Published on 12, July, 2020
I am curious if other parents with kids on the spectrum have as much difficulty as I do 'making' their children do chores? I have put 'making' in quotes because to be honest, their is no 'making' .. there is only the getting them to agree that it would helpful for them to be helpful at this particular time and place ...
And I guess I just more or less answered my own question because it seems to me, their is no 'making' because attempts to reason, or yell at them (my frustration) don't work - they tend to meltdown if I do that. They will be very helpful if they are in the mood to be helpful which doesn't actually happen all that often for my son (almost 16) (once a month and when he does he is outstanding but he has all kinds of other issues like he can only be around other people for about 3-4 hours before he shuts down).
This leaves my poor oldest daughter (age 17) as the main 'slave' because at the moment she is the only one who will do anything ... she doesn't like it though and if I ask too much she will also melt. And timescales ... unless I give a good reason that she agrees with that it needs to be done 'NOW', she will put it off and go back into her own little world and forget even if I remind her 3 or 4 times a day for 3 days (3 days is about the average length of time it takes for her to do something if it isn't urgent).
NT daughter (age 12) with sensory issues generally times a temper tantrum or angst the moment she is asked to do anything and thus wiggles out of it ...
This is a bit of a rant. I know I must not be the only one. During school term time, I don't even begin to ask as everyone is so stressed and overloaded from school
I hate housework myself. If I had known it would be my main job (besides working full-time and running the house including all the finances and making sure people ate properly ...). ARRRRRRGGGG ....
Too much. And the worst thing is ... they aren't getting the skills they will need in the future when I'm gone ...
Anyone else?
Dor
no, I'm afraid that boys (wherever they are on the spectrum) won't smell the bacteria too well :-)
You aren't a bad mother - all parents get ground down by teenagers and ultimately if life was too comfortable then they would never leave home. It seems to me that the friction and discontent is pretty unavoidable and is part of how they discover who they are and that they need to do more for themselves. The transition from child to adult just isn't easy.
I'm a programmer too so I expect that you are likely to be well down the ASD track like me!
One of the ways I think about this is that life is like a computer game where you have to play against the baddies (i.e. your children, work bosses, relatives etc) and manipulate them into doing what you want. You would happily do this in WoW etc so why don't you treat life as a similar challenge where you strivbe to get to the next level (where you can have your own time, doing what you want whilst you have manoevred the others into leaving you alone.