

That's the  thought that you know, we're projecting out in the future that this is a problem that will continue for the rest of his life. That puts us right in fear. We spin in the future failure that could occur and all of the consequences of that future failure.

And the result is that we think he will fail in life. That's pretty scary. And it's certainly uncomfortable to feel. It makes perfect sense though. We all go to the future and think, "If this doesn't get solved, it's going to be awful."

And that's what our brain is doing for us. Our marvelous brain is looking at what's happening out in the world, and what do we need to do to protect ourselves? What do we need to do to make sure that we have enough resources, we're safe, and we're connected to the people that are going to support us and the things that we want to get done? Makes perfect sense. That's what our brain is they're doing.

So here's my suggestion. What if we just tacked on this is again, we're connecting with ourselves? What if we just tapped on the words and that's okay. It's good. Could be a push but let's try it on.

• He gets the teacher feedback. Same situation.
• He didn't revise his work and that, okay. Just try that bought on.
• That keeps us centered. It's okay. We're willing to accept the situation as it is at this time.
• What else could we do? The question we ask ourselves, that's our action. We wonder what else could be done? Is there another way we can approach this problem? What are the options? What's that flexible thinking that we want to practice? That is, was so beautifully illustrated in the conversation that I had with Susanna Cole and her book on FLEXIBLE MINDSETS IN SCHOOL. What other options, and then the result is we do generate some options.

So I just suggest tacking those words on and that's okay because it opens up a world of possible actions. We can take I mean, they're infinite. And it gives us a freezes up from that heavy feeling of fear that kind of takes our brain when it's afraid it takes our focus and it focuses right on the problem. I mean, that's what kept us alive. We have to focus on the problem. But in you know, when there was a tiger in the woods. But there's no more tigers in the woods, most of our problems are psychological in nature, and we just want to think a little bit more flexibly about them and saying and that's okay, opens up our lens a little bit broader and helps us find what is okay in the situation. Now, let's look at okay, what's going on with our autistic young adult here.

• Again, the teacher gave him some feedback.
• His thought was I don't like him.
• So he resists any feedback.
• He doesn't do anything.
• And his result is he doesn't like what's going on because he was so enthusiastic when he enrolled at the school.

I mean, he really is a talented person who would love to express himself in, in a in a brilliant way. And he needs to know what this teacher is teaching, but he just doesn't like the way this teacher is. He doesn't like the way he gets feedback. He doesn't like the way he teaches me. He is really resisting what's going on in this situation.

Here's another possible STEAR map of what could be going on with our autistic young adult.

• Teacher again,
• I don't like him.
• I'm going to resist it.
• So I notice all the reasons why I don't like him. I mean, I don't like the way he teaches his pace is too slow, too fast. He doesn't give me enough examples. His instructions are not explicit enough. It's really hard for me to focus on what he says. So I drift off and then I come back. I'm not sure what was said and he doesn't provide me any notes so I can't fill in the blanks.
• Let me tell you all the reasons why this teacher is a bad teacher.

You know, and we see this happen a lot. And so the result is, he doesn't like him and he doesn't learn from him. We know that this is what's going on with our autistic adults and I do see this often in my house as well. So that's when we, you know, really need to step back, take a notice and see if we can help you know, maybe listen, and see if we can't get some thought downloads from our kids who are sometimes reluctant to tell us what's really going on in their heads.

We listen to them, that reflective listening to them when we can get their thoughts out someplace else where we can sort and look at them using the STEAR maps, we can help them and then of course, the best part of all would be if they could do this for themselves whenever they get in a sticky situation like this one is.

So I would suggest to this autistic young adult that we tack on the same words.

• Teacher
• I don't like him. And that's okay. I've accepted that I don't like him and that's okay.
• Now I can be centered.
• Their action is to question, "What other options do I have for learning? I still want to do well in this course. I still want to get the grade. I still want to get the diploma because that's going to open doors for me. But what other options do I have to learn the material? What else could I do? Maybe in doing all of those things I'll know the information better and I might even be able to pay better attention as we go along.
• So the result is you learned another way it's okay that I don't like learning from this guy. I'm going to figure out how to learn it. My way. What works for me.

If we can teach our young adults this they can get through just about anything. So what's the practice then, in the three step?

PRACTICE

Well, you know we I'm going to advocate that proactive problem solving process that Ross Greene teaches at livesinthebalance.org. It's golden, you first, you know, put the situation out there teacher gave you feedback. What's your thinking on that? And you see if he can unearth what's going on in their head and help you know really reflect and listen and help them figure out and sort their thoughts out.

Then you say to them, okay, here's a perfect opportunity. You are not always going to like your professor. You are not always going to like your boss. They're not always going to like your co workers. Here is a perfect opportunity for us to practice flexible thinking so that we can figure out another way to be successful in this situation, which is one that we cannot change.

Alright, then what do we agree we're going to do next? What are we going to try? What experiment could we see if it might work? That proactive problem solving process is just golden.

And let me encourage you with this. In this book, James clear explains the habits. Those are the actions that we take that add up over time to a life we love that works.

And this thought is so helpful to me as I work with my autistic young adults. I'm sorry that it's so small, but the bottom line is that 1% better each day. When you do the math which is 1.01 to the 365th power actually adds up, when you do the math, to 38% better each year.

So I just want to encourage all of us to realize that we do not have to turn our children into stellar self advocates tomorrow. We just need to take time to get them to be 1% better each day. That's what we do in The Art of Adulting.

We divide life into those critical parts. What are your dreams? How are you talking to yourself? What actions are you taking? And what people that's where this one falls, which people do you need to recruit on your team so that you can find how you need to navigate all of those people skills, so that you can get better every single day in terms of getting the support, exact support that you need, exactly when you need it.

So please take just take a big breath. Think, "All we have to do is do things 1% better each day and we will be well on our way to creating a life we love that works. making huge progress. One tiny micro step at a time.

And here's where you can find the resource PEOPLE SKILLS. Here's my copy. This was actually printed in 1979. So you know I've had it for a while. It's also still available. Thank goodness, at Amazon and is available on Kindle.

Bob Bolton and his wife Dot, were tremendous teachers of people skills throughout corporate America. And they say they call it assertion skills. We're I'm just going to substitute the word self advocating. All that our young adults need to learn is and watch this. It parallels the steer map.

• When you okay, that's the situation.
• It causes me to think
• and feel and
• I act this way.
• So I get this result.

It's just that simple. So we can teach them the STEAR Mapping. We can now leverage it in both the problem solving process that we learned from Ross Greene and in their self advocacy skills. This is powerful. And I know we can help them learn how to do this. It's going to take time, but if they get 1% better every day, they will get 38% better every year. And that's the best we can hope for.

So please join me in The Art of Adulting. 

Nicole, I know you're there already.

And please let's learn how to help our autistic young adult systemize adulting together so that we connect with them and can continue to love them for the rest of our lives.

Bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai