When someone on the Autistic spectrum is in Defense Mode, everything is harder because they're constantly trying to protect themselves from the overwhelming stress of both real and imagined threats that constantly surround them.
Many people believe that if someone on the Autistic doesn’t appear to be motivated, it’s because they don’t want it. People hardly ever look deeper to find that someone actually does want something, they just don’t have the capacity and capability.
After they stuck my Autistic son in a tiny instrument closet for refusing to write, I learned that there was a legal process to follow to get him the accommodations he needed. Here's what I learned.
With the Red-Line approach, each new attempt to motivate will produce fewer results, and, in the long-term, will continually require a sweeter carrot or a scarier stick in order to maintain its original effectiveness. There's a better way.
Obviously when you said 'clean your room' you and your Autistic son both had very different definitions of what that phrase meant...
If you have low vagal tone chances are excellent that you get stressed out more easily. You probably tend to feel more anxiety, and in general, it’s just harder for you to regulate and deal with negative emotions.
Trust building is a recipe with 4 ingredients. If any of the 4 are missing, trust will be damaged instead of being built.
I thought Lillian’s refusal to go to Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma & Grandpa’s was a direct defiant behavior. When she had a meltdown, I thought she was trying to make the day about her and get her way to make us go home.
Mom’s intentions were good and noble, but she was inadvertently crippling her son on the Autism spectrum by doing everything for him.
Of course, the ultimate goal is to solve the problem and get results, but chances are you won't be able to design an effective solution until after you discover and diagnose those hidden black swans that may lie at the root of the problem.
Raising a son with Asperger's, we often had to celebrate in a different way. Here are three examples...
Should you continue carrying the heavy burdens of someone on the Autistic spectrum who refuses to take action or help themselves in anyway?
It's one thing to constantly declare that you should be respected. It's another thing entirely to demonstrate through action that you can be trusted, you are respectable and you are knowledgeable.
I remember talking to the ABA lady, and she said, 'Well, we're really about fixing the things that are wrong.' I asked, what can we do to really help him to harness the things that are special that he has that nobody else has because he has Autism? She just had no answer for me.
Throughout my life I have not been able to relate to people on a level where I feel connected, understood, accepted, or loved. There was always a missing piece, a sense of being different, excluded, isolated, and just not part of.
Some of my failures have so monumentally, unfathomably stupid that they are still impacting my life today, but you know what? If I could go back in time I wouldn’t change a thing, and I’ll tell you why.
It's important to remember that folks on the Autism spectrum are usually REALLY overwhelmed already, and so the best thing you can do is make them less stressed, not more.
I was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum when I was 12 and this is the story of how I had cataclysmic level panic attacks and my realization of how to stop them.
My world was the computer, and if you took me away from what I knew, I was really sad and really depressed.
The natural answer to 'How can I get?' is to use some sort of force, manipulation or coercion in order to achieve the end result.
Here's simple but powerful script for holding boundaries with someone on the Autistic spectrum... without walking on eggshells.
We have been trying for months to talk to my son with Asperger’s. He has NO interest in learning basic social skills, getting a job, doing his homework, practicing basic hygiene, eating healthier… the list goes on.
Unless the task is one that must be done in a very particular way, then avoid dictating exactly what your Autistic child should do moment by moment. That would diminish their feeling of responsibility and destroy the potential for any creativity.
Around the time I was diagnosed with Asperger's, I was one of the pickiest eaters you can imagine. God forbid if anything green touched my plate.
When your Autistic child is of moving out age make sure your actions are informed by these 2 guidelines.
My 15 year old was diagnosed with ASD and in the beginning, it got really bad. We're talking about near-hospitalization, therapeutic schools, lots of trauma. Day to day life was just nearly impossible.
Growing up, I was what many would have considered 'a parent’s worst nightmare.' I was defiant and headstrong in the most extreme way imaginable.
'You're still having meltdowns every day. Your siblings are terrified. You're failing most of your classes at school. I'm sorry. At this point we're out of options. So here's the deal. You can't live here anymore.'
He wasn’t willing to try pizza or pasta until he was 9, and has never tried red meat, fish, or most vegetables. He would have a meltdown if we cooked anything involving fish or olives because he claimed they 'smelled up the house and caused him pain'.
Mom assumed that Sarah’s sluggishness in the morning was caused by lack of sleep, but did we actually know that was the cause? Sarah insisted that she wanted to stay up reading an additional thirty minutes and that she could still wake up on time.
Before you know it you've gone into Defense Mode right along with your child and now despite your best intentions, you find yourself yelling all those angry and hurtful things you promised yourself you would never say.
If so, how? When? What if you don't want to label them?
When you are talking to people on the Autistic spectrum, they might not have already connected the dots between A and B. Be explicit. Lay it out. Help them connect the dots and don't assume they already can.
'Spoons' is a metaphor, a code word, to describe and measure how much physical and emotional capacity each of us has to get through the day.
If you choose to believe that stress is not bad for you, but rather is just your body kicking into high gear so it can rise to the challenge at hand then you may start to notice that all those adverse side effects you’ve been experiencing from stress just start to evaporate.
The person who made the assessment said, 'Has anyone talked to you about having a diagnosis?' We said 'No, does he need one? And what for?'
In high school, Sophia would have these bouts of meltdowns. Normally she would get out of them, but one in particular, she was 15, and she was in her bed acting like a two year old.
This after school decompression schedule works great for kids & teens on the Autistic spectrum.
In Defense Mode, I often felt the need to control and keep everything exactly as it was because I was so overwhelmed that anything new just added to the overwhelm and shut me down even further.
I am frequently in frustrating positions trying to explain to others why their well intentioned suggestions of a rewards and punishments model will not work with my neuro atypical child.
The so called 'bad parents' aren’t the ones reading about Asperger’s advice & help, and aren’t the ones that are seeking to get better.