Flourish On Their Own: Day 1 Transcript
Note: I edited this transcript for brevity and clarity.
Welcome everyone. I really am honored that you're here. I will do my best to make every minute worthwhile. I can guarantee that you'll get one nugget at least from today.
So it is one minute after the hour let’s get started. If you see me looking over and clicking, it's because I have to admit people.
Let’s get started.
Today's agenda.
We're going to go over why we're all here, what is flourishing, why it matters and how to identify and remember strengths.
I really believe that strength is what we want to start with and end with and live with every day as much as we can. That’s backed by some really good research.
I want to remind you that each day of this masterclass is going to build on the day before so it's really important that you stick with me for all three days because what you're gonna end up with is your life GPS.
I'm gonna urge you to use your life GPS every day because repetition matters. That's what wires our brain to remember what we need to remember so that we're the best version of ourselves more often. I just want to remind you to please come here tomorrow at the same time. Get it on your calendars.
What I'll be doing at the beginning is giving you a presentation and then I will answer your questions. So I'm hoping that the presentation only takes up about half of the time that we're here and then the other half of the time I can take your questions. If you think of a question as we go, put it in the chat.
Why Are We Here?
Thank you for being here everybody. So we're gonna talk about why we're here, what's flourishing because that's what we all want and how to remember our strengths because those are going to give us a nice solid place to operate from.
I'm here because in 2016 my family was not flourishing. We were languishing. I had just spent six nights on an antibiotic IV because I was septic. I had a kidney infection from a urinary tract infection that I said I didn't have time to go to the doctor to take care of it.
Graduate number five in my family was talking about suicide. They said their therapist was not helping.
I had to figure out a better way to manage myself and help my family live better. That's what I've been doing since 2016.
Then in 2019 I decided to offer what I've learned to others in hopes that it would help them and save them some time.
I’ve read a lot, listened to a lot of experts and I just want to condense it all for you so that you can start flourishing.. Also because I want my kids to flourish. Oh, by the way, I want to flourish too.
I think we're all here because we'd all love to flourish.
I also want to make this world work better for people and be as inclusive as possible.
My Goal
So my goal by the time that you're done with the three-day masterclasses is that you'll have your own life GPS. It's going to be recorded and you're going to know how to use it so you can start using it now. So when it's the right time for you to join The Art of Adulting and bring in your graduate then you'll both be using the same tools.
That’s what I found frustrating when I had my kids in therapy. They would go to therapy and I would ask what happened and they would say not much and I wouldn't know how to help them.
The way I've structured my program is that we're all in it together. We all have the same tools. We use the same tools. We know what the tools are and that repetition together is really what helps make it stick.
Carol just joined us. She is also a member of The Art of Adulting. We've known each other three years now. Carol has a 17-year-old at home with her and she's been in the program since he was 15. She’s been very helpful for me because Carol has some personal experience with diversity that she'll probably share with you.
Make a Copy of the Workbook
I want to urge you to make a copy of the workbook, one for you and one for your graduate because we both want to do this work.
The reason we parents want to do this work is because then we'll be better prepared to answer any questions that come up from our kids. Not to mention the fact that I think it's going to be very useful for us to use the same tools.. Our family is a system so it really helps if we practice the tools together..
I want you to make a copy for yourself and a copy for your autistic graduate. I'm going to have Britt, who is also a member of The Art of Adulting, she is a graduate and is here to answer any questions if your graduate joins us as well.
She's going to put the link to the workbook in the chat so that you guys have it.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EdZ6qpVN18aBA2T4kTtTP8qbG8gvgbUC/view?usp=share_link
The Autistic Adulting Road Map
These are the three things we're going to do.
First, we're going to talk about who we are at our core. Which strengths really resonates with our true heart
Tomorrow we're going to talk about what we do next to get what we want. We want our graduates to be as independent as possible. We want them to get what they want because we won't always be here helping them. So we want them to have as much practice while we're here getting what they want so that they know how to do it when they're on their own.
What happens as we try to address the challenges that come up when we’re neurodiverse? What do we want to call that? Alternative learner or whatever we want to call them. I like to call them graduates because I like to start with what they have already accomplished.
What We Do
We tend to attack if things aren't going the way we think they should. We tend to avoid work that's going to require a lot of our energy. That's the way that we often end up showing up.
So what I want us to do is approach. That's not as easy as it sounds, it's one word and it sounds simple but it isn't because there's a lot of stuff going on. I want to make sure that you have the tools, the approach that works for you. We are all unique and what works for one doesn't always work for the next.
The quickest way to improve your family’s mental health
This article was just published at CNN on September 21st. It's about a study at Harvard Medical School that recommends the quickest way to improve our family's mental health. Because, you remember, I was not in such a good place in 2016.
This article specifically focused on parents and teens. I think it's extremely relevant to us. Often our kids lag in development because of the kind of brain that they got, In their 20s they are a lot more like teens who don’t have an autistic brain.
Parent’s emotional health and their teens’ are deeply interwoven
So I really do believe that the research that they quoted in this article is absolutely applicable to us.
What they found was that parents and teens' emotional health is deeply interwoven. Parents are just as anxious and depressed as their kids. I found that to be true in my family and we work on it every single day.
We were just at the doctor for our physicals this morning and my daughter was just sharing that there are times when she feels depressed. It's going to happen. We're all human, we're going to have our dips.
What I provide inside The Art of Adulting are the tools we need to manage those dips. I'm going to give you the framework and some of the tools in these classes.
We All Have Anxiety
The statistics they quoted was that 18% of teens, 20% of moms, and 15% of dads are anxious. They reported similar numbers in depression. The point is that we all need help to better manage our mental health.
Autistic brains are different
People with autism have brain changes in both high-level processing regions. This is fascinating research. They actually examined 750 brain samples and were able to show anatomically how there are differences in the autistic brain versus the non-autistic brain.
You know this is not our imagination. Things are differently wired. Autistic brains process things differently than brains on the other part of the bell shaped curve.
So we don't want to push everybody into the bell shaped curve, that would be boring. The fact is that at least 3% of the world's population have autism. It's probably higher than that. But let's just take 3% of 8 billion people. That means that there are at least 240 million people in the world that have a brain that looks like it's autistic.
What we talk about being autistic is normal for people with autistic brains. It's just not normal for others in the middle of the bell-shaped curve.
Fine. I don't want to have a world full of people in the middle of the bell-shaped curve. I like being around diverse people.
The impact of having an autistic brain
Here's how Mark Hutten describes the impact of having an autistic brain. Mark is a YouTuber who focuses on couples where one has autism level one and the other one doesn’t. I find some of his words so helpful. He's a therapist. He says we need to recognize that there can be:
Mind, emotions and time blindness. So it's hard for an autistic brain to imagine how the other person is thinking, feeling and how much time it's going to take to get stuff done.
Executive dysfunction, meaning organizing and all the things that we do to get things done, can make things difficult.
Sensitivity to sensory input. I see that in my house.
Difficulties extrapolating the lessons from the past and projecting them into the future.
Processing speed. In my house it is slower. I have to be really careful to go at their pace and their pace is the right pace, period. I can not push on their pace. What works for them works for them and I need to accept that.
The preference for animals, tasks and things over relationships. That just makes sense. I mean if you look at all the people who have made significant contributions who also have an autistic brain, it's usually not in the area of social work. I mean it's just the kind of brain you know that the genetic lottery came up with.
Again, this is normal, just not typical. We don't all fit into that bell-shaped curve. I'm very thankful for that. It means we can all be ourselves.
I'm going to bring in some of the teachers who have informed me in the last five, six years.
I don't know if you know Bill Nassen at the Autism Discussion Page on Facebook. He's no longer active but boy did he produce a ton of content there. It's all free. I went ahead and bought his three books. Anybody who's worked with the autistic population for 30 or more years needs to be heard.
I think all autistic people need to be heard as well.
Bill is saying in this quote that there are a lot of invisible cues, relationship cues and contextual cues, that are difficult to interpret when you have an autistic brain.
That's why we cannot assume. We have to provide this information to our kids, clarify, clarify, clarify, clarify, and verify understanding. We can say things but it doesn't work unless they get it and unless it sticks. That's what really matters. That's why we clarify and verify all the time.
Here's Martin Seligman. He is the father of the positive psychology movement currently. He was President of the American Psychological Association. He explains why short times with therapists or short classes or whatever don't seem to work. That's because we cannot cure the differences, nor do we want to. Because the differences allow us to enjoy what everyone brings to the table. What we don't have as a strength, often they have it.
So the whole point is to continue to benefit from whatever we've done in terms of therapy or classes, we have to make sure that the learnings are applied.
That's what he's saying and I'm going with him because he's the chief guy in the psychology area.
So let me just pause for a moment and let me look in the chat and please tell me does this make sense to you all? Can you just give me a little bit of feedback in the chat?
Sue, I am so glad that you told me things are going too fast for you. You will have the replay. I hope by this afternoon I will have taken the transcript as well and edited it. [I underestimated the time to edit the transcript, so here it is now.] I will give you headlines within the edited transcript so that you can find whatever you're looking for inside of it faster and easier. It's going to take me a little bit of time but I really want you to have access to what I'm telling you about. I appreciate your feedback.
Just so everybody knows, next Wednesday I'm available at 11 o'clock. I'll give you the link to sign up. In fact, Brit, if you have the link to the mini-masterclass next week you could put that in the chat as well. https://www.lynncdavison.com/pl/2147722700
Because if you come I will be there and it's usually a smaller group and I will do my best to answer everybody's questions next Wednesday and the following Wednesday whatever works for you at 11 o'clock.
I'll be there until Christmas until the week between Christmas and New Year's.
Q: Are your slides available?
I hadn't thought about that. That's a good idea so it'll be available in the replay and you can take screenshots is the best I can do but maybe I could actually even download the slides, too.
Just a couple weeks ago we were in Washington DC with our son, his beautiful wife and our adorable two-year-old grandson. We have eight grandchildren and many are diverse.
I was struck by the Martin Luther King, Jr. Monument. On the side is carved, “Out of the Mountain of Despair comes a stone of Hope.”
That's my purpose here for you today is to give you hope and to let you know that you're not alone. You're definitely not alone and that this is a safe place for you to be.
This research study that I referred to earlier from the CNN article is “Caring for the Caregiver.” It's the link between parent and teen but I still think it applies 100% to us.
The bottom line is the way to improve the mental health of our families is to start talking.
The study echoed Martin Seligman's words. You can go to therapy, you can take the medicine, you can take the courses. What really matters is how we apply what we learn together as a family.
It doesn't cost us anything, we just have to start talking.
Let's admit though that talking can be painful.
But talking stops us from dismissing or hiding the grief, just the heaviness of life. Making us silent and sore of heart.
It's really important that we start this dialogue with our kids and that they feel comfortable talking to us about whatever they want to learn about life, whatever they want out of life, that we talk about it.
Barb Avala says in Seeing Autism, a marvelous book I highly recommend, that every step of progress matters.
My graduate number six this morning got her blood drawn by herself today. That’s a first so I'm so pleased that that was our step of progress today. I didn't know that that would ever happen. So that's great!
Barb advocates this process where we do our best to understand what's happening, we connect with one another and we agree on what we're going to practice. I have these three steps in my head and in my heart.
If something is sticky, not going so well, I do my best to understand first, then figure out what's happening in their minds, And finally, we jointly agree on what we're going to practice. That's the process that I advocate and has worked for us so often.
In her book, she says that partnering with a person with autism takes purposeful and artful planning. We cannot assume that the way we were raised is going to work, that our kid needs. That's why we want to be thoughtful and mindful about the way that we ask them to connect with us and share control over what's happening. It's not easy for anybody.
Defining Flourishing
Let's get to the definition of flourishing. This is what Dr Seligman believes is how we get the most out of life, all of us. He has sworn that 51% of the world's population can flourish by 2051, which is going to be interesting because he was born in 1942 so we'll see if he can make it that long. But several others have picked up that objective including one of my coaches, Brian Johnson at Heroic.us.
PERMA+4
Seligman defines flourishing in these words: PERMA + 4. It's the first five characteristics and then he added four more.
Positive emotions. Make sense
Engagement. We're really into what we're doing
Relationships. They are supportive and are there for us
Meaning. We're doing things that are meaningful to us that we can find a higher purpose for what we're in
We're achieving things. We're being successful
The four things they added were genius because we have to have:
Physical Health. With our physical health, then we have the energy to tackle all the challenges that have been brought to us. Everybody has challenges and we need to be healthy so that we have maximum energy.
A Positive Mindset. It's more like a growth mindset. We are not trying to be Polyana here. We're just trying to understand that the biggest purpose we have is to grow.
Work Environment. He added that one and I think that one is so important for our autistic graduates my kids have had several jobs my graduates have had several jobs some are more conducive than others to their mental health, If that's the case then let's make sure that we notice that and we help them you know manage whatever is going on in their work environment. If possible you know over time figure out what's working and what's not working and then see what we can do to find a place that works better for them.
Financial Security includes safe housing, access to medical care, nutritious food, and transportation to work. Then of course the tribe that supports us through everything.
Those are the five things that are the most important elements for all of us to flourish.
Now is the perfect time for us to set our life GPS. We're learning how our graduates learn. Our graduates are at the perfect time because it suggests that when we're in our 20s is when we can do a better job listening to our thoughts. The metacognition process is what's going to help us get where we want to go.
The recipe for flourishing is knowing what our strengths are and then recreating our life as much as possible to use them as often as possible.
That's the first step for your life GPS: to know what your strengths are.. I've been doing this for a long time and I have never found two people with the same set of strengths. So we are all unique. I'm thankful for that.
When we know our course strengths. I gave you the reasons inside the workbook. But I'm going to add some more.
It's just helpful to know how powerful we are. That we can create what we want. It helps me center myself. When things are going a little wonky in my house which happens on the regular. So you're not alone. It just helps me to ask myself, “How do you want to show up, Lynn?” Because that's what matters. How do you want to show up, right?”
Also, when our kids go to job interviews, they're going to get that question, “What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses?”
We know that that's going to happen. So now they can answer that question.
If they know their strengths, then they can answer the question about their weaknesses. Their weaknesses are just when they overuse their strengths. So all they have to do is memorize this list of strengths.
They can say, for example, “Okay, I am very virtuous. Virtues matter to me. But sometimes I can carry my virtues to a fault. I can be a little rigid, that everybody else should behave perfectly logical.” It’s a great way to emphasize their strengths.
Okay, I'd be happy to hire somebody who is aware of what their strengths are and what their weaknesses are because that means that they're coachable. I can teach them. So knowing both strengths and weaknesses is so helpful.
How do we do this? We set a clear intention that we're going to respond using our strengths. Greg Hammer is a pediatric oncologist. He wrote Gain Without Pain for healthcare workers. He watched them struggling with bringing the stuff home from work. You can imagine what a pediatric oncologist sees. It's probably pretty heartbreaking to watch kids with cancer and watch the parents go through that as well. He believes that setting our intention in front of us on a daily basis will help us.
One of the practices is that we actually recite our strengths before we go to sleep at night. I do them every day in the shower and whatever we can to get them stuck in our brains so that we can just rattle them off and we can recognize when we're overdoing them.
Because we want our kids to have power.
To be:
present
original
whole
energized
resilient
This is from Dr Shefali who wrote a marvelous book called The Parenting Map. I just read every word and listened to her being interviewed on podcasts. I just think she's got an awful lot of good things to share with us.
So that's what we want. We want them to be present. Original. We don't want them to look like anybody else. Whole, meaning that they feel like they can express themselves and that they're not masking. Energized so they can do what they want to do. And resilient because life's going to knock down. There are a lot of people in the world that just do not understand autism and the impact that it has. That's just the reality. That's just the way things are.
We also want them to recognize where they're having difficulties when they're overusing their strengths, because we want them to ask for accommodations.
We want them to advocate for what they need at home and for sure in the workplace as long as they believe that it's going to work for them. We really, really want them to advocate especially with us, what it is that's going to work best for them.
So the only thing I want to warn you about is that sometimes we get impatient with others who don't have the same strengths we have. It's like, “Why can't they just be honest?”
What annoys us the most, is what we care about something the most,
So I just wanted to mention that a strengths-based mindset focuses our talent on what we do best so that's where we want to be.
In the workbook, I have the process to find your strengths. One of them is you can visit viacharacter.org and take their test but there's a quick way we can do it together today.
Just notice how many people around you are focusing on their strengths. Here's Temple Grandon in her book saying that cheerfulness, kindness, beauty and truth are some of her strengths. It just comes out when you notice the people that you really admire. That's what I want you to do right now.
If you could please put in the chat. I would just love it. Think of somebody that you truly admire. I gave you examples in the workbook and I'll just look at Dr Martin Luther King. I admire so much about him.
First of all, I admire the words that he spoke. They're so well put together. I mean he's a true craftsman and an exceptional Mozart kind of guy who could really put together the words that hit us both at our heart and at our head.
He was very determined to make real the vision of people noticing others through the contents of their character and not by other external indicators or in our case invisible differences.
So I believe that being part of this equality movement is one that we parents of autistic graduates embrace, and that he was a fabulous leader in that area.
Annie, thank you. Honesty, curiosity,iIntegrity, passion, acceptance.
The Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar. Tell me about him. Because he was taught by a lot of stoic teachers. I'd love to know what you think his strengths were as well. Knowing these is so helpful and then what I like to do is combine them into a strengths acronym.
Patience, long suffering and compassion which I think means determined or you persevere.
Mine is SCARF. I want to be strong. I want to be compassionate. I want to be active, regulated and focused. It spells scarf because I do love scarves.
Leadership, stoicism, honesty, discipline and integrity
Look at the crowd of people we have here you guys. I mean seriously we got some really good people I mean this is cool
Resilient, honesty, critical thinking, excellent, communication, acceptance. I'm hearing acceptance as a theme here that's really important
Compassion, excellence, follow through, respect
I love these.
I like to turn our strengths into an acronym because I find it much easier for me to remember it and practice. It’s going to take some wordsmithing. You may have to Google, “strengths that start with a vowel,” because often the ones that we come up with usually begin with consonants.
Take five strengths of someone you admire. Wordsmith them into an acronym that's easy to remember.
We want to not only know ours, we want to know our graduates’. Every time we see our graduates acting in their strengths, we need to tell them we see it.
This morning when my graduate number six did the blood draw by themselves, l said, “I am amazed at your strength and your courage.” I know those are strengths that they have. Sometimes it just helps when Mom notices.
Please do your best to get your autistic graduate and yourself those. You need to know them right in the front of your mind.
If your graduate is like one of my graduates, they didn't need me to ask them who they admired. They just knew what their strengths were right up front. What really mattered to them, what they knew they were strong about and they just rattled off five just like that. So you may not need anything extra except to ask the question, “What do you think your strengths are?”
I just think wordsmithing it into an acronym makes it easier to remember.
Repetition reinforces the circuits in our brain and forms neural connections so that in our weakest hour when we're tired, when we're hungry, when we're frustrated, we don't talk ourselves out of our greatness.
That's why we want to get this stuff down. So it's so simple. This is the first part of your GPS.
We talked about
Why we're here because we want to flourish along with our kids
We have some shifting to do understanding to do to connect better and to agree on practices that we both believe in order to help them and us get out of life what we want
We know that operating from our strengths is what really brings out the best in us
We covered today's agenda.
I can't wait till to talk to you tomorrow specifically about what we're going to do next to get what we want. There's a process to get down to that one thing that we're going to do next so we'll be talking about that tomorrow.
I want to introduce Carol to talk about what life was like before she joined The Art of Adulting and what it is like now.
Hi, my name is Carol. My son’s name is Caleb so I'll refer to him by name. He's now 17.,
As Lynn indicated he started with Lynn in this program or we did as a family when he began highschool and I've seen such a transformation in him as a result of Lynn's support and direction and intervention when needed.
Traditionally I was more of a parent who wanted to just be in control and make everything just right, perfect, I suppose so that these kids would turn out right, whatever that means. But it was part of my upbringing; it was that vision I just continued on with.
You know what? There is no right or wrong when it comes to people. Because,like Lynn said, we're all so different. I've come to understand the true meaning of neurodivergence. I've come to also realize I am neurodivergent.
I also need to be understood, heard, accommodated and supported and accepted as I am. The transformation that took place over these past few years with Lynn is exactly that. I'm no longer that person that was the parent like I was for my daughter who is now an adult in her 20s.
I'm a different parent with my son and one where I've given him a voice. With my daughter that wasn't necessarily the case. It was, “I say, you do.” Sadly, I regret that.
With my son it is, “Let's talk and I am listening and I will be there for you and I will help you through this.” Trust me I do. It takes every part of me lovingly willingly to do this but I want to because I just absolutely love seeing the person he's become.
He is so much more confident, he is so much more comfortable in his own skin. He feels we are in a comfortable zone in our home. He can speak. He can behave as he does with no judgment. That's the way it should be for everybody. It allows him to become the person he wants to be. He has dreams. He has goals, aspirations. He's determined.
If I had continued the way I was I don't know that he'd be where he is now. I think that would be a great problem and a very sad sad situation to be in for him.
So I'm just encouraging everyone. This program is absolutely worth it. Lynn knows what she's talking about. She's been there for decades. Lots of experience. Lots of people in her life who've given her the opportunity to learn and grow as a parent, a guide, a teacher, coach. I think you're not going to regret what this program has to offer.
I wish you the best. My only recommendation would be to, and this is not easy, is not to just take in and pocket what you're learning and receiving through Lynn. But to please put it into practice take action there will be no changes unless you take that step. I know you're tired, so am I. I know you're overwhelmed, so am I. But take the time, it's absolutely worth it and the results are absolutely wonderful and hopeful. That's what I have to say.
You are so kind Carol, thank you. Carol's a teacher as well. She tutors diverse kids. I wish we had one of her for each one of our children.
Please raise your hand.
IPad how am I going to unmute you. You have to unmute yourself. Hello there you go hi hi oh and I see your graduates right there with us I just can't see anything but the top of his head. There you are! Hello, graduate!
Thank you hello sorry I just I'm not too I'm not very big on cameras.
That's fine. You don't have to be on camera, that's good. It's just we that now that we know you're there. I want to make sure that you're heard as well. I Know You're Gonna Keep Us Real Here you're not.
Alexander: Thank you. I'm blunt as well. That's perfectly wonderful because we want to know what you're thinking.
So tell us more. What's going on? What's your first name iPad?
Alexander: My name's Alexander.
Alexander. What's your mom's name?
Melissa: I'm Melissa.
Hi, both of you. So tell me what's going on. What can I help you with?
Melissa: So my graduate's gonna be 23 next month. He's been working a part-time job for two years now. We've known he's been high functioning on the Spectrum since he was two technically.
Alexander: I have Aspergers. I was diagnosed before I was moved in so we've lived this life for a while.
Melissa: He became a big brother at 16. I have a six-year-old who will be seven next month. Diving into this new realm of trying to get my graduate to understand that her needs are different from his.
Learning how to I guess navigate for him to be more independent because he's now I I would say regressed some of his tendencies. So a lot of that was, he saw the attention she was getting and thought well I need it
Well it makes perfect sense to me I'd like all of your [Laughter] attention.
I just I guess we're here to try to get him to be more independent. I would love to see him be able to ride the bus. I worry about things like going to the doctors. We have to take him and of course he signed for shared information. He does take medication and his temper.
There's a lot to it isn't there?
yeah so we spent a lot a lot of time advocating. I just want him to start doing it for himself.
I know that's what we all want because we know that our runways are not infinite. They're going to have to do it on their own someday.
We just finished working with a chartered special needs consultant and he reminded us that when we do our financial plans we look at what if something catastrophic happens in the next five years. That's the scenario. Whenever my graduates push back on something that they don't want to do because it's uncomfortable.
I say look, you want to be able to do this in case something does happen to me and then they go, “I don't want to even think about that,” and neither do I, frankly.
But I'd like to plan for it just in case, right?
So that's why tomorrow, when you come back, you're going to see how we divide life into 10 parts.
We focus on what we've already done, so we know we can create what we want.
Then we go to what we want next because we all are human and humans just continue to want more. That's just the nature of our being.
Then what are we willing to do next and often the thing that we have to do is outside of our comfort zone.
Hopefully, the vision of what they want
If they clarify it and get it really specific, and they right-size it.
I'd like to have $10 million in the bank but that's probably not going to happen. So I’m very content with at least just putting in $6,000 into a Roth IRA or seven whatever the limit is this year. I'm going to right-size it to what something is that I think I can do and that's what we're going to work on next.
We're not going to have you know 75 things we want to work on next. We're going to narrow it down,
Then we're going to take those things and we're going to put it on their phone.
Mom, you are no longer responsible for keeping track of what they want. They become responsible for keeping track of that and what they're going to do next. It's helpful if you know what it is that they want next so you may want to keep something to refer to but you also need to know what you want next, So you don't get lost.
Because you could tell from that research that I cited earlier that our mental health gets deeply intertwined with our children and we want to just pull that apart a little bit so that we can both be a little bit more independent and thrive together in the interdependency that is a family.
We're not striving to get rid of them. That's not the goal here. We're striving to live well as a family together, that's really what we want. I know that's what I want. I don't want my kids to ever be apart from me. I love them too much. I want to be part of their lives.
I still know that I'd have to make them as independent as possible so that when something does happen to me at the end of my runway they're okay. All they're dealing with is the loss of me, not how to figure out the rest of their life. I want them to have figured that out before I do my smooth exit from this world. So that's what I'm trying to achieve.
I hope I've answered your question please um I am available again on Wednesday at 11 o'clock not tomorrow because I'll be teaching but the next Wednesday I will do a mini master class every Wednesday it's free want to come and ask me more questions. I'd love to have you there as well.
Paula: I echo everything Carol just said I can't speak right now because of activity in the house being noisy but Carol summed it up beautifully.
Oh Paula, you're so sweet. Thank you so much for that.
The Roth IRA. Roth IRAs are really important and let me tell you a reason why. If you put funds in a regular IRA and this is what I learned from the financial guy we worked with whose sister has Down syndrome and he's doing everything he can, his mission is to help people with disabilities figure out their financial future.
He told me there's something I did not know and that is if you put your if your graduate inherits your IRA and you have a supplemental Needs Trust, which we all all of our kids should have because if they are entitled to benefits, we don't want their assets to be counted so that they have the resources they need to become independent. A lot of wise people before us designed to be there. So in the United States, Carol can speak better to Canada, but in the United States if you put your IRA into a supplemental Needs Trust and when it comes out of the supplemental Needs Trust it's taxed at the trust rate which is close to 50%. So whatever you put in there that's in an IRA,half of it is going to have to be paid back in taxes when they withdraw it if it's inside of a trust.
What you want to do is you want to put as many assets as possible that are not tax sheltered inside their supplemental Needs Trust. When they withdraw it they don't have anything else to pay other than their normal income taxes. They don't have a special penalty imposed because it's coming out of a trust.
That's what I learned from my chartered special needs consultant that I hired when we were putting together the financial plan for our kids and for ourselves we did.
The other piece of advice he gave me which was so obvious but genius was to hire a lawyer who's younger than you are because you want them to be there when you pass. You want to at least up the possibility that they'll be there when you pass so that they know they're part of that team.
Lorraine, James T told you that, too. So Lorraine heard the same advice as well.
You're looking forward to talking about the tools tomorrow that graduates find helpful for following through on actions. Tomorrow is when we're going to be talking about the ten domains. what they have, what they want, what they're going to do next and what affects their motivation. They can manage to change their motivation level and it's possible because I've got the formula.
Who else has a question?
Marie: Hi, this is Marie from Michigan and my son is 24. He is a high school graduate. Hdid two years and got a certificate in graphic design at the Community College. He drives, has his own car and he has a full-time job. So he's doing very well in that aspect.
Of course, he is not real social. He would like to be, I think, but definitely has holdbacks.
The issue in the house, and it's been like this for a lot of years, is his addiction to his computer games. That may be an issue, I feel like it's an issue for a lot of boys and girls. I suppose not just them, it's for me, it's for all of us.
It's been a very large conflict, arguments,threatening to turn off the wifi and all that kind of stuff. Of course you ask them and they're like nope not right now not right now of course you know you give them some time and that's you know notenough restricting restricting time is um unheard of it's torture it's you know it's of course the end of the world for them um of course he's this has been since he's been a teenager and he's 24 so this one obviously it's a passion it's an addiction um I'm just wondering how do you curb that? you know how do you try and curb these kids' fixations?
I feel like it's impossible okay and maybe you're going to go through that I guess. Is that something that we look forward to hearing or that's just one of our big issues?
The big issue is how do we get their attention? it doesn't matter if it's a book. if it's something online. Whatever it is, we want to get their attention.
No one likes to be told what to do or be threatened so that they comply. None of them like that. So I've given up on that after six kids. I've just given up. I'm gonna try a different way.
My different way is to backfill their calendar with their dreams and figure out what they want so that they motivate themselves to get it and spend less time on screens because they realize that you cannot ever get enough of something that isn't truly satisfying. Spending their time on screens is not truly satisfying.
The research suggests. and we've seen it ourselves, it leaves them not in a good place often so what we want to do is move their attention away from being successful online.
It makes perfect sense. They're successful in that environment because it's a controlled environment. They know the rules, they know they can't die, they know that there are people there often and they get some social socialization going on there as well.
It's an environment set up to hook them. Nir Eyal wrote a wonderful book called Hooked. His book is the guide for the people that design games.
Well guess what he also wrote he wrote another book about how not to stay distracted, Indistractible,
He recommends exactly what I'm offering you, which is to backfill their life with what matters to them.
To do that we have to get really specific about it and get it recorded. Because then we can spend the time on looking at that and imagining it so that it rewires our brain.
That's what we're going to do tomorrow. We have them put it right on their phone. We use Google Tasks to do it because it's free and it works on every phone. Then they have it in front of them. it's not a piece of paper that they can lose and it can it connects right to their calendar so they can schedule what they're going to do next
It's a brilliant tool for our people and for us. It really works.
So what I mean when I say ‘backfill their life’ with what matters to them, is for them to decide what they want next and to spend the time on that instead of spending so much time on screens. They borrow some of that time for what matters to them.
I'm not suggesting that they should eliminate screens from their lives. Screens are marvelous. Look at us! We're on one. It's not that.
It's that we need to make sure that we put the right amount and we don't overdo screens.
Fixations are wonderful. Fiixations are great. I'm fixated on this and people think I'm crazy. I'm fixated on trying to help in this area and I don't know it's brought a ton of richness to my life and it's just helped me grow. I've met wonderful people like Carol and Britney and there are many others that I've met. I'm very lucky. This is my fixation.
So, yes, all right so going to university.,A lot of our kids go to school and get overwhelmed the first year. But that's okay. The problem is that they start to think it means something about them. It doesn't mean a thing. It just means in that environment there were too many challenges at that time.. Doesn't mean they can't do it later. but at that time it was just too much. They weren't getting the support they needed at that time or maybe they were blocking the support that was offered. That happened in my family.Tthere's ways to do this we just haven't figured it out yet.
So I'm really glad that you're there for her. I get it that she's got academic smarts. The other stuff is pulling her down.. That's often executive function challenges, social maybe but I think it's usually executive function challenges. it's usually more about getting how to get the stuff done that needs to get done without scaring herself.
Managing that mental health.. Scaring herself that it's not going to work out and all the catastrophizing that our kids tend to do. That's day three. That's Thursday we're going to talk a lot about anxiety and why that plays such a role with our graduates and what we can do about it. There are things we can do. Definitely are things that we can do all right.
How did that happen? This is what they talk about with flo. This is when we get so immersed in what we're doing we lose total track of time. That's what's just happened to me. What do you mean it's after 12?
Nicole bless your heart that you moved out. Good job, well done.
I was gonna say yes, thank you. I'm sorry I missed this. I was in another Zoom. but yeah it was a challenge but I finally got tired of I'm 36. I finally got tired of living with my family. They're really nice, they're wonderful people but I just wanted to have my own independence.
So I moved out on my own, moved from Toronto to Montreal. I decided to move to another city because if I didn’t I knew my parents would keep coming in every day trying to check on me. So if I move to another city it would be a lot harder though I do have some relatives just five minutes walk from me who also have autistic adult kids.
So I do have support., I live in a basement apartment that I rent. It's only a thousand a month . It's really hard to find. My parents helped me find it through Facebook Marketplace. Learning to cook on my own, learning to take the bus on my own and it's been quite rewarding .
I've been meeting a lot of people through church so you know I'm not completely alone. It's definitely worth it. It's never too late to try and it's definitely worth it.
I was just going to mention that somebody said that their adult son was on video games all the time. I would suggest you can't get rid of an autistic special interest or fixation. It's just part of autism. You can't get rid of it nor should you. I was gonna say, use the games to motivate him.
For example, maybe he is getting too stuck on them. That I could see where that is I can get stuck on screen stuff and and then the ADHD the AudHD kicks in. So he gets so caught up on the games that he forgets things and misses stuff.
That's a problem. So there may be a timer on the game that may give him an alert or something that he's been on for a certain amount of time and then he can you know say okay give say a half hour and then say okay now time to save it. So he could do that.
But also turn it into a career. He's 24, so you're never too old to go to university. There are animation schools. There are coding schools. He could certainly create his own video games or work at a company that develops video games, become a software developer. He will have a career so that will get him out of the house or he could do it at home but you kind of want to get him out of the house. But that will do that will get him a career based on his special interest. Then he'll be able to afford living somewhere. Use that as a motivator to get him out.
Well thank you so much for coming on here as a beacon of light, Nicole, We really appreciate hearing your story and your suggestions because you know. You've been there you've done this.
and it's just so I try to do my best, I rely on Brit a lot of times because I work with her and she keeps me real sometimes like no you can't say that okay you just it's just very helpful to have that perspective live in person with us. So thanks so much.
Beth I do have I have experience with a graduate with schizophrenia. Autism often comes with other diagnoses.
I just want to assure you of something that I learned from Emma McAdam at Therapy In A Nutshell. She has a wonderful YouTube channel. She's marvelous.
She reminded me that all mental health diagnoses are based on observations of behavior. No one has taken a blood test and said they have schizophrenia. No one has taken a blood test and said they had autism or borderline personality disorder or Oppositional Defiant Disorder or any of the the whole alphabet soup.
They've just observed behaviors and no one knows if it's autism or bi bipolar or whatever it is no one knows. They guess based on the behaviors that they observe and obviously the other information that they have from other scientists.
I want to encourage you that schizophrenia is not a death sentence. You may go away but it may still be there. All we need to do is understand what's at the basis of it and do what we can to help with the thinking and the emotions. actions and results follow. It's very possible, it can be very challenging, but it's very possible. There are many people working with schizophrenia bye
Carol thanks for coming um yeah I was just going to say I know somebody with schizophrenia my cousin who's non-speaking autistic and writes with the letter board and communicates with the letter board.
[Nicole} My uncle who's not on the related side but on the non-related side, has schizophrenia and he lives on his own. He's probably in his 50s. Really really nice, really really nice person. He lives on his own. I think he lives in an apartment that's designed for independent living but for people with different disabilities and neural diversities.
He's actually become a friend of a friend of mine because he lives through my cousin and the relatives that live five minutes away. He lives on his own. It's housing and I think has support but they still live on their own and independently and kind of like you have for independent seniors.
He's quite happy. He has a fulfilling life. He cooks on his own. I don't know if he has has a job or not but I think I think he gets disability pay but he he lives on his own, he he transits on his own, he's on medications the schizophrenia has been treated and he's he's a he has a fulfilling life
Schizophrenia is a neurodivergent difference as well. With the right supports, anybody can live the life they want to live. That's exactly the message here and we're just trying to figure it out. I'm trying to give you a road map I want to share what's worked for us and those inside the art of adulting
I do everything I can to offer as many um as many tools as possible because I know that you know one size does not fit all especially in our neurodiverse population here so you pickfrom them so I have over I don't know 150 plus various tools that um I make available and then we U I talk with graduates and I talk with parents every week so I do what I can to help solve problems with them so that they figure out what what works for them, too both parents and adults and the graduates so um I'd love for you to join me let me let um does anybody else just in the chat if you got something you want me to do right there yes there will be a recording.
Cindy no worries you'll get an email from me proba hopefully before four o'clock this afternoon after I've done a few things to to prepare the um to prepare the page and
Thank you so much to Nicole. I think she just turned off her camera but I don't know if she's still here. But wow, thank you so much Nicole I really appreciate your thoughts. I didn't know you before and I'm very happy to meet you.
All right so I'm gonna see everybody tomorrow at the same time at 11 o'clock Eastern. I hope that works for you.. Bye for now
