Might need to shut down my small biz

DontEatMe said:

I just find it so overwhelming interacting with multiple people per week.

You have identified a key trigger for your autistic trait here. Is this the only trait causing you serious issues in the workplace?

You do need to recover from your burnout first, but once this is achieved, would you consider spending at least some of your time developing techniques for managing these traits so you can endure them better and for longer?

They will never go away but you can learn how to relax more effectively to lower the stress levels that the interactions bring, and you can learn to understand them so where you need to interact you can cope better.

If you can afford it, a psychotherapist is the best tool I can recommend as they can teach you techniques in ways that work for you, but if the budget does not stretch that far then you can self learn techniques like meditation and mindfulness that allow you to manage your level of stress.

Learning about how to interact socially is also a great skill to learn, and if you are a very rules based thinker then reading up on the dynamics of social interaction makes it suddenly less opaque and easier to interact with. You will need to mask and script no doubt but this becomes easier when you have developed a much better understanding of what is happening in any interaction.

It sounds nice and easy on paper but it is months or years worth of part time study to do all this, but the skills will benefit you for a lifetime.

These are just my thoughts on what may help - hopefully something is of use.

I've already spent my life studying people and memorizing and scripting to make myself palatable to people. I've done it successfully enough to run a sole trader business for 10 years. But it's exactly what's wearing me into the ground. I'm 35 and it's still hard work for me. I have never found it easy, my brain has to go on overdrive to do it and I never feel certain that I'm doing it right. It's like trying to run a program on a computer that can't actually handle it so it overheats and the fan starts whirring like crazy to keep up, that's how I feel. 

And I can't just choose not to mask on this job. Nobody wants their piano teacher to be rocking or fidgeting next to them while they're trying to concentrate on playing something. Nobody wants a teacher who never looks them in the eye, or who has a monotone voice or a flat facial expression. Nobody wants to discover that their teacher is briefly zoning out sometimes from sheer overwhelm.

As long as I'm masking, I keep customers but I lose my mind. But if I stop, I'll lose customers and have no money of my own. But how long until I snap? And in a society that values money and money-making above all else, won't I be more isolated than ever if I don't force myself to keep going? I'm so lost!

May I offer one insight? There may well be a market for an autistic tutor. It isn't necessarily a local market norm.

Meandering version: I only passed my driving test with an instructor who has an autistic son.

Some children at my Lego club only feel at ease with an approach I have made with sensitivity to what I would have wanted.

I hope I do not appear patronising, and appreciate my two anecdotal examples are not the same as the incredible effort you have sustained of running your own business for so long. Total respect for doing this. My dad is a self-employed builder and I suspect copes with human interaction via information dumps on niche book learning and fascinating on other people's interests, then total focus on the art of construction.

Short version: are some of our best musicians excluded from learning by exclusively allistic tutors? 

Gamifying is fine for general musical concepts, but for his actual pieces for his exam, he does need to actually play the pieces. I break it all into little sections and give him choices about the work as we go, and I give him breaks between activities. If I bring out a tablet with musical education apps, he gets extremely carried away and I have to literally yank the tablet back off him so he'll stop running off with it and opening other apps, so that's not an option. If I bring out the LEGO bricks to work on rhythms, he also gets carried away with those and we don't get anything done. If I provide fidget toys, he puts them in his mouth and bites them, and no amount of telling him not to/telling him to take it back out of his mouth stops him, so due to choking risk I've had to remove those from the room, and throw some of them away due to damage.

I'm ending the discussion about this student now.This isn't what I made the post for.

I understand. I like to imagine autistic or Neurodivergent are 'enough like me to match with less effort and more mutual conversational benefit', when in fact there are many parents who have tried everything, and young people who are led by their priority of focus, in a way completely unlike the manner to which I am accustomed. A presumed observation of the genteel norms of Middle England.

Is home the only and best place for you to give lessons? Who is your ideal student?

DontEatMe said:

I have one young autistic student

From the description you give, they sound more like ADHD to me.

There are some good tips on teaching ADHD students here:

https://www.positiveaction.net/blog/teaching-students-with-adhd

Gamifying the learning seems a good way forward with younger students with ADHD.

I have one young autistic student, and much of the lesson time is spent telling him to stop trying to push buttons on my laptop, stop bashing the keys, stop trying to run into private rooms of my house, stop grabbing things in the hallway and breaking them, stop playing while I'm trying to ask him a question or give a direction...

I keep trying to be kind and patient and understanding, but with no firmer discipline he would absolutely spend the entire 30 minutes doing all this intense sensory-seeking stuff and ignoring me completely. I can give him the same brief, clear instruction 5 times in a row and he'll ignore me and keep making a bunch of noise on the piano, so I have to start using a really firm, almost angry tone before he'll stop and just do what I'm asking. Or I have to start counting to ten. On the one hand, he's the one person I don't have to mask around, but on the other, my senses are absolutely wrecked after working with him each week.

So I would be quite scared to risk building a niche where I didn't have to mask for the kid (though I still have to mask for the parents despite their understanding of their kid's autism), but the students I end up with are majority very noisy and have no impulse control. It's too much for me.

I have one young autistic student, and much of the lesson time is spent telling him to stop trying to push buttons on my laptop, stop bashing the keys, stop trying to run into private rooms of my house, stop grabbing things in the hallway and breaking them, stop playing while I'm trying to ask him a question or give a direction...

I keep trying to be kind and patient and understanding, but with no firmer discipline he would absolutely spend the entire 30 minutes doing all this intense sensory-seeking stuff and ignoring me completely. I can give him the same brief, clear instruction 5 times in a row and he'll ignore me and keep making a bunch of noise on the piano, so I have to start using a really firm, almost angry tone before he'll stop and just do what I'm asking. Or I have to start counting to ten. On the one hand, he's the one person I don't have to mask around, but on the other, my senses are absolutely wrecked after working with him each week.

So I would be quite scared to risk building a niche where I didn't have to mask for the kid (though I still have to mask for the parents despite their understanding of their kid's autism), but the students I end up with are majority very noisy and have no impulse control. It's too much for me.

Gamifying is fine for general musical concepts, but for his actual pieces for his exam, he does need to actually play the pieces. I break it all into little sections and give him choices about the work as we go, and I give him breaks between activities. If I bring out a tablet with musical education apps, he gets extremely carried away and I have to literally yank the tablet back off him so he'll stop running off with it and opening other apps, so that's not an option. If I bring out the LEGO bricks to work on rhythms, he also gets carried away with those and we don't get anything done. If I provide fidget toys, he puts them in his mouth and bites them, and no amount of telling him not to/telling him to take it back out of his mouth stops him, so due to choking risk I've had to remove those from the room, and throw some of them away due to damage.

I'm ending the discussion about this student now.This isn't what I made the post for.

I understand. I like to imagine autistic or Neurodivergent are 'enough like me to match with less effort and more mutual conversational benefit', when in fact there are many parents who have tried everything, and young people who are led by their priority of focus, in a way completely unlike the manner to which I am accustomed. A presumed observation of the genteel norms of Middle England.

Is home the only and best place for you to give lessons? Who is your ideal student?

DontEatMe said:

I have one young autistic student

From the description you give, they sound more like ADHD to me.

There are some good tips on teaching ADHD students here:

https://www.positiveaction.net/blog/teaching-students-with-adhd

Gamifying the learning seems a good way forward with younger students with ADHD.