#11 | Wants Son To Do His Daily Chores Without Prompts

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RESOURCES

LivesInTheBalance.org by Dr. Ross Greene

SEEING AUTISM by Barb Avila: https://www.lynncdavison.com/pl/2147533610

Lynda & Richard Eyer Teaching Your Children Values

Today I promised Kate that I would answer her question. She asked “how do I get my son to do his daily chores without prompts”? This is a question that we have all faced. We really want to move the monkey of responsibility off of our back and onto our young adult’s back so that they learn how to create a life that they love that works and recognize that they need to hold themselves accountable for doing that. What they create in this world is really truly up to them. And how they do it is also up to them. So we really want to get that monkey off of our backs and firmly onto theirs. So what's the way that we can do it?

The best idea that I have found over the years is to follow Ross Greene's collaborative, proactive, collaborative problem solving process. Ross is incredibly generous online. He gives all of his tools away. You don't even have to buy his book, though I highly recommend it. And in fact, I read his book first when my now 25 year old was in second grade in school and the school psychologists handed it to me. It was eye opening and mind blowing and truly paradigm shifting. So I highly recommend it. I did have the opportunity to meet Ross (he's a terrific guy) at my son's school where he gave a parent presentation there. I was lucky enough to meet him myself.

What Ross Greene advocates is that our kids will do well when they can. When they're not doing well, it's just a question of an unsolved problem or a lagging skill. And that takes it out of the realm of the drama and into the thought process and to the part that we can't control. This is what's happening. This is external to us. This is the situation. He also argues that the best time to do it is in a proactive manner. Not in a reactive manner. Because when we're reacting to whatever is happening around us, energy levels are charged. When we are highly charged, we're usually not very comfortable and when we're highly energized that's not when we operate mostly out of our primitive brain. And we can't get a wise brain to solve the problem. So let's do it at a time when things are not highly charged.

The collaborative part is so that our kids as young adults appreciate that they're part of the solution, coming up with what we're going to do together. It has to be collaborative, because what we're trying to do is train their brain. We're trying to get them to use their mind to train their brain to make neural connections so that this part of their world will work better for them in the future. So that's what I advocate. 

Here’s how we want to start. We want to start with describing the problem. That's usually the parent’s role, but just the factual parts of the problem. “I noticed in the last three days that I've had to remind you every day to do these tasks, and I really think that you've been thinking about doing them, you know how to do them, now we needed to take the next step and move to the point where you can do more of these without my prompts”. That's describing the unsolved problem. Then the second thing is, “okay, tell me what it is that you think about this. What are your thoughts and your feelings about it”? Because it's our thought feeling combination that flavors our action. Our thoughts will highly influenced the feeling and they will all both flavor the way that we act. So we want to know what his thoughts and feelings are about it. And to do this, we really have to listen, that's really hard. I found that that listening step has been the biggest challenge in my parenting that I want to leap in there and solve the problem or I want to offer advice or I want to criticize the way that he's done it in the past and that is not what we're doing right now. Right now. All we're doing in the second step is to really listen well to what his thoughts and feelings are. Ross calls this the empathy step.

When our kids feel like they are seen and are heard by us, it will soothe them and make them feel safer. And that is so important. For them to really tell us what's going on. The safer part is so important, and is emphasized in Barbara Avilla’s book, Seeing Autism because our kids were probably born with an amygdala that kind of is on fire. And that means that they are in fear from their very beginning days. And so that has created a cascading effect of not really being able to solve their own problems as well because they were so scared so they would retreat and hide and stay safe. And that describes the people that I love that are autistic. And so what we have to do is make that environment, especially coming to us and asking for help, as safe as possible. So this empathy step is the second step and it may just be the most important one.

The third step is what are your thoughts and feelings because frankly, we're not just trying to solve this problem for them, we're also trying to solve this problem for us. And so we need to put out there that we can't spend as much time helping them on things because it takes a lot of time and we really need them to take this on for them to become the adult that they want to become and to create the life that they love that's going to work. Whatever other thoughts and feelings you have about that we need to decrease the reliance on the supports in the scaffolding that we've built in their life and get them to internalize that, especially on these routine daily tasks, so that then they can have time to take on the bigger things that they're interested in doing (becoming an animator or designing games or whatever it is that they want to do with their life). We want to get some of these actions that are really the fundamental actions on autopilot. So we want to know what their thoughts and feelings are and then what your thoughts and feelings are.

Third, the last step is where can we meet in the middle and agree to experiment with a solution, a tiny action to discover what works if we approach this with a experimental problem solving, proactive, joint project. I think you'll find that hopefully, there will be more progress in this area.

Now the final idea I have that it didn't really include in here was it's not a bad idea to check in with some of the other supportive members of your team to see if they have any ideas? Do they have any thoughts that you can incorporate in this process? So the bottom line is you plan in advance, you actually write down the problem. You understand you're going to pause and listen to them as well; leave room on the paper for that. The third step then would be to put your thoughts out there. And then the fourth step would be to agree on what the next actions are. What the little tiny experiment is. Because that's how we build our life is through those tiny actions that we do every day.

So to summarize, just the overall philosophy of where we're trying to go is I like to talk about the role of a parent of any adult children. I got this idea and concept from Lynda & Richard Eyer. They wrote a book called Teaching Your Children Values. They took all nine of their children on Oprah live several years ago. I didn't get to see that episode, but I sure would love it. The courage that it must have taken to bring on all their children live in front of the national audience. They're just lovely people. They have a website called Values Parenting. So when I was trying to find exactly where I had gotten this concept of the role of a parent of adults, I Googled it. And lo and behold, let me tell you about it. The role is to encourage, which is what we're trying to do through this problem solving process. The second thing is to warn, if we see that they're headed in a direction it is our obligation to warn them and then the third thing is to be consulted. So those three things form our crown. And the reason why I use a crown is because the Queen of England has the same role to encourage, to warn and to be consulted. Imagine that, you know in her 90 plus years the number of Prime Minister's and things that she's seen. Certainly if I were a prime minister, and I had a perplexing problem, I would want to go to her and ask her for any advice. And that's exactly what we want our children to do. We want them to come to us and consult with us and the way that they're going to do that is if they feel safe, and seen and toothed in our presence. So they're secure in the knowledge that we love them unconditionally and that we are there to help them create a life they love that works.

So I'm just gonna say these are my best thoughts and I really hope you'll find them helpful. You can go to Ross Greene's websites. He's got a great website and then if you get a chance visit Linda and Richard Eyer’s. They wrote a series of books about how to raise children. How to Teach Your Children Values, Responsibility and Joy, I think these are three things which are absolutely wonderful ideas and they have several other books. They're wonderful authors.

I'm so happy to make this for you. And if anyone else watching this video has a struggle that they'd like to share with me. Just direct message me or put it right in the Facebook group and I'll be happy to do it for you too. Bye for now.