Parenting neuro-diverse kiddos and I am more typical than divergent myself – Jan 26 thoughts
TEXT TO VIDEO THOUGHTS ABOVE (UNEDITED, NO STYLING)
because it is January 26th and that means it is Saturday and uh let’s talk a little bit about uh autism PDA and ADHD so
uh again just a little bit to level Set uh my wife and I have four brilliant kiddos they range from ages the ages are 17 and 75 and two and we have two the 17 and 7 year old uh that are definitely ASD recently diagnosed and uh with uh shaping a PDA profile uh in the USA they don’t actually diagnose that that profile is prevalent and then I have also the two-year-old I’m diagnosed with ASD we’re watching to see how that all comes out one of the very telling factors for the little two-year-old is when we were going through the process towards the end of that he was in a meeting with us with the doctor and we went on for about 90 minutes and he never once ever
ever totally of his own self-play and the pediatrician thankfully uh first one that was kind of like uh he didn’t ever interact and Gage anything with me and he’s been totally fine with his own thing and for most of it he hasn’t done anything with any of the others so there’s just all of that so um and then the last one uh my seven-year-old interesting she has ADHD has a lot of anxiety and processing oriented dysregulations so slow for sure and then you know all of them all manifest different things in different ways generally I concentrate on pathological demand avoidance or pervasive demand diversion because those are the two really big hot things that are occurring I wrote a Blog yesterday or the day before as I was working through some work stuff and I’m pretty neurotypical I am myself a dyslexic so that is on the neurodivergent uh spectrums of course and so sometimes that runs into things so I was just needing a kind of a place to cap off some stuff which I did and so some of those topics I just want to kind of take on a little bit now like one of the things that I’m kind of noticing is a few people are talking about it and I engaged with somebody on ADHD an ADHD Forum on Facebook and uh the a lot of people in neurodivergence there’s this this kind of you just see this kind of thing that happens like we all have questions as parents right we wonder if we’re doing the right or the wrong things we don’t have a guidebook for a lot of males unfortunately we have a hard time getting to the point where we are like okay there needs to be a different way our our kiddo needs support and it is not necessarily the here is what is typical here is what is the norm here is what the authoritarian like authoritarian authoritarian you know whoever has the power it’s not always about a parent power Paradigm right like and it really goes into kind of even work in servant mass or master and servant that Paradigm um and I want it my way or to be this way okay dude I’m all about running too but let’s get out the sidewalk you don’t have space on a very difficult field here um sorry I am a big into running biking and swimming so Triathlon man when people aren’t doing his favors it’s just a challenge to try to help I’m all about running against traffic that’s why we should do it but when you have a protected the sidewalk especially on a very difficult angle the narrow streets and you are provided a sidewalk please with bars and stuff take that so it kind of goes into the kind of the chocolate buffer Divergence here right so slipping back as parents and I’ll use that as a kind of highlight that like we’ll see our child doing something that isn’t necessarily uh in line with the norm and it comes down to I’ve come to realize what you know me as a parent um I can choose me as a parent As a caretaker as a caregiver I can choose to say well the rule is more important than anything else or I can choose to see that my child is not either understanding the rule or hasn’t is having a problem with the autonomy dysregulation that is associated to following the rule and that can manifest because of misunderstanding straight I don’t want to some belligerence or active Omission or commission to not want to do what that is cast upon them and sometimes and I find and I’m finding for me at least in our family situation and the things that I observe it is very difficult as a parent to truly know understand and recognize what is the correct application right everything from gentle parenting to being a complete douchebag [ __ ] and trying to knock them into Bolivia and compliance sorry for the language but saying it that way because that’s what happens or can we take a moment and stop and kind of treat it like we would like learning a skill or English or mathematics so if a student is in school and they’re not progressing and doing right you know Sports what do we do um yes in America we follow the assembly line model it’s bell curve oriented you know we formally believe that 80 of the people are doing it one way or the other so because it works for 80 percent of the people the extra 20 wherever they’re found left to right of the bell curve for example they just don’t have access to support or it’s not the concentration lens or it is ignored it is avoided or if it does happen to be acknowledged then what options exist right so as a parent turning off the emotional button taking the moment to observe looking up on the contextual clues that are going on instead of trying to convince the little one or Force the little one or thrust autonomy on them identifying if there is a gap as it were in them making the processing or them making uh cognition or them making uh in their own awareness model of okay here’s a stimulus how am I going to respond and then comparing that to the Frameworks that all this you know what is my expected Behavior here have I learned that do I have support and so I hate it role-playing for example you know like that’s one way to a tool to try to do it but at the end of the day like I’m getting more and more and more I’m observing more and more and more that it is the lack of coping skill opportunity so I like to refer to it as a library of coping skills um that is wide and uh has a depth that is uh worthwhile for that so you know in that manifests in different ways so if for example
um a child we have been giving them for example um screen time or a device or something like that and we don’t really take the time to Foster other opportunities that are non-screen time oriented in to be frank that can manifest in so many different ways it’s hard to really just kind of say a key here’s an alternative and I see lots of parents asking well what do you do well every child is going to be not necessarily unique but every child is going to have a recipe of sorts that is different so what works for one it may not be applicable directly to the other or we may have to share a myriad of things that different people are doing until you find one that kind of works and then newsflash for example with PDA um a technique sometimes only works once it’s not going to work every single time and for other layers of people that are Divergent and neurodiversity you know sometimes that one thing becomes their preference so imagine if you were that you were a little five-year-old and you know Mom and Dad are at the wits end and so all of a sudden you get screen time or you get into your food something that’s full of sugar or you know something that is high value and all of a sudden that becomes your favorite thing and with neurodiversity in the hyper Focus other proclivity a different type of tendencies that sometimes occur
and so I’m recognizing in myself and I’m not good at it I’m trying to get better what would I do if one of my preferences or one of my favorite things and somebody with quote unquote Authority or a difference of opinion or a difference in perception and execution preference comes to me and says option that’s me uh I know that you want to choose between stimulus and response this but I’m taking that away as an option
foreign so why is it that we have such a hard time with children from 4 to 16 18 to really be High functional adult somewhere by themselves
why did you expect any different since typically unfortunately we often as humans Express and sometimes we often times I have to rewire ourselves to lean into what is not comfortable what you mean okay I’ve been giving my kids screen time because that’s easy and now because I want to I’m so frustrated I uh all these different things I need help whatever that is right and all of a sudden I’m like this screen time is too much and everybody’s telling me therapists or other friends you know we only give five minutes of screen time and then everything else is you know like that’s great that fits it’s a best fit for you there isn’t like I hate the concept of best practice best practice is my way my autonomy versus your way and that may not fit um and that’s not just business I see these connections again I’m I’m dyslexic so I see these connections and that’s where I go if you have a hard time jumping with that I apologize that’s the way that I work though that’s the way that I see it so from my perspective for example why in the crap or why in the world are we finding such a hard time as parents or caregivers that a little child is four years old they’re children they don’t know any better they’re not adults they’re going to give us the middle finger because you know what that tasty little red candy brings them freaking Joy but we’re on the other side and trying to shape them into this quote-unquote world and norms and things that say well you know as an adult and we’re not happy we’re not chasing our dreams we’re not doing the things that we want to be doing so we’re going to turn around say F you because of our own personal trauma and we’re not going to give you the opportunity to have joy because I am unhappy I’m going to piss a lot of people off
and I wish more dads would listen to this especially the males and I know bless your hearts mamas any woman that is delivered a child whether through their belly or through their vajayjay vagina Etc and brought a child in the world we as males don’t as much as we want to we don’t have that connection and we have to forge it differently and to forge that we’ve got to get Beyond ego and ego can be the enemy and it is very difficult especially in the paradigms that are cast gender role gender bias whatever I’m not going there it is a difficult Journey for us to come to understand at the end of the day it’s not our autonomy that we’re expressing across and want our children to have complete obedience and compliance to that at the end of the day we want them to be able to identify and find joy and until we find a way to disrupt that cycle to change the cycle to be active and to be present and to be available you pay attention to these ladies pay attention if your husband and you’re struggling with them
flip the script on them I invite you to do this and take something away from your husband and watch how they work that can be sexual that can be other preferences that can be their drinks that can be you know activities friends Etc and please do this try to find common neutral ground to share this experience and go through the experiment and then liken that to what the child is feeling until we see and have that for some reason empathy for males is very difficult to do or to create or to cultivate unless we are naturally and in that situation ourself and so until we have that kind of we have no other way except to go through empathy and mind you for me I believe most courage of value is developed in the throes of empathy it’s just difficult it doesn’t get any better so anyway some thoughts I gotta pick up my kids and my family so I’m sorry this is so frenetic and all over the place a little bit of chaos but Welcome to our life as parents of these four but yeah this is um anyways just I’ve seen a lot of ladies asking for assistance and help to help their husbands it is not a hey I don’t believe most males don’t want to do these things but we are also going against we’re swimming in a different Lane when we are asked to do these things and we have a child that isn’t quote unquote biologically normal if you think of it that way that means also we’re admitting we’re broken which isn’t true but we think that we’re broken our outcome or our outputs or our Offspring we we didn’t do the right thing like we got to get beyond that toxic masculinity it is very much and it’s been a hard journey for me Etc to get beyond that fighting ego being a douchebag being an a-hole that is not what I want to be at the end of the day I and this is my perspective and I’m trying to to normalize it for other potential fathers and parents and stuff we can do this we want our children to find Joy if we want to be cycle Breakers and we want them to have access to that we gotta sacrifice ourselves climb a mountain fall on the Sword whatever that stupid little jargon phrase cliche is that makes it work for you and for me
and what’s going to bring those little kids joy and then shape them and help guide them and don’t break them along the path so that they can become resilient and they can be little agents unto themselves for when we want them to walk out our doors between 18 and 26 years old that they could do it with the confidence and then turn back to us as peers because that’s what they’ll become because that’s what happened for me for example and then one day we’ll be going to them for advice and may that happen earlier so that we can mature in such a way that this neurodiversity that we have allows us more opportunities for more
just better hopefully and more mature and a larger and better opportunity for growth so anyway some thoughts
