mistersprinkles wrote:
Can my fellow ASD/social anxiety people please explain to my mother, in this thread, that this is actually a thing, and that sometimes we cant handle social interaction?
Why do these god damn NT simpletons not understand our condition? Idiots.
Dude, a simple problem has a simple solution. Let's talk about anxiety first.
Do me a favor, go out and get one of those digital pocket voice recorders, something around US$50 ~ US$100. Whenever you feel anxious, record down your feelings, your thoughts. Needs not to be long, just a few second. Then, when you are no longer anxious (the best time is when you are happy and laughing), playback your recording. Think about what happened, why your were anxious. Straighten out your thoughts. Remember what was making you happy and your life enjoyable at that moment. Next time when anxiety happens, remember the findings you've done when your were happy, tell yourself that life sometimes if stressful, but that some other times is fun, right?
Very simple: connect your bad moments to your good moments, and vice-versa.
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As for mothers not understanding their children, it's kind of universal. My own parents nagged to no end that I needed to socialize with people, that I needed to control my temper, since I was a little boy. They worried to no end that it would affect my success in life. I guess it's a matter of put up or shut up. I went to engineering school, and my parents saw I was giving TA lecture sessions to huge number of students. I made tons of friends, I was good at telling jokes. Well, when I had my two children, especially in the early days when they were just diagnosed with autism, you know, tons of useless comments came like torrents. What do I mean by put up or shut up? First of all, I got my PhD and I got decent jobs. I was independent and was able to make money to sustain myself. Secondly, I got married, so there you go with your worrying about your kid's social impediments. Thirdly, I needed not to listen to anyone telling me how to raise autistic children: I am the expert myself, and I don't think anyone else understands autism better than I do in the whole world. When my parents saw how successful I was in raising my children, guess what? Instead of telling me what to do, they learned to listen. They learned that there IS another way of raising children. They came to realize that there was nothing wrong with their grandchildren. And finally, they came to realize that there was nothing wrong with their own son, after some 70 or 80 years. Yeap, that's how long it takes for some parents to understand their autistic children. But it feels great to be finally understood. I love my parents, they are my parents, you know? But it's not easy for people to understand that there is a different route to success. Life is not monolithic.
Instead of telling my daughter to handle her anxiety and be sensitive to social environments, I do something else. Hey, I am autistic myself, why would I want to follow advice from other people that I know simply won't work? It's always funny to me that people give out advice that doesn't work, and keep repeating their mistake for decades and decades, and they never learn. For both of my children, I develop their vital skills first: reading, writing, drawing pictures, play acting, etc. What does all that have anything to do with socializing and handling anxiety? Well, on my daughter's 8th birthday I wrote her a letter, telling her about autism and her being autistic. So now she understands herself. The other day, when I took her to school, she asked in a funny way, whether I have been electrocuted before. Because of all the noise, I couldn't understand her and had to ask her to repeat her question a few times. When I realized that she used the word "electrocuted," I laughed so hard, and told her that she shouldn't say that, and I teased her in a funny way: "what are you talking about?" Guess what? She started to scream and cry. She did not like to be wrong or be criticized. If you are a parent, what would you do? Tell her to stop screaming and crying, that screaming and crying are not socially appropriate? Try to redirect her behavior? Basically, try to change her behavior? Give me a break. My daughter is an equal-rights fellow human being, I am not gonna manipulate her like a circus animal. I talked to her as an equal. I reminded her about the letter I wrote to her about autism, that autistic people have powerful brains, and that we feel more intensely about things, that we feel very strongly about things that we don't like. I told her that, sometimes, things are not as bad as we think. It's no big deal. I reminded her that life is sometimes is stressful, but sometimes is fun. Like when I took her for an ice cream treat, or when she went to a pony ride on her friend's birthday party. She felt better almost immediately.
What helped in my daughter's situation? The crucial step is her reading skills. It's not about redirecting your children. It's about developing their reading skills. Once they are intellectually developed, there are plenty of ways to solve social or anxiety issues. Another crucial step is: I don't solve my children's "behavioral" issues when they are mad or sad. I solve them when they are happy. When I took my daughter out for ice cream treat, when she was having fun and enjoying her ice cream, I drew picture of her cringing moment in school's party, when she wasn't winning her Bingo game.
Yeap, anxiety issues are not solved at the moment of anxiety. Lecturing your children at the moment of behavioral issues doesn't work. No need to repeat that mistake of millions of parents out there. Solve those issue when your children are happy, not when they are mad. Connect their good moments to their bad moments, and vice versa. That's all they need. They are fellow human beings, heck, they are even smarter than you are. There is nothing wrong with them, but there is something very wrong with the way we treat our children.
Kids are fine. Parents are the problem. That's my take on autism, after all these years.
02 Mar 2016, 10:10 am
