Hi,it's Lynn, your adulting coach.
I've increased independence with autistic graduates and their families for the past five years. Parents frequently come to me exhausted, frustrated, defeated, and hopeless, knowing that they need to prepare their graduate to be on their own.
They also knew who they want to be but are not sure how to get there. They're showing up as a different version of themselves that's not where they really want to be. They ask for help.
I suggest that this transition between being a child-school-externally defined to being an adult-working-internally defined person is complex.
Because of the nature of the autistic brain the transformation will likely take longer than a brain that isn't autistic. Makes sense.
We start by sorting out a behavior. What's going on? What's the trouble? Describe the situation and what you're seeing.
Then we follow the breadcrumbs, the behaviors, the thoughts and the words that they say to try to figure out what our graduate wants and what their skills are now. Where is the opportunity to level up?
Parents, while they're noticing their graduate, also notice their own triggers and opportunities for growth. We're at the last trimester of our life, our young adults have just finished the first trimester of their life, so we're both at a juncture where we're defining who we want to be and how we want to show up.
It's all manifested in our family system. One impacts the other. The parents impact the graduates and vice versa. Sometimes we need help sorting this out.
We notice that below the surface of these behaviors is our own internal world, that inner voice that talks to us more than any other voice for the rest of our lives. We are in a dialogue with it, believing or not believing or arguing with our internal voice regularly.
We were brought up with the assumption of behaviorism. If we see this behavior, then these consequences need to be implemented.
I suggest, especially because we have autistic graduates, that we need to switch from that lens to a relationship approach that places the emphasis on connection.
- The behaviorist approach as we've seen over and over again creates the protection mode.
- Then when they're in protection they're hidden they're either melting down or they're shutting down.
- They're escaping and avoiding. All that conflict inside drives them to on screens often or some other form of immediate pleasure.
The relationship approach, the connection approach, does not suggest that they have they can do whatever they want it. Includes firm boundaries, parental authority and resilient leadership from us as the people who are in charge of our families.
That's how we feel better both on the outside and on the inside. All of us, we're in that connection mode that helps us create a better future together.
We understand the mind-body connection to improve behaviors both theirs and our own. We relate better.
So often we've been instructed to go to our mind and figure out the problem, think it through and ignore or reject or push away whatever is going on inside of us.
The consequences of that approach are a lot of tension. That tension has an impact on our nervous system which can create all kinds of dis-ease. That's not what we want.
We want to be in connection and in ease so that we have the energy we want to create what we want to create in our lives.
So let's start at the beginning. We want to start with the assumption that we're all compassionate, loving, and generous at our core. There's no ill intent here. even though that's what used to be the way that that would people would respond to "bad" behavior.
Our society would say they're lazy, or they're manipulating, or they're just trying to get out of work or they're trying to use us.
Let's set those assumptions aside and assume that there's good intent here with all of us.
That helps us to notice the behavior. It doesn't excuse bad behavior or give an 'anything goes' permission approach.
Instead it puts us in that curious emotion where we want to understand why we're behaving the way we're behaving. We ask, "How do we create change?" We know that's tough to change behavior.
We know that there are many New Year's Eve resolutions set to exercise, eat better, whatever it is, meditate more and they're lost by the end of the first month.
My daughter worked at a grocery store in the bakery and they always had their hours cut back in January because that of customers were trying to eat fewer baked goods, but then they put them right back on for February and Valentine's Day. Our resolutions just don't last that long.
So how do we create the change that we know is necessary for them to be able to run their lives on their own?
This approach this relationship and connection approach distinguishes the person from the action . It suggests that although it's easy to default to "good" or "bad" judgment because that's what we've been facing our whole life, we want to notice that that's just our default brain.
We all have a phone and it all came programmed with certain software. Yet we have customized our phone over many years, adding apps and shortcuts that help it work harder for us. That's what we have to do to our brains as well, to our mindset, so that what's in programmed by default is not where we always act. We want to act with intention to act so we get the results we want.
Our brains are wired to notice what's negative so we stay safe, we guard our resources and we don't miss out on any opportunities to connect to our tribe so that we are you know we have the resources of of our community.
What we want to do is intentionally correct that life GPS that says, "Hey, you just need protect yourself," and move it instead to a connection destination. We want to rewire those default thought patterns so that we do exactly the opposite of what our brain wants to do.
- We take risks. We try things. That's at the root cause of why we're escaping so much and numbing so much.
- We take lots of action to discover what works for us. We don't guard our energy and make sure we're perfectly perfect the first time out of the gate. We're willing to make mistakes.
- We delay that immediate gratification that comes from that brain just seeking what whatever feels good to delay what feels good in the short run to what really is satisfying in the long run.
It's not very likely that we were parented this way. In fact, we can hear our brain offer a bunch of thoughts about how we're just going to spoil them, they're going to be ruined, they're never going to make it on their own if they don't learn how to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and have a stiff upper lip.
Okay, noted, good to know. There's some wisdom in all of that but I'm not sure that's how we want to govern our actions.
I know that I want to do better I want to break the cycle of the behaviorist approach which was punishment which sends me into defense mode, and protect less so that I connect more with my family. I want us to be connected until the end of my runway.
I'm borrowing some wisdom from Dr. Becky Kennedy who wrote the book GOOD INSIDE. She suggests that we start with the most generous interpretation of whatever behavior we're seeing when we're seeing those meltdowns or shutdowns.
We are a good person having a hard time. It's not just their meltdowns or shutdowns. We also think we can't handle it anymore, we are at the end of our rope, we just can't do this it's too scary. Or we say, "Hey, I've done what I can. they're on their own now."
That's the shutdown, where we where we distance and we do not connect anymore with our graduates because we are telling ourselves that there's nothing more that we can do.
I offer that as long as we're alive, we can nurture the hope that we will improve the way things are. We can believe that it's possible to make our vision of what we want our family to look like and how prepared we want our graduates to be.
When something happens to us, we can do this. We can make things better little by little, step by step.
Inside the art of adulting we increase independence with our autistic graduates together. We're on the same page. We're not sending them off someplace to get fixed.
We're together, discovering what we need to do to better 1 UNDERSTAND what's going. We 2 CONNECT with each other and our mind and our body and 3 PRACTICE helping both of us get what we want from our life.
Those are the three steps that we circle through over and over again. No matter what challenge we face, we train that inner voice that voice inside of our head, to find our goodness and outsmart the challenge together.
We are curious about what's going on, and what are we willing to try next, what's the next experiment we're going to do to see if we can figure this out together.
Please join us in the Art of Adulting. Now that you know the first step, which is the most generous interpretation, let's take the rest of them together.
Bye for now.
