Lynn Davison NOTE: I lightly edited this transcript for clarity and make it easier to read.
Hey, there we go. Hey everybody, hi. So glad you're here. Zoom is pulling you in. We have a couple three more minutes before we get started and just
you all are coming in. If you could put in the age of your autistic young adult, and know that I'm going to interchange the word autistic young adult with graduate because it's fewer words easier for me to say. So if you could just put the ages of your kids in the chat, there we go. Okay, perfect. Nice to know.
I want to introduce you to Brent. He is my son. He is 36 and he has a three year old and an eight month old, and he is going to monitor the chat for me, which is a luxury I've never had before. So I'm thrilled that he is here. Thank you for being here, everyone. Yeah, yeah, that's Brent. So he also helps me in the calls. He also does some of the calls with me, helping me.
There's Stacy. Oh, that's great, yay. Both of you are here today. Hello, Stacy and whoever that's great. Oh, it looks like you're having a good something to eat too. Yum.
Alright, so we got 20s and 30s. That's, that's who are in my program, most 20s and 30s. The oldest, I think, is going to be 37 soon. So I think this TNT 20s and 30s is quite the transition time for our kids, and it really, it's more of a challenge. I think that it even was for us, because there's so many more choices than there used to be, and I believe there are more distractions than there used to be. And the biggest one is right here, right? in our hands. Being able to get to a handheld computer, which is what it is, you know, makes it so easy for us to go, oh, let me check that out. And then we're gone. Who knows how long we're gone. So it just makes it more interesting. I'm not giving up my phone, so we get distracted, and I want to use to all the tech. You know, we love the tech. It depends on our mood.
I am so glad that you're here. You are the people who are going to make the world work better for your office accounts. You're the perfect parents for them. You are interested in what and you're going to work together as a team. You're going to form a collaborative team to make this works.
I've had 1000s of conversations with hundreds of autistic young adults and their parents, and I raised six neurodivergent adult children. I just researched and researched because I grew up in an autistic family, my father, my mother, my grandfather, my brother, my sister, lots of aunts, uncles and other cousins, too, were and are
autistic folks.
So how are we going to figure this out? I want to know your questions. I will do my best to presentation shorter than before so that I can hear from you.
And there is a gift that, if you continue to get to the end, that is really valuable. So the gift is about how we build that financial foundation underneath our graduates. So just in case something catastrophic occurs in the next five years, that's what my lawyer told me to think about it in terms of the next five years, because I said, I can't, I don't know what I'm going to die and how how long my road is going to be. And he said, think the next five years. So that's what this handout is this. It's a very long PDF, and it contains the nine ways we build the financial foundation under our kids, and two transcripts from that fellow that I hired. He's a chartered Special Needs consultant who helped me get the government benefits in place, and that's the reason why I put them in place, in case something did happen to me. I'm really very hopeful that as they continue to expand their capabilities, that maybe those won't be necessary. But there are a lot of wise people who, long before I got here, realized that there are many different types of brains in the world, and some require more support than others.
Why are we surprised? There's 8 billion of us. There's going to be a huge variation. We're not all going to fit neatly into the middle of that bell shaped curve. Maybe it would be nice if we all did, because that would make our systems, very efficient. Everything could go the way it's supposed to go. But that's not how reality is. We know that, so that's where we are.
So I mean, by the way, what did happen? And I like to look think about this as an analogy for that whole what happened. How did we get started, and why did things get stalled?
I remember when I was in high school and we had to run around the track, remember that? So we all lined up at the starting line, some of us very reluctantly. Others of us, you know, eager to go because we were well trained. We knew how to operate our body and get it around that track. The gym teacher said, "Go." And we took off. We got going. Then we realized that this isn't going so well. I gotta slow down here. Some of us stopped and regrouped and got going again, and we eventually made it around the whole track, but wow, that was hard. It was unexpectedly difficult for us.
I think that's what happened with that transition from school to adulthood, because we thought, "Oh, all we have to do is do well in school, and then we'll be able to do well in our life." That did not turn out to be the case. The skills are different, and that's why, when they graduate, 80% of our autistic young adults say they want to live independently, and the best number I could find was 25% are doing it at age 30.
So there's the gap between the 25% and the 80% and we want to close that, and we want to make their life as good as we possible. We want to help them, support them to create a life that they really, really like.
So we want to teach. to encourage and help them direct their unique system. Being autistic is just a part of their unique system. It's not the whole system. It's just a part of it.
So we had to figure some stuff out too, we parents, because we realize now that we have less support, they have less structure in their day, and, like I said, more distraction.
Standard wisdom just doesn't apply to our kids. It just doesn't.
And really, I honestly, want you to know that we are not going to try to change anything. We are going to be there and warmly support them and their system. We can't. If anything changes, it's going to be because they want to, not because we want them to, and that's really good.
So instead of being the Enforcer over here that says, "Oh, I know the way you're going to have to, either earn money or go to school and those are the rules and pay me rent." All that stuff that, that's the Enforcer. Put the rules down. Or we're just gonna let them do whatever they want. That's kind of the enabler. What we want to do is stay in that really nice middle where we support their learning as their mentor. We don't want to either be an enforcer or an enabler. We want to be their mentor.
So here are the three habits that I have distilled from all those conversations and 40 plus years of parenting, and it's all on one page. It's to understand, to connect and to experiment. It's all on one page, mostly because I want you to be able to go to the slide, copy it, and save it in your photos app. Create an album called The Art of Adulting, because then you'll have it right in your hand whenever you want to check it out. When you are thinking, "Oh, where am I supposed to be? What? What can I do next?" That kind of thing. That's the way I offer everything inside my program so is easy for you to get to. You don't have to sign into or, monkey around with it. You just have it. I make it possible for you to just copy the image that that, is a synopsis of the concept, and put it right in your photos app, so that you have it whenever you want.
So let's start in the middle. What does my logo mean to you? My logo means that you have planted your GPS pin drop and you're victorious. You have gotten to the destination that you set, and you are victorious. This is for both adults, for the parents and for the graduates, because that's where I'm different. I don't suggest that the autistic person is the one that needs to change. I suggest that we both need to change, and we both need to have a system that works for both of us. Because we want to be connected to our kids. You know, we want to have the what we want, and we want them to have what they want. We want to meet in the middle in a connected system where we're each supporting each other. Stephen Covey in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People talks about interdependence as the goal. Interdependence. We can work with each other and are supporting each other in a way. It helps us both get what we want out of life. That's what my goal is.
The three things we need to do is to understand our brain, our body and our mind to honor our unique system. There are ways that our brain came together, ways that our body came together, and ways that we have trained our mind already. That's so it's the neurology, the physiology and the psychology and all those things play into each other. They're really important that we notice all parts of them. I never had it explained this way until recently, and it was like, boom, there's the idea!
1 We can notice what our brain offers us by default, feel what it feels like inside of our body and decide what whether or not that's going to get us the result we want, and whether or not there's anything that we want to change or keep or keep doing, or whatever it is. We want to understand. That's the first habit.
2 The second habit is to connect with what we want and play to our strengths and focus on what works. What does reality tell us? It sure would be nice if every single application that we put in at Indeed that the people we applied to came back to us with a letter that said, "You are a marvelous candidate for our position, and we cannot wait to interview you." But the reality is that there's between 150 and 300 people applying to most of the positions on Indeed, and there's no way they're going to reply to us on an individual basis. We're going to get ghosted a lot. That's reality. So what works? What works is to apply a lot. It's just a numbers game. It's a good example of just noticing reality and moving on to it.
3 And then the third habit is to just experiment over and over again, try different things, try different next steps, and review and see what has been working and what you know, what's worked well. And then what can we do differently next time? And then, okay, what is the next thing we're going to do? This is how we build our confidence, by taking action. Nothing changes unless we take action.
So let's go through each one of these, understanding the brain. We need to we need to master what's going on inside of our operating system. I mean, there's so much that, just like a phone, came pre programmed. There's a lot of hardware running our brain. A lot of hard things that are hardwired into our brain.
Some suggest that our energy preferences, are hardwired in our brain. I mean, for 2500 years, back to long before Aristotle even, we've been trying to kind of figure out how, how can we predict what people, what groups people fall into, and what, what are they going to do next? Some people call it personality. So some of that's hardwired.
Some of the traits that we have in our brains are hardwired for other preferences, for, you know, hot and cold.
All kinds of things are just hard wired into our brain. It's the center of everything that we do. It's hardwired to offer us, offer us what we want to do to survive. It's hardwired for survival, so we need to notice that that's what's going on.
It's hardwired to create all the dopamine and the cortisol and the serotonin and all of those hormones that affect the way that we feel. The signals to produce hormones comes from our brain, but then we feel it in our in our body. Our brain is the engine that that powers everything in our life, nutrition and movement and sleep all directly impact our energy, our discipline and our clarity.
We also train mental toughness, and that is what we need in order to get what we want.
Physical endurance translates into resilience. We need to think about, how are we treating our bodies?
And then the mind. The mind determines how we interpret and respond to life. That's just what's going on. It always is telling us a story. It's perpetually telling us a story. It's perpetually offering us thoughts, what we can do is figure out, okay, how do we want to direct our mind so that it works for us, that inner pilot? How do we want to steer our ship? And the payoff is when we align our brain, our body and our mind, we remove that resistance, but we manage better the resistance, and we become more unstoppable, and that's what we're interested in.
So let's talk about an autistic brain. This study came from 750 samples of an autistic brain and a non autistic brain, and they compared the way that the brain was wired, and they they showed that there were differences in high level processing regions that affect reasoning, language, social behavior and mental flexibility as well as sensory information. That's the way that the brain came together. Our wiring is unique. And what happens with a unique brain is it drives unique behaviors, and so we are not always showing up the same way everybody else shows up. That's just the basic biology of it, that bell shaped curve. So we just want to know that that's what we're working with.
And there are lots of theories as to why, you know, and how and all of this. The one that I prefer is the system like the systemizing. And some call it hyper systemizing, but I know others who are hypo systemized. I see it's hyper. See, how did my brain notice systems? I like the I like to think of our brains as systems. So there's a lot of theories. No one of them explains each of us, because there's just so much variety out there. So we're not gonna, I don't know, maybe somebody will have an overall, overarching theory that explains everything. I'm a little skeptical.
So let's remember that our brain is trying to keep us surviving. That's why we feel often like we're in protection mode, and this is what it defaults to. It wants us to keep us safe. It wants to guard our resources, and it wants to make sure that we don't miss out on any pleasure. That's what our brain, by default, offers. Good to know, because when we recognize the voice inside of our head giving us those kinds of thoughts, we go, "Oh, thank you. I appreciate you for helping me survive. And I may or may not pay attention to that thought. I may decide, "Interesting." That's the psychology piece.
Then here's our body, right? We've got that vagus nerve going up and down and up and down and sending the signals all the time. It helps us to feel the emotions that we're feeling. And the brain somehow tells the body to have this certain type of vibration. It's kind of a miracle. So that's what's going on inside of our body.
All those senses, right? There's eight of them, sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, movement, and where are we and what's going on inside. Those are the signals that we want to pay attention to. So we've got our emotional signals, we've got our sensory signals, we've got our muscle signals. You know, if you work out your goals sore, yeah, that's another one. There's a lot of things that our body is trying to tell us about. It's a great source of wisdom. We want to pay attention to what's going on in our body.
Then our mind, our beautiful human minds. There's a lot of voices up there chattering away. This is what you know. We want to manage our energy, make meaning, execute and learn. And I have searched high and low for the best approach to the mind. I've studied cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
I can't even name all the ones and the one that I have found that works best, at least lots of autistic people tell me that this works best for them, the Internal Family Systems method of self help.
Often it happened in our family where, you know, we thought we were doing the right thing. And I love therapists because they help us figure out what's going on in our mind. But I knew that my kids needed a tool that my adults needed a tool that they could operate whenever they needed it, because the therapist wasn't always there. They are always there experiencing their life. So they needed a tool that was going to help them figure out how they were going to direct their mind so that they would get the result that they wanted. I found the internal Family Systems is a really good one to look for.
I'm going to give you a tool right now. The very first tool that I want to share with you is the Four Ns. This is where we notice are the thoughts that our brain is offering us. We normalize them by accepting our humanity. All right, these are normal thoughts for somebody who's facing the situation that I'm facing. All right, let's just agree that it's normal. First, let's notice them, and let's normalize them, and then let's neutralize them with the facts. Instead of what we tend to do is project catastrophe. "Oh, this isn't gonna work. I've tried this before, and all these bad things are gonna happen." Let's just neutralize our thoughts by kind of synthesizing things down to, "They said words, or my stomach's upset, or I am so tired, I'm more tired than I have ever been in my life. What is this? I have less energy." That's a fact.
And then, what's my next step? It's always in degrees. It's just a great way to calm our mind and then find what our next action is going to be, and make it small. Make it the smallest next action, so that it's possible, so that you can see yourself doing it. Make it the right size. Let's not try to eat the whole enchilada. Let's just focus on the first bite.
I use this more often than any other tool, and I think my graduates do as well.
I just want to tell you, I've been working with Henny and her son for, yeah, very close to five years now, and we have made, I can't believe the progress we've made over five years, and how much better their whole family is. They work better with each other. They're, you know, they're getting to this part where they, everybody's getting what they want, and the graduates getting what they want to and it's, and they're starting to earn money. It's, it's really, it's really cool. So I just want to introduce you to them, one of our one of our members.
Okay, so connecting is the second habit. We need to connect to what really what we really want, then our strengths, then reality.
Okay, all right, so when we start with our what we want, and that's what I do with your autistic graduates, when you sign up for a call with me. We'll put together a life GPS. We can do it with your graduate there or not. We can do your version of it, parents, or we can do the graduates version of their life GPS. What we want to do is really get clear on what matters to them, what matters to us because there's two different perspectives. One perspective says I've got maybe a third of my life yet, and the graduates saying I've got at least two thirds of my life ahead of me. There are two different perspectives. They're both valid. We need to figure out what the wants are from both perspectives. So when we figure out what that is, it keeps us working on the things that are most important to us, and that keeps our motivation going, and it makes sure that what we're doing aligns with what we really want, so that we lead a more fulfilling life.
Then we connect to our strengths. This gets us confidence that we can do things, and it makes us more efficient. It's always better to go with what we're good at, right? So it maximizes our natural abilities. It increases our chances of success because we focus on what we do best. It boosts our confidence and resilience facing challenges, because everybody's going to get knocked down. It's our resilience that we have to train.
Then we connect to reality. Connecting to reality keeps us wise, keeps us grounded in what's possible, and prevents unrealistic expectations. But doesn't mean we shouldn't stretch and really go for something. But sometimes, expecting it. You know, every application we put in it indeed that we're going to get some kind of response. It's just not real. It helps us adapt. If it's going to be, it means I'm going to have to at least put 100 applications in. Oh, God, that sounds like a lot, but, "How am I going to do that?" Okay, I'm going to problem solve that, and I'm going to do it maybe five a day for this month. I'm going to do five every workday this month, alright, I broke it down now I'm not as frustrated. And that's what connecting to what we really matters to us, does for us.
We want to look at each of the 10 domains. I started these way back in after 9/11 when I was so discouraged by that tragic event and by the fact that every one of our kids at that point had been diagnosed with something. I kept saying to myself, "I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do." My go-to was always to get organized and do as much as I can. And that's what I did. I looked at my to do list and I grouped it into these categories, into domains, and I just went for it. I just kept going and going and going and going until 2015 when I was in the hospital from doing too much myself, and I need to think of a better way to live. And my son was suicide ideating, and we didn't want that. He was saying that the professional help we hired wasn't helping, and I figured we got to figure this out together. And that's when we walked every day and just talked, and I learned how to zip my lip.
When you're a parent, all you want to do is, is to help them feel better. So you want to tell them how, here's how you can feel better. But you have to resist the temptation, resist the urge to suggest and advise and criticize. It just doesn't work, alright?
So, you know, if we want to focus on energy, we really want to notice what's hardwired in us. What are our innate preferences? Okay, extroverted, introvert, do we like to be spontaneous, or do we like to plan? Do we like to look at data, or do we like to look at patterns? Do we make decisions based on our values or based on logic. Having all of that helps us understand.
Okay, these are my areas of concern. These are the areas that I can influence, the job recruiters, one that I want to influence or if I'm trying to build my own business, I want to influence my my clients, to come to me. But the one, the only thing I can control is my attitude and my effort. We focus on that. We really want to focus on attitude and effort.
And then, of course, recognize that this is going to be painful. Oh, I'm selling pain today. I'm selling pain. I'm selling a version of pain that's called progress pain, what we have to do. And I see Harris just came back in again, and Harris knows all about progress pain because he's a professional. He was he's a coach, a tennis coach. He knows that when you work out, your muscles are going to hurt. So you know, we don't just seek challenge. We thrive on it. We want to adopt that growth mindset from Carol Dweck and accept the progress pain as inevitable. That's going to help with that.
And this is one of my young adults who's in my program. I asked him one time, what do you get out of this program? And he said, "Look, I need help figuring life out. That's what I get from this group." And so he's been great. I love working with young adults. They're just wonderful.
So now we move on to number three, which is to experiment. We got to try a lot of things, and not everything's going to work alright? So we explore our options. We, you know, we try not to say it's either this or that. We try to get moving away from the black/white thinking and move into, "What are some options? Big ones, small ones?" The smaller sometimes are better, because then we know that we can do it so we right size our option.
We figure out, "Okay, where is that resistance coming from? Where am I pushing back? Why am I pushing back? What's going on in my in my brain, in my body and in my mind?" So now we're combining all three. What is it? How is that going to align with what I really want? What's the result I really want to produce? So these layer on top of each other, the three habits we really want to get creative and look at innovative ways to solve whatever trying to solve, and then, of course, to action.
When we move from planning to doing, where we make real progress. It gives us those first hand experiences that we need to be able to decide if we're going to produce the result that we want. If they didn't work or did they. It helps us to overcome that fear, that perfectionism, "It's got to work perfectly the first time." Well, the chances of that are not very good, so we really want to be there and keep practicing to focus on each time we do things, we do better. I mean, this is, I don't know how many webinars I've done, but each time I do them, my message is clearer. It's more comfortable. I'm more confident that I have figured things out this practice that I've done is really paid off for me.
Then we review our results. Hey, what you know? We got to learn everything. We've got to refine our approach. We can't just keep doing the same thing. We want to just always improving and be improving like small, incremental changes. Big changes are harder than small, incremental changes, but they act up and they're worth it.
We want to take that default motivational triad that our brain offers us of safety, guarding our resources and making sure we don't miss pleasure. We want to, we literally want to flip it on its head, and we want to say we are going to act we're going to embrace pain, we're going to take on action A lot of it, and we're going to do another virtuous way that gives us the long term result that we're looking for. The long term, not the short term pleasure, but the long term virtue, the virtuous victories that you have when you plant your GPS pin drop, and it's there. You've gotten there in the way that you're proud of. That's what we want to do. Flip it and do more, not less.
Your brain is not happy about us doing this all the time. So we have to figure out what's going on inside there.
We need to take actions. And I cannot believe how brilliant this Pierce Steil was in his book Procrastination. He synthesized all the research into four words. Our motivation is comprised of confidence and importance. How confident are we that we can get something done, and how important is it to us? So let's just assign numbers. If we said our importance is a 10, and our confidence is a 10. We know we can do this, and it's a 10 out of 10 in terms of importance. We multiply them and get a score of 100 to maximize our motivation.
But we also need to minimize resistance. Wow, that's where we have to notice how our impulsiveness is, to move away from it and get distracted. Times the delay. How long is it going to take this thing that we want to happen? So if we have a 10 out of 10 up here, and we are not impulsive. We're very focused, and there's a very little delay. That's one times one.
If we divide 100 by one, that will maximize the probability that we not procrastinate. All right, it's brilliant.
And notice that every one part of this equation is the way that we're thinking. It's all based on our thoughts. It's all based on the third part of the first habit which is to manage our mind. It's fascinating. I think this guy's brilliant. What he put together.
In our family, we reviewed using what we call investment conversations. The review step is when we ask the other person what they did well, what they think they could do better, and what they're going to do next. If they want our opinion about how well they did, what they could do better and what they should do next, we ask first. If they're open to suggestions. We stop the suggesting, advising and controlling and criticizing, and start collaborating together with these three steps. That practice is magic. This will connect you to each other, and you can ask the question of yourself as well as of the other person. So I really want you to notice that when we stick with the did well, do better. Do next. Use the investment conversation framework.
That's the next tool that I really find helpful.
And I love these quotes from Paula and from her son. "We both take a breath now, we're often on the same page. He's learned how to talk to himself as a friend and not as a bully. So that inner dialog that goes on, he's training his brain to talk to himself so that he can he can get what he wants out of life. He can get the result that he wants. And, you know, just overall, their household is doing better.
So that's it, guys, that's the framework. So we just keep going around the outside of this. You know, these, these three habits, and then each of them have three practices, and we just keep going around this and keep going around this. And that just was just which is puts us on this upward spiral where we're continuously improving the results that we create in our life and the way that we're so well aligned. There it is on one page.
The next step is to sign up to do this live GPS with me. I've just opened up more time. I don't have any this afternoon because I do my calls every Tuesdays and Thursday afternoons, that's when I'm live. So I don't have anything this afternoon, but I have openings tomorrow morning, Thursday and Friday morning. So please sign up for time to meet with me and Brent, you can go ahead and put that link in there about talk to lynn.com is what it is.
Before I go to questions, though, I want to make sure, Brent, if you could just put into the chat the link to this giveaway, which is I spent hours doing putting this together. I was concerned. You know, one of the things that I think my biggest concern was what happened, if something happens to me, how are they going to fuel their life financially? And so I wrote this piece about the nine ways to build a financial foundation. And I also interviewed a Chartered Special Needs Consultant and transcribed the talk. And I I also transcribed another talk that he did because I could not find anywhere where it brought together all of the benefits, all the government benefits that might our kids might be eligible for. Now, listen, I was raised in a Republican household, so taking any government benefits was severely frowned on. But I have evolved my thinking to appreciate the people that came before me who probably faced the same kind of challenges with with kids they love, who happen to get in the genetic lottery, a brain that just didn't fit in the middle of the bell shaped curve. And, you know, maybe if something does happen to me, I want to make sure that they have what they need to eat, have a safe home, have access to to health health care and transportation, so that they can get to their health care appointments or get to a job. And then whatever else they want, because there's always other things, like the internet and phones. So for me, knowing that I have put what I need to put in place has given me tremendous peace of mind. I don't worry about it as much as I used to. And we all know, with the current political environment that things are kind of up in the air, but, and we don't know what it's going to be like, but we might as well get informed at least as to what's available today. And we might choose to want to work with these three professionals, which is a lawyer, an accountant and a Chartered Special Needs Consultant. And I loved how the charter Special Needs consultant said you might want to find somebody who's the same age or similar age as your young adult, because you want them to age with your young adult. So there's the link to that. Just click on it. You should be able to download it and I hope it is valuable to you. I took the transcript and I put in headings in each of the transcripts, so you should be able to find what you're looking for inside of that without having to read the whole thing.
Just make sure that you schedule a call. We want them to go to www.Talk2Lynn.com because that'll give you the 60 minutes on my calendar. I think we need to appropriately get you at life GPS together, just so you know. So talk to Lynn. Alright.
So Brent, what are the questions that I need to answer?
Speaker 2 41:38
Haven't had any yet. Please feel free to put them in the chat. Yes.
Lynn Davison 41:43
Please, please tell me. What? What do you want to know? There was one question earlier about helping autistic people enjoy eating. Yeah, that's just the way they're wired. That's their brain. And the most recent hearing read is that they place a lot of importance on feeling comfortable. It's really, really important to them to feel comfortable. And when they don't have that comfort, they resist. It makes sense. So, um, hasn't eaten vegetables or fruits, only drinks juices. Okay? Well, you know, sometimes we just have to figure out what works for them, and maybe eventually there will be some movement, but when they want the movement to happen. So that was the hardest part for me to accept.
Now it doesn't mean that I don't set guardrails up, you know, I have expectations. I'm not going to give them all my money today, I'm going to save that money for when I think they're going to need it, right? So, I mean, I have expectations, but I've done my best to really explain those expectations in that they what I'm trying to do with these expectations is to prepare you for being moving on, grow. So I'm not just putting these expectations in so I can be the controller. I'm putting them in place so that you will experience the difficulties that help you grow. I think that's the only way that we're going to do it, is if we experience the difficulties that help us grow.
Brent 43:24
Another question about young adults and trying to get them to not spend the entire day on screens. Yeah,
Lynn Davison 43:31
That's a challenge, because they have gotten into a pattern of indulging in distraction. They don't have traction, right? So they're not doing what's going to help them get what they want out of life. They're indulging in lots of distraction. And that makes sense. I mean, holy cow, the amount of options that are available just in our hand is amazing. It sure is fun to experience what's on the phone, the games, the way the games are designed, they're designed perfectly for our kids. They're predictable. The rules are clear. They can decide to participate or not whenever they want to. They can put together social groups where they talk. You know that where they play games together? I mean, it makes all the sense in the world that they want to be on the games or watching YouTube videos or whatever it is, makes a lot of sense. And there's a whole economic model behind most of what's out there to encourage them to stay. We know that they're either somebody's buying their attention or they're buying something. So there's an economic model behind it, everything that's on screen.
So I say the way that we get them off, you know, we get them to move from spending 80% of their day on screen to something, what that they determine is more reasonable? What did they think is the right amount of time to spend on screens in a day, and how does that fit with everything else that they want? And the way, that's why we do the GPS, that's why we look at each of the 10 domains, figure out what they want, what they want next, and what they're willing to do, what makes sense to them to do what they can see themselves.
So my program only $150 a month for each family. So that just gives you an idea of what it costs. That includes a lot. Brent and I are live six hours a week, so we have two calls on Tuesdays and two calls on Thursdays for both parents and graduates. So the benefit of that is, obviously, you're in your peer group, and they're in their peer group, and so you can see that you're not alone at all. It also includes a lot of videos, and it includes a one on one call with me once a month for half an hour, so we go over that GPS, figure out what it is. So I do include individual coaching. It's one per family per month, and you can decide who wants to come. So if your young adults isn't ready to participate yet, then you and we'll figure out, how do we how do we tackle and how do we get them involved? Because there's so many benefits to know that we're struggling with the same struggles.
Brent 46:42
And so how would you approach parents who are invested in keeping their adults with autism from launching when it's fairly evident that the young adult is ready and
Lynn Davison 47:02
It sounds like you're talking about somebody else. They are preventing your young adult, from launching. Okay, so how do we go back to what you control? You go back to what do we pay attention to?
Okay, so there's the area of concern. That's what's happening in the larger environment. This is the area of influence and that's our family, or our family, the people that we work with, mostly, and then what is our control. So I don't know that we can, but we can change what they say or do. We can only change what we say. So what is your next step? What is something you can see yourself doing that you control? That's the good news, because you have the power. You control what's going to help them take that launch, take the next step toward the launch. And so I, I see the Sarah.
I suggest you come and get that life GPS put together. You both have one, you have yours, and they have theirs. You have yours, and the young adult has theirs. And then you do what you can to mentor your young adult to take the action that they are going to take. What is it? Is it checking out a place to live? Is it buying their own car and paying for their insurance? Is it what is the next step that's going to demonstrate that they're capable of handling life on their own? Yeah, and that'll be competitive. We don't have to change anybody else's mind, and we just have to figure out what it is that we can mentor.
Brent 49:11
Thanks. This is a great one. My son is in junior. He's a junior in college, studying mechanical engineering. He's had some setbacks, but it's doing well academically, and now lives in an apartment at school about an hour away. It's all you can do to manage classes in school and survival. Never had a job. Is it best to wait to join this program until after graduation?
Lynn Davison 49:34
I just have to tell you that my father was a mechanical engineer, so I have a special place in my heart for your kid. Mechanical engineers. And he, when he passed, donated money to the school Michigan State, because he happened to have a great mentor when he was there. He was born in 31 so long ago. This was like there was somebody in at Michigan State who mentored him. He was so grateful to her that he wanted to leave some money in her name. So yes, he's figuring things out, and yes, it's all he can do to manage classes in school and survive. That makes perfect sense to me, that's as far as he's going to go.
Is the best way to join this program until after graduation, maybe he has so much on his plate now is not a good time, but it sounds like it could be a good time for you, because then we can figure out, okay, what can we do now that supports his independence? What do we how do we want to show up? You know, when we're talking to him, what's the kind of psychology that we're going to have in place? What's the next thing? I mean, we've got to sort this out, to figure out the part that we can control, the part that we can influence. So it's up to you. You know, I don't want to get anybody in there that's not getting the return on their investment. So that decision is really up to you.
Brent 51:16
So we got a bunch of other questions. You more here. 35 year old son, very reluctant to seek help. He goes to bed at 8:30am and tries to figure stuff out on Zoom.
Lynn Davison 51:25
Oh yes, this is that lovely reversal of the night/day thing. Okay, well, he's made a connection with his vocational specialist. That's a good thing. So he's comfortable talking to them. That's a really good thing, and this whole reversal of night/day is not such a good thing. The research is really clear that people who work at night die sooner. It doesn't have anything to do with autism or not. It's just that working against our circadian rhythm has an impact on our physiology, actually at the cellular level, that's not good. Trying to get him to change is going to be interesting. But I think that we do our best. We really do our best to try to when he goes to bed and tries to figure stuff out on his own.
The question that I have is, "What's he thinking about?" Wouldn't it be nice to know that? I mean, we each have 60 to 70,000 thoughts in a day, and wouldn't it be nice to know what he's thinking about? Is there any way does he leave you any breadcrumbs? Is there any way that, if he talks to you, that you do your best and it's not easy to zip the lip. Take a piece of paper and a pencil out and start writing down what he's telling you, so that he knows that you're very much attuned and listening to him, and that you're not suggesting, advising and criticizing anything that he's doing. It's just, I want to understand better what's going on for you. I want to understand your thinking. "What are you worried about? What's going on, you know, what can I? Can I just have a glimpse into what you're struggling with? I would really like to know." And that's we start to build that connection so that we understand what they want, and they understand what we want, and eventually we help them. You know, notice that it goes both ways. And you know, what can we learn from each other? Because then you know how to support them. You don't know how to support them. How you going to help them if he doesn't tell you. All you can do is guess. I don't want to guess anymore. I'm tired of guessing. I want to have really good evidence, and then I can present a guess and see if it's right and check it out. Thanks for that question.
Brent 53:53
These are all so good but because we're short on time. I'm going to combine a few of them and say we have a couple people who are wondering how to get their autistic graduate to engage, whether that's in helpful services or any sort of improvement.
Lynn Davison 54:11
What we have to do is, what we do to help them practice what works for them at home. We figure it out at home first. And it's really that listening and experimenting. It's really going through the three habits. It's really understanding what it is that they're struggling with. Connecting to what does he want, right? What does he want? Did he know what he wants, what he's thinking, what he thinks his strengths are, and you know, what kinds of realities has he bumped up against that have maybe discouraged him? And that's good to know. Maybe he tried stuff and it didn't work, and so he kind of thinks it'll never work. Well, maybe it'll work with few adjustments, but let's get those things out on the table. Hopefully connect at home.
Then once he's done it at home, the next step is to get him in some kind of work. Now, that doesn't mean that they have to go to work. You know, the traditional go to work. They can also do work online as a freelancer at several places, and our kids have immense talents that they could offer to the general public. So maybe they just start there with trying to create a practice online that they get paid for. Just what's the next thing? Do they want to work for their own money? Most of us do. You know, what can they do that would be valuable to someone else? It's trying to figure out stuff to get really practical. What do they want? What are their strengths? Where can they play their strengths? And then, okay, let's figure out the reality that they face. I mean, it was years ago when I started this practice. There was a lot of reality that I had to face, and I just had to keep facing part of reality, and that's what's enabled me to help.
Brent 56:18
Yeah, a few people are worried about their autistic graduate leaving home and either being lonely or not having the support they need, or not being able to have basic things like insurance or or saving money for groceries and not spending it on video games.
Lynn Davison 56:35
Video games or food delivery, right? Delivery. That's one of the favorite things that I see happening in my house. So yes, well, we just do it at home first, if we can do it at home first, and get them to practice those habits, and get them to notice the consequences of not practicing those habits. Review stuff. Then we go back to, oh, what was my brain offering? My brain was offering pleasure. Oh, god, yeah, I know I can't live a life of pleasure. We know that that's not going to work, because I still have to do a lot of other things in my 10 domains. What's my body saying? The body's saying, Oh, I got that urge. Got that urge to just escape, and I don't, you know, and it's been emotional urge. All right, so it's saying, "Is this going to work? Do I want to just keep going around the circle, that circle over and over there? I know that it looks like I'm looking at Tracy's comment, "Games are the only thing that matters to him." Good to know. That's good to know. Is he attuned at all to how his body feels when he gets off the screen?
What happens is the screen enables us to distract ourselves from all the things that are happening inside of us, our thoughts, our emotions. We're just distracted from them. So when it comes to going to sleep, we turn off our device and all the thoughts and feelings we had just come flooding in, and we have not processed them all day long. So no wonder we have trouble going to sleep. Or our sleep schedule gets flipped because we think we know the answer. The answer is, I'm going to game or I'm going to watch YouTube videos or whatever it is, until I'm so exhausted then I can fall asleep. Well, that strategy is not sustainable. It just isn't because, as you've seen, then they stay a little bit longer each time, and before you know it, their days and nights have flipped. That's not good for their physiology. You can, you can go to any AI, and it'll tell you, is it smart to stay up all night, or is it better to go to sleep when the sun goes down and you get up when the sun comes up? Yeah.
So when we talk to them about each of the it's really the diet, it's really the connection and the dialog that we have that helps them see their thinking that's making the decisions that they're making and producing the results they're that they're producing, and is that really what they want? It's really mentoring to help to be that that person in their life that they can trust to to review what's going on, what's going well, what they think they can improve, and then what's their next step. And if they want suggestions. You know, we probably have a bunch of them, but only when they're open to them. And then yeah, they're done. He tells us that is what he wants, yes. So he's convinced himself he's got all the logic. Let me give you the logic as for the reasons why my life has to be set up this way. "How is that going? Just wondering, is that sustainable? Are you able to earn money that way? You know, because let's do the math."
That's one of the best places to start the math? Because then you can't argue with each other. You say, okay, financially, you need money to pay for your food, your home, your transportation and your healthcare and anything else you want. All right, how much is that going to add up to? Can you actually go through the process of adding it up? That's likely that it's going to add up to be between $3,000 and $5,000 a month. So they have times between three and $5,000 a month, multiply that times 12 to get the annual expense, and then you multiply that times 25 to figure out how much money they have to have in investments producing 4% per year.
How much is 60,000 times 25 it's a million and a half. How many of us have a million and a half to leave to our children?
So we gotta figure this out. We gotta figure this out. Sometimes the math just makes it factual. You know, gets all these other opinions and ideas and thoughts off the table, and here's the math. How are we gonna do this? That what if something happens to me in the next five years? No things do happen. Are you gonna manage? I want to help you figure this out now, while I'm still here.
Lynn Davison 1:01:51
yeah, spend all these money definitely. I've definitely heard that. And Greg, you and I have had a talk. Greg's has done marvelous work with his son. He's a former college football coach, and he understands mentoring really, really well.
He's saying that my son is in an entry level position, not making a whole lot of money. And I really want him to get to the area of his interest. I want him to be able to work in that part, we have several graduates in the Art of Adulting who have bachelor's degrees and work they're working in, you know, entry level wage jobs, and they want to do something that leverages all that brain power that they have up there.
So the answer is, you got to just go through this whole process again, they figure out, Okay, what's the options? What are the options, where our actions and then review to see if we're not those actions are taking us in the next step. I mean, you know, could be volunteering. It could be finding a mentor in that in that industry, and interviewing them, or finding somebody to do an interview, an informational interview, not a job interview. How do you see people get into the jobs that I want? What is it that they need to do an informational interview? And often give us the next step as to what they need to do? They need to do a project, particularly in is in computer science, it's just a field that used to be growing but now there's fewer positions, and it's often to do a project, and then we use that as something they could talk about during the interview, so it makes their application more magnetic.
All right, I have kept you as long as I promised a little over, so I'm gonna have to let you go, but I am so pleased you all came, and I can't wait to talk to you at our live GPS discussion. Bye For now.
