Working on acceptance...

[prairiewindmomma]

Do not quote, please...

How do you re-center your thoughts to a place of acceptance and non-frustration when you need to?

I have been watching people in my house exhibit behaviors to be expected based on how their brains work....and I think part of what I am seeing is just current upper bounds of their ability to cope. I keep wanting them to do better/be xyz and I think I need to, for my own mental well being, just step back a bit. 

How does one do this? 
 

Current examples: anxious kid is being obnoxious (class clown) in a group public school discussion—-a la pathological demand avoidance socially, if I were to guess

another kid is procrastinating finishing college transfer apps due in a few days by doing other things like engineering homework, day after day...because he doesn’t want to call and have a few simple questions answered...

At some point I just can’t control/micromanage all of the things....but I, personally, am wired pretty type A (gifted perfectionist) so this is grinding on my heart and brain, iykwim....

[Lecka]

https://blog.allaboutlearningpress.com/the-big-pit/

This really speaks to me!  

[PeterPan]

You also have the "ball of responsibility" if you will and figuring out whose *responsibility* it is for how those situations go and whose *consequences* it will be if things don't happen that you'd like to have happen. 

I think it's very hard to watch our kids not step up to their responsibilities. For a college age kid, that's a walk away, their responsibility, their consequences. For a dc in the ps, it sounds like some of what you're describing is a school responsibility. It's their responsibility to step up supports.

I think when you get frazzled at this time of year it's a good idea to remember it's that time of year and be good to yourself. Is your D low? Is that dc having the behaviors feeling his best, or is winter getting to him? A break, some sun, some de-stressing can be good for anyone. 

[Terabith]

I don't know, but I'm starting to really worry about both of my kids being capable of independence when it comes to making phone calls.  Both of them, in most contexts, seem like they should be on track to full independence, but both of them have full stop complete unwillingness to make phone calls.  I don't really know how to get them over that, but I hear you on frustration about a college aged kid not being willing to make phone calls.  

Honestly, I feel like my kid who is far more globally impacted and has by far the worse diagnoses is more likely to eventually step up and do sucky stuff they don't want to do because it's necessary.  It sucks.  

[PeterPan]

5 hours ago, Terabith said:

phone calls.

We've got my ds to where he makes calls to his aunt to ask about going to visit her. And he can join briefly a call on speakerphone with someone he knows. Beyond that, yeah I'd expect balking and meltdowns. But he doesn't necessarily have anything to say anyway. He does *zoom* chat just fine. I think an old school phone call is probably the most abstract and anxiety raising option.

[Lawyer&Mom]

I was a college age kid terrified to make phone calls.  I’m so much better at it now, but I can still get anxious just thinking about making phone calls in college.  Can you scaffold it for them?  Help them write a script for the call?  Have a decision tree of possible responses?  “If they say X I can say Y, but if they say A then I say B.”  Actually sit next to them when they make the call for moral support?  Find out if it actually has to be a call?  Is it possible to email the question?

I would tell them that you are always available to help with phone calls, because you don’t want to have them procrastinate on an important call going forward.  I’m 40 years old and I will still occasionally ask my boss to help me plan my wording for an important phone call.  It’s just an Autism thing. 

[Not_a_Number]

21 hours ago, Lawyer&Mom said:

I was a college age kid terrified to make phone calls.  I’m so much better at it now, but I can still get anxious just thinking about making phone calls in college.  Can you scaffold it for them?  Help them write a script for the call?  Have a decision tree of possible responses?  “If they say X I can say Y, but if they say A then I say B.”  Actually sit next to them when they make the call for moral support?  Find out if it actually has to be a call?  Is it possible to email the question?

I would tell them that you are always available to help with phone calls, because you don’t want to have them procrastinate on an important call going forward.  I’m 40 years old and I will still occasionally ask my boss to help me plan my wording for an important phone call.  It’s just an Autism thing. 

This forum turned out to be full of people unable to make phone calls, so apparently it's not just an autism thing 😄 . 

I also get nervous about phone calls, @Terabith. Honestly, the best thing for me has just been having to do it. If we weren't in pandemic times, I'd probably do exposure therapy and have them do it a LOT so they are somewhat desensitized. And I'd brainstorm with them about how to make it easier. 

I still procrastinate phone calls because I don't like them, and I kind of wish I didn't. I think practice would have helped. 

Edited February 1, 2021 by Not_a_Number

[PeterPan]

5 hours ago, Lawyer&Mom said:

anxious

Technically the anxiety is separate. I turned out to be homozygous for an uncommon defect/explanation. Treated it, boom anxiety gone. It's astonishing. After 40+ years of it and meds, just a particular form of B6 (P5P) and it's gone.

I don't think we do favors when we say everything is behavioral. Sometimes it's chemistry and should be treated, not in a palliative way but in an actually addressing the root problem way.

[kbutton]

20 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

This forum turned out to be fulled of people unable to make phone calls, so apparently it's not just an autism thing 😄 . 

I also get nervous about phone calls, @Terabith. Honestly, the best thing for me has just been having to do it. If we weren't in pandemic times, I'd probably do exposure therapy and have them do it a LOT so they are somewhat desensitized. And I'd brainstorm with them about how to make it easier. 

I still procrastinate phone calls because I don't like them, and I kind of wish I didn't. I think practice would have helped. 

I try to brainstorm ahead what I might need to know, how I want to ask a question, how much I need to tell them up front, etc. 

Exposure therapy has worked well for my ASD kiddo. He's quite good at phone calls now. He did some work with a BCBA on them as part of social skills, and we've just always had him call for just about anything we thought he could handle. I've noticed that adults tend to be excited that a child is learning a new skill and a thousand times more patient with them than with an adult calling about the exact same thing.

My other kiddo has some issues, but it's more about lining up tasks and being able to think on his feet while also not losing track of the reasons for the call. 

[SanDiegoMom]

I am struggling with this at the moment myself.... and have no answers unfortunately.   This past weekend saw my son almost shut down over an assignment that provoked an extreme amount of anxiety -- so much that he refused the chance to revise it... actually had the teacher email and give him another chance (it's the difference between a B and an A for the semester) and he tried to refuse again.  I literally sat down with him and typed while prodding him the entire time, and he took about an hour after to recover.   If I hadn't had intercepted the email he never would have done it.

Meanwhile my incredibly bright 21 year old with adhd promised to submit her law school application tonight.  It's due tonight. She still hasn't finished her personal statement and she's convinced she has enough time.  She has literally never submitted an application before the last minute of any deadline.  She meant to sign up for a second LSAT to be taken last month and missed the deadline by 9 minutes.  Even though she knew for 2 months that she was going to sign up for it.  

I don't know how to separate my emotions from these kids.  I get so frustrated always watching them take the hard path.   

One thing I do try is to remember the places they have improved.  My daughter has taken care of things that I would have struggled with -- things involving billing and phone calls.  She's terrible at managing her money but she's great at tracking down a refund that she is sure she deserves.  Or a school accommodation she feels she was supposed to get.  Advocating for herself is never a problem.  So I celebrate the small successes I guess. 

[popmom]

On 2/1/2021 at 6:45 PM, SanDiegoMom said:

I am struggling with this at the moment myself.... and have no answers unfortunately.   This past weekend saw my son almost shut down over an assignment that provoked an extreme amount of anxiety -- so much that he refused the chance to revise it... actually had the teacher email and give him another chance (it's the difference between a B and an A for the semester) and he tried to refuse again.  I literally sat down with him and typed while prodding him the entire time, and he took about an hour after to recover.   If I hadn't had intercepted the email he never would have done it.

 

This happened to my dd (ASD) last year--2019 toward the end of the semester. She did in fact completely shut down. I definitely felt some serious frustration with her and went through all of the Plan A ways of dealing with it. Then I had my "lens change" when I realized that the anxiety was literally preventing her from engaging her brain in any way academically. It didn't matter if I sat next to her and typed for her--she couldn't form a coherent thought on the subject of her paper. If I read aloud to her from her sources, she couldn't process it. So the acceptance in that case came from knowing that she was suffering--not refusing out of defiance or demand avoidance. Normally she is good to advocate for herself, but she was so bad off I had to contact the teacher. She was wonderful about it. We completely dropped all deadlines for the rest of the semester (it was only a couple of weeks to Christmas break). That dramatically reduced her anxiety, and she was able to get all of her work done--a little late--but it was good work. Since then I am much more proactive about looking for those signs of an impending shut down before it's too late. 

My adhd kid--it took me much longer to reach acceptance over some of her behaviors because she wouldn't communicate with me. She was skipping co-op classes, not turning in assignments, etc. Not only that--she was lying about it. Incredibly frustrating. I had a hard time understanding why such a smart kid would be this way. This was her senior year of high school. She was very depressed, recovering from an ED, so I chalked it up to all of that emotional stuff. Fast forward. She continued to struggle her freshman year of college. The the *&%^ hit the fan last summer when we realized she was abusing/self medicating with DXM. It took an over dose and trip to the ER for her to finally open up to us. It was like a dam burst. Turns out all the irresponsible behaviors were due to adhd. I know it probably sounds like I'm a crappy parent for not figuring that out a lot earlier because I knew she was ADD, but she ALWAYS flatly denied that was her problem. She never ever communicated that she truly couldn't keep up the pace in her classes. The shame kept her bottled up so tight--I still don't know why she struggles so much with communicating. Well, I actually think she is also ASD, but she doesn't want a dx. Anyway, that was my long, LONG road to acceptance in her case. If I can find something behind the behaviors to empathize with, then I can be calm and have that acceptance. Happy ending: We clearly did not feel comfortable sending her back to college last fall, so we arranged a gap semester, got her back into counseling, she quit the DXM, and she is SOOO much better. We thought she might have to take the entire year off to get healthy, but she's taking a full load from home/all online. Definitely glad she's still home for awhile.