Answering a question about household disagreements

[msagara]

spiffikins asked:

Looking back at our own efforts, we had lots of battles :) I've love to hear how you applied these rules to situations where your son didn't want to do something, like have his bath or get dressed/put his shoes on for school or participate in the day to day activities of helping out (setting the table, doing dishes, doing homework) - it

Comments

[twiegand]

reasonable people (for a value of reasonable that includes me)...I find you very reasonable. People just need to find the boundaries of that reason. I think this is true of most people. I did smile at when I read that line because I know there are times that you feel you or others push those boundaries.

In other matters, I finished SILENCE yesterday (after buying a copy in Connecticut). Great story. I eagerly await the next part of the tale. This does not mean to stop work on Jewel or Kaylin!

Give my best to the family.

[msagara]

Give my best to the family.

I have done so :). Thank you for both of the other parts of the comment!

[mmarques]

Teaching that sometimes you have to do something despite fear seems like a good lesson. I only learned that from a psychologist when I had got into a bad state.

[msagara]

Teaching that sometimes you have to do something despite fear seems like a good lesson. I only learned that from a psychologist when I had got into a bad state.

I think what happens instead is that people try to teach others that we should not feel fear. It works if you consider fear the expression of the feeling itself. We can teach people not to publicly express fear.

But it’s a lot harder to tell them not to fear at all, and in some cases, it just doesn’t work - but it leaves people feeling inadequate and insecure.

Actually, we had a funny discussion about this because I tried to break fear into “rational” and “irrational” fears. He thought about this and said: “I am afraid of the lights in the basement”. I, of course, asked why. Was he afraid they would shatter, was he afraid they would fail, what did he think the would do?

And he looked at me and said, “Mom, if there was something I was afraid of, it wouldn’t be irrational.”

I reasoned that my son did not choose to be afraid, because being afraid is rather unpleasant. I

[mmarques]

Your son's fear of basement lights reminds me of one of my childhood fears. There was a bare light bulb in the hall between my bedroom and the bathroom. At night, I would avoid walking directly under the bulb, as I was convinced it would fall on me.

[beccastareyes]

The writing thing reminds me so much of me in the early grades. I could write things, but I had to be at home and spend time thinking about them first. It was the only time I'd put off things in class; so I could take them home and do them there. Eventually a teacher caught on and said that 'no, you have to do this now' and I pitched a fit because I didn't think I could. (It was 4th or 5th grade, IIRC.) I wasn't diagnosed with AS at the time, so as far as she was concerned, I was just being a difficult child

[msagara]

The writing thing reminds me so much of me in the early grades. I could write things, but I had to be at home and spend time thinking about them first.

My son was given extra time to do certain types of exams by his school because of his diagnosis.

I once asked him why he was so afraid of being wrong; I pointed out that there were no penalties or punishments for it anywhere. If on a test, yes, the marks were lower - but the marks in and of themselves were only an indicator of comprehension. We didn’t get angry; his teacher didn’t get angry.

He was much older when I asked, because I was still trying to fully understand his reactions as a younger child. He couldn’t not tell me why, but said there was just something about getting things wrong that seemed so devastatingly huge to him. It had nothing to do with any subsequent reaction from either teacher/parents (because the teacher and the parents did not consider it evil, immoral, or lazy).

[beccastareyes]

It's not a question I can easily answer myself, either.

[msagara]

That “couldn’t not” tell me why should lose the “not” - it was a typo (I could not = couldn’t not sometimes with my typists fingers...).

It's not a question I can easily answer myself, either.

He doesn’t have that reaction as an almost-nineteen year old now, either - but I sometimes want to understand it because at least for the first two years of grade school, it was such a barrier for him. I learned to think as if I were my small son in a variety of different ways - I could assume certain characteristics and extend them outward in a cause-and-effect way, but I could never grasp the reasons for the fear.

We never reprimanded him, at home, for making mistakes. We never made an issue of it - but the issue was fully internalized, regardless. I know his early teachers didn’t either. We made it absolutely clear that failure was a logical extension of trying anything new, and that it was therefore a very positive sign, because you could learn from it

[la_marquise_de_]

I have always felt that 'because I said so' is one of the most unreasonable things anyone can say to anyone else, of whatever age. It undermines everything because it's so irrational and arbitrary.
You are, I think, the most imaginative parent I know. Which is rather wonderful.

[msagara]

I have always felt that 'because I said so' is one of the most unreasonable things anyone can say to anyone else, of whatever age. It undermines everything because it's so irrational and arbitrary.
You are, I think, the most imaginative parent I know. Which is rather wonderful.

As a child, I felt that reasons were demanded for everything I did. Often from people who were incapable of then offering reasons for everything they did. Much of my reaction to using the phrase comes from my reaction - as a much younger child - to hearing it.

So, it’s not that I’m more imaginative, I think - it’s that we all parent trying hard to avoid the things that really, really bothered us when we were children ourselves.

[controuble]

That's one I never tried to use on my son, so I was rather flabbergasted when one of his therapists told him, "She's your mom, that's all the reason she needs."
I had always tried to use reason and logic to explain why he should do something, but explaining why he had to get off the computer never did go over very well - in fact, he still ignores me sometimes about that one.

[la_marquise_de_]

Yeees, but the ways in which you thought about how your son thinks and what he needed showed huge imagination and empathy.

[spiffikins]

Firstly - Michelle, thank you for responding

[msagara]

My brother has some of the same characteristics - especially when he was younger - he had absolutely no problem being punished at school if he had broken the rules - but the other person involved better be punished too or it wasn't FAIR.

This, in fact, is what caused my son’s largest in-school melt-downs. Because he did not understand that what he knew was not, in fact, known by everyone (including the teachers), he often felt that things were hugely unfair.

If someone hit him and he hit them back and they went to tell the teacher on him, he got punished for hitting the other child; the other child did not get punished for hitting him first.

The idea that the teacher did not know that the other child had hit him did not even occur to my son. So it is dead easy for a child with no theory of mind in place to become very embittered and feel very persecuted very, very quickly.

He always has had, and still has, issues with what he considers to be arbitrary rules - he didn't see any reason to load the dishwasher the way my mother wanted