Hi! It's Lynn, your adulting coach.
As parents of autistic graduates, we want them to handle stress, reduce their screen time so they can invest in getting a job and running their life. That's the only way they'll be be prepared for life on their own.
At The Art of Adulting, we have figured out what works: these three steps.
1 We understand the struggle from from their perspective
2 We connect with what matters to them and
3 @e practice the solution together, experimenting over and over again until we figure out what works for them to do the work they need to do to build the life they want.
We believe that the number one skill to better understanding is reflective listening. Reflective listening takes into account the impact of an autistic brain because we know that we can't know what their experience is, whether we're Autistic or not. We need to understand better how they're processing what's going on in their life. We want them to feel safe, seen, and soothed so they feel secure asking us for help. Doctors Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson in THE POWER OF SHOWING UP said that is our number one job as parents. It's especially important for parents of autistic graduates who go into the defense mode fast.
We want them to be in the connection mode and we use reflective listening to help them get back from protection and into connection.
Unfortunately we were probably parented this way. We brought a concern to our parents and they suggested, advised and criticized the way that we were handling it. That's just the pattern that we inherited. I suggest that there is a better one and it starts with reflective listening.
We need to reflectiveLY listen because
1 We want to Check our understanding to make sure that we get what the nature of the problem is all of the nuances
2 we want to show that that we accept where they are right now that we've set aside judgment criticism all those things that kick them right into defense mode and
3 We're right there with them trying to solve the problem together because we love them and we want what's best for them and
4 we're trying to figure it out both in what we do and what they do that matters to help them be prepared to live on their own
There are four parts to a listening reflection
1 The first part is the opening. Here's the challenge. We need to zip our lips and fully attend to what they're saying, starting with just listening,just bringing all the information in that they're sharing with us. It may just be a little bit but we need to follow the breadcrumbs till we do understand.
We start with,
- Okay you're concerned...
- You're worried because...
- You're wondering if you're ever going to get a job
- You're concerned because, for you, it feels as if you're putting all this energy down a big black hole and there's so many other things you'd rather do.
- From your point of view, it's a problem that cannot be solved
2 We name the emotion.
- It sounds like you're feeling hopeless and helpless in the situation you believe that you've tried everything that you can it seems like everything you try doesn't work
- What I guess you're feeling is super frustrated that you cannot solve this problem and you see some of the people you went to school with solving it and moving on and it might be that the best best you can do is just keep trying
Here's what we want to do. W we do not parrot what they're saying to us. We want to reflect the emotion that they're experiencing, the frustration, the confusion, the defeat, the discouragement.
If you need help finding emotions, which a lot of us do, because we may have alexithymia which means we just don't have words for these feelings. If we want, we can just go right to one of these emotion sensation wheel and stick to the middle.
- You're happy mad sad glad whatever it is in the middle. Just the simplest emotion, if we can find that and reflect it back to them
3 Then give them a situation sound bite.
So it could be that you've given up because you can't figure out the solution.
- You're frustrated because you think you've tried everything you've tried so much
- It's frustrating when you put all your energy into submitting applications and no one calls you for an interview
that's the reflection that we want to give back to them and then we zip our lip again and we pay attention to what comes back.
Yes, we are affirming what's happening to them. We are not necessarily agreeing that they're handling it the best way possible. We're just accepting where they are what their situation is.
They will either agree, "Yeah, I am frustrated because I just feel like this is a lost cause."
Or they will say, "No, I'm not I'm not done with trying. I just don't know what to do next. I'm confused."
So then we reflect again, "So you're confused with how to choose from all the alternatives."
We want to continue to reflect until they will start to repeat themselves, Then we know we've got we're in agreement. We know that we understand what they're saying.
Now I know this process, these four steps, can seem contrived at first and they're going to be awkward, just as any new skill is when we first practice it. But practice it and they will become natural.
It's because our solution may not really fit their situation.
If we don't understand it from their perspective. Besides they're the ones that have to see that the solution is going to work, because they're the ones that are going to implement it now.
We cannot do this for them anymore. We don't want to do it for them anymore. We want them to be doing the work to build the life that they want.
They may be too jacked up and need to calm down. This is the process that will help them calm down because they will feel seen. Their brain will go, "Okay, I'm not threatened right now I can connect with this other person or with my parent and they can help me solve the problem."
There may be more to this to the problem than we can see. Our graduates are ashamed of whatever is happening. They wish that this stuff was easy for them.
Don't we all wish that things were easy for us. The struggle, they're ashamed of how they got into the struggle,
We just have to accept that they're in a struggle, and it's often of their own making, and they're going to have to find their way out of it. They're going to have to put the energy in and we can't solve it for them.
Welcome to the adult world, the Work World. This is how things are going to be going forward in their life and they're going to be this way when we're gone so we want to make sure that they practice solving it as much as they can while we're here.
When we talk to our children in these conversations we want to at least keep what we say at 50% and what they say at 50%. That's the minimum. We actually want to get to when they're talking 80% of the time and we're listening 20% of the time when we may say a few things from time to time. That's the goal is to partner with them in a way that they run the conversation.
It's not easy.
1 We have to take in what they're saying.
2 We have to sort it out
3 We have to sum it up. That's the work we do inside of us.
4 Then we say it back succinctly in our own words, that sound bite that includes the emotion and the situation.
We want to get to the meaning of the struggle, what are they making this mean about them.
When we start with that opening:
it seems like,
it might be,
we're not sure,
I'm not sure,
But it seems,
Okay so it's,
You're frustrated because you can't figure out how to get your paycheck direct deposited.
I don't know what the struggle is but we need to know how to do these steps and then stop and listen.
This is our work, the practice is what matters.
When we continue to practice this over and over again we will build those connections so that they will trust that coming to us is a good idea and we will help them where we can but we won't always do the work for them.
We we will not do the work for them anymore because they need to learn how to do this on their own. It's our job to prepare them for that.
Sometimes when they come to us, we need to ask them this question: Do they want support or do they want solutions?
That's what we're trying to sort out here.
I'm going to guess that 9 times out of 10 they want your support first.
Maybe they want just okay tell me how I do this on the phone or tell me how what I need to do here. Maybe they're coming to us with that.
That's fine. I'm not suggesting that we never offer solutions, I'm just suggesting that 9 times out of 10 when they're talking to us they want support.
Maybe the easiest thing to do is just ask them, "Do you need my support or would you like some solutions?"
We don't ask them questions other than that one though. We stay with reflective statements statements.
- When we ask a question we are turning the conversation to our own agenda. That's not going to help them figure out what they need to do next.
- It could cause them to feel defensive because they're justifying what decisions they've made and what actions they've taken.
- What we really need to do is to sort things out with them. They need our ears more than they need our thoughts.
Doing this one step at a time incrementally, every step of progress we make to connect and figure out what works for them matters.
Please do this I promise you will see the benefits.
Bye for now
