Thank you for your patience!
I know I usually can hardly sleep on a Saturday morning. I wake up my mind full and my fingers burning and I can often get off two, maybe three blogs on a weekend. This weekend however I had my hands full, I have a dear friend who received a cancer diagnosis and I found my hands burning instead to paint. I was wandering in a book store and found a book on healing mandalas which are to do with meditation, so that was where my creative energy went instead. I gave my healing energy to the mandala.
I have been thinking for a while about a book I read by Temple Granding and Kate Bush about preparing our kids for life after school. This is a big topic, so I am going to break it down and deal with it in chunks. She talks a lot, especially about high functioning people, the Aspies and how she felt frustrated by the small number of people actually holding jobs that take full advantage of all of their skills. Most were tragically underemployed and under utilized. You see it is not the skill part that kills them, it is having a melt down over something silly like not getting the right sandwich from the sandwich cart, or getting into a confrontation with their boss or a coworker. Or about not being able to see someone else's perspective on a project or work within a group setting. There are very few jobs that do not require this on some level.
She talks about how her own mother spent a lot of time expanding her comfort zone. I always think of my comfort zone as a bulls eye, the center of which is " home". Personal Best gave me this analogy. If you are standing in the center, "home", you don't learn much. You are too comfortable. One ring out from that is "Learning". Here you are a bit less comfortable than "home" and more open to new information. The last and outer ring is "Panic". That feeling where you are out on the ledge. The funny thing is that you actually do your best learning with one foot in "Learning" and one foot in "Panic". Once I figured this out, I now get a bit of a buzz when I get that anxiety feeling because I know I am on the edge of some pretty fantastic learning! Our kids spend a lot of time trying to stay in the middle of that bullseye as far away from Panic as possible. It is our job as parents to lead them towards the outside of that bullseye in a very controlled and manageable way as we can for short visits, so that they can learn to function here without blind terror. This is a slow process and it takes a long time, so it is never too early to start.
Autistic and Asperger kids have areas of special interest. Those of us that are familiar with this concept know that whatever they choose takes over your life! At one stage we had every dinosaur known to man! Bed time stories started with " the diplodicus was 18 meters high and lived in the cretacious period.... ". Now my house has lego ships in ever corner and on every shelf. We have lego novels, Halo encyclodedias, the whole nine yards. Whatever they choose they can hold a monologue with anyone of any age, regardless of the sex or interest level about all the intricacies of their special interest area. Trying to get them to talk about anything else can be more challenging. Temple gave some great examples of how her mother tried to expand on her areas of interest to broaden her exposure to things and then got her started in small ways doing jobs for other people where she had to pay attention to what they wanted instead of what she wanted.
That is a huge thing for an Asperger's child to get their head around and it really got me thinking. On a very practical level, I would like to start setting up some situations perhaps at school as well as at home where these skills get practiced on a daily basis, because I do believe that for them to be successful, she is right, they will have to be ingrained at almost a cellular level. It needs to be part of the training we do with our kids every single day. I think about the things we have had so much success with and they truly were the things we held in our conciousness every day. Things like eye contact.
So much of their being successful will hinge on being able to fullfill someone else's expectation. And as parents, we can start to verbalize and create on a very small scale opportunities for them to practice these skills. Something as easy as setting the table.... properly! Don't laugh but I actually bought placemats and I am outlining the plates, the knives, forks and spoons! Normally when I ask I get all of the components on the table but all in random order and placement. What a simple way to create a successful outcome without a whole lot of effort, but instill the idea that "close enough" just doesn't cut it. There must be a thousand ways around the house to start this before the boys are old enough to have part time jobs! My mom and dad have been great about "hiring" the kids to shovel snow, and not only that, about having the hard conversation about the fact that the job isn't done until it's done to the satisfaction of the client!
I look forward to your feedback and your creative ideas of how we can start preparing our kids for success!
In love and light,
Kathryn
In preparing Mark for the world, I realize that it important that he have as many opportunities as possible to explore it in controlled, safe settings. He has gone to adventure camp with Camp Soar and traveled through California in grade 8. In grade 9, he went with the school to France. Organization was an issue but the experience was essential. This past summer, he went to Artstrek in Red Deer for Acting Camp for a week and then later in the summer he flew on his own to Vancouver and went to Comedy Improv Camp. These experiences at a young age are 'important'. They feed flexibility required to survive. AND you must be able to be flexible, organized and attentive to travel alone.
ReplyDeleteMark has his learners licence and this spring will do the AMA course and be a driver.
The more 'experiences' and 'opportunities' he has for growth and self sufficiency under my roof means the more able he will be when he has to take care of himself.
Our kids need not protection from experience. Our kids need need more, not less. They need more opportunities to practice life skills. Many of us tend to prevent opportunity because we worry about readiness. BUT our kids need more practice then most. It is important not to coddle but to TEACH...
I have made my list of life skills essential for independence and success. Right now we are working on cooking skills; next it will be laundry skills and after that....? COLLEGE!