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Showing posts with label independence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label independence. Show all posts
Monday, October 7, 2024
Tuesday, September 10, 2019
FAILING SAFELY/DARING GREATLY
By the end of August, almost everything I said was making G really, really mad. Could be sulking mad, could be yelling mad; whatever I had to say, he was angry.
All the time.
If I said, “Ask yourself if you really need thirds on ice cream,” he’d be enraged, for hours.
“You’ve already watched two movies today, how about taking a break?”: infuriating.
“Let’s get some fresh air”: seething, at length, with rage.
Screens, picking up stuff left all over the house, bedtime, laundry, hygiene, homework, manners, state of his room…All were loaded topics.
One night, after a loooooooong day, I decided it was time to let go. Yep, all at once. It was time for Operation [G] Freedom.
I didn’t actually even think it through. At all. I just sat down at the dining room table and said, “I’m done. You’re going away to college next year and I’m not going to be there to remind you to sleep, or get exercise, or make good choices.
“This year is a great time for you to ruin your life in a safe context. So do whatever you want! I don’t want to fight with you anymore and you have to learn this stuff to succeed in life anyway!”
Then I got up and went back into the kitchen to do all the things.
A few minutes later, I heard, in a kind of tiny voice, “Mom? I don’t want to ruin my life.”
“Oh sweetie,” I said, “I don’t mean ruin-ruin your life, exactly. It’s just that the things I tell you that make you mad, those are things that you need to do or not do. So if you do or don’t do them at home, that’s a safe place to fail.
“I’m hoping you’ll realize for yourself that I’m not nuts or trying to annoy you. And figure out why you need to do certain things, like sleep regularly or not be on your phone 24/7. That way, when you get out on your own you’ll be able to do what you need to do to succeed—like get some healthy exercise and finish your schoolwork on time—without making huge errors in judgment.”
“In fact,” I added, “let’s call it ‘playing college!’”
Now, I don’t think any of this would’ve worked a year ago, or even a few months. I’ve watched my friends whose kids don’t have developmental differences gradually reach this point years ago, but G needed extra time.
Paradoxically, I'm basically giving him more freedom than many of his typically developing peers currently enjoy. That's because until very recently G didn't seem to have enough common sense or self-regulation to manage the tiny amounts of freedom he was given. Now, he only has this year of high school left in which to practice those skills before leaving for college.
What he said next showed me he was ready to try.
“I don’t know if I want that kind of freedom,” G admitted a few hours later. “I think I’m going to use the same parameters you gave me.”
And he has, for the most part. Admittedly with less sleep and more screens, but not so much that he’s messing up in school or in general. (Yet?)
So far, perhaps the most amazing thing to come out of this is a huge shift in our dynamic. G can actually, finally hear me again without taking offense.
For…years, really, there was a lot of struggle between us over just about everything. Now, because I’m no longer trying to command him—and because he feels respected—he’s able to listen respectfully.
I’ll make a suggestion from time to time—“At your age, you need 10 hours of sleep a night, so if I were you I’d figure out what time I need to get up and see what is a good time to go to bed”—and then ask, “Does that make sense?”
He’ll usually answer, “Yes.”
When he resists—“You just had cross country practice. How about a shower?” “Nah”— I simply state a logical consequence—“Well, you’ll be smelly all day”—and move on.
I never, ever claim to have “The Answer.” All families and all individuals are different. For some families, this shift is probably inconceivable (as it was for us not long ago); for others, it’s not on the horizon at all. And who knows, we may need to ease back into more regulation—it hasn’t been that long!
Also? Don’t get me wrong: I’m scared. Really scared. About ALL the menacing things, for the foreseeable future. But this does seem to be working for our family right now.
Figure I — Some Of The Menacing Things (not shown: accidental pregnancy, loneliness, driving, unintentionally breaking the law…)
Moving forward, I’m planning to try to stop even making those suggestions. I’m going to dare to allow for the possibility of failure—AND the potential for entirely self-directed success. I’m stepping back so that G can achieve his own kind of greatness on his own terms.
That means when he chooses to stay up all night or never, ever do his laundry, or leave random dishes and papers and shoes and books and pens and Magic the Gathering cards (and so on, and on, and on...) EVERYWHERE I am going to stay quiet and let him experience the consequences…Also on his own terms.
That means I can reduce my worrying-about-college time significantly, freeing up time to worry about a bunch of random things for wholesome activities.
At the same time, I’ve been grappling with ways to help him gain increased responsibility as a fair and natural part of increased freedom. That means picking up after himself more, at the very least, right? Fingers crossed.
Love,
Full Spectrum Mama
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Tuesday, January 9, 2018
"REAL" AGE
Dear Persons,
If you have a child or children, do you remember when your first baby was a newborn? Remember that feeling that your life had changed irrevocably and the terror of, well, anything and everything?
Then your child starts to become more mobile and you wonder, what was actually so hard about that baby who couldn’t go anywhere or reach beyond the ends of their arms???
Around this stage, you may also encounter the added bonus of “non-typical development,” which adds a whole ‘nother level to the process.
Next, usually, your child enters the school system and a whole new batch of fears kicks in, right? (People who are reading this from the perspective of the child and not the parent — or from both positions — may even have memories of this time.) What was so, sooooo hard about the days when you could kiss every boo-boo and make it go away? When learning consisted of stacking blocks and finger painting rather than specific and regimented tasks that might or might not be suited to your child’s learning style, abilities, and/or neurology? When social interactions consisted of taking or sharing playground trucks, healthy snacks, and dress up costumes?
And then, really suddenly, people, the end of high school looms. I actually find this next stage of transition the very most terrifying of all (I know - aren't I encouraging?).
Over the years, as I have gotten to know my first child as a human being, my love has grown exponentially from the more-than-I-ever-could-have-imagined level I felt for him as a newborn to There Are No Words.
And, over those same years, my son has grown — but not in the same ways as his typical peers. He was a giant baby, 110th percentile (which means only 1 in 300 were his size), but didn’t talk much until he was at least three. His apparent physical age far surpassed his actual physical age. People would think he was four or five when he was two, and wondered why he didn’t speak. When he was four and we went to China to bring his sister home, people thought he was ten. They laughed hysterically to see this ginormous child in a stroller (it was 104-degrees and walking was sensorially too much).
Now, intellectually, my son is probably quite a ways ahead of most of his peers. Hormonally, he is right on par. But socially, or common sense-wise? He’s far, far younger.
We recently visited friends in Cambridge, and G (16) played at length with an eight year old who is also on the spectrum. The other kid’s parents also had a 15 year old, but we all agreed the younger child was a better fit because their 15 year old was “much older” than G. It was wonderful, if inevitably slightly painful, to be having this conversation with people who very much approached the whole matter from a perspective of total equality and inclusion.
My love for my second child, my daughter, has grown similarly; and she, too, has grown — in most ways typically, but she has her areas of difference as well. For example, she was in diapers until she was four years old, which I found exasperating until we figured out that — because she had been in an orphanage — she “needed to be a baby a little bit longer.” When we figured this out, it really helped her to have words for her feelings - and she learned to ask for other things that helped her in this regard, such as being carried or held in her baby sling (she was still tiny well into elementary school).
My daughter’s emotional age seems quite a bit younger than her social age, since she is the most socially-adept and -powerful person I know. Her common sense “age”? A million.
How can we assess and address actual, “real” age in effective, accepting ways?
I recently heard about “the two-thirds rule:” apparently, many people on the spectrum may be seen — as compared to their peers — as developmentally about 2/3 of their biological age. This notion helps in some ways, as I observe my son’s atypical development and hope that he will eventually be able to achieve independence and everything else he wants, much of which seems very far away right now. It makes sense for me, too, since because of my divergent neurology (and perhaps also because of childhood and adult trauma) I only started to integrate and understand some very basic things about life — things most people “get” much earlier — in middle age. But it also seems like a massive generalization and perhaps might also be perceived as a little patronizing. And I don’t think most developmental models incorporate areas in which my son truly excels way beyond most teens, like, among other things, kindness and compassion.
Once again, I don’t have “the answer.” Certainly, estimating age for a bunch of different categories like those I discuss above (intellectual, social, practical/common sense, hormonal, biological, physical, emotional, developmental, compassion/kindness) and then taking an average of these to estimate someone’s “real” age won’t work. As well, every individual is different, and every stage of life is different for every individual…We might well view age as very amorphous and multiple, and even refer to individuals’ “ages” instead of a single age.
What I do know is that it’s important to take a nuanced approach to “real” age. We need to celebrate and presume competence in areas of maturity and independence, build strengths in areas that are still developing, and accept that some of us will always have differences - whether they render us more advanced or less so - in terms of our skills and capacities.
Love,
Full Spectrum Mama
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