Comment on The same adult daughter who has trouble loading a dishwasher efficientlyly...
indomara@lemmy.world 3 days agoOh yes, I wanted to touch on her “sticking with a task for 6 hours”. This is because at a certain point she wasn’t learning, and she was growing up so fast we knew we had to get through to her. So when she had a task like this that she refused to do, everything else stopped until it was done.
She would stand there or be in the kitchen until it was done, or it was bed time. Then she would get ready for bed, sleep, wake up and have breakfast and go to school like normal, and when she got home? Back in the kitchen. For however long it took. Forever if necessary.
There were tears, there was pleading, there was an extinction burst of both in the beginning that was just awful before she realised we weren’t going to break and life just wasn’t going to continue until she did it.
That’s when we got to the “Will go to the kitchen and stand there but executive functioning so bad that even with constant reminders end up distracted for 6 hours trying to do a task” stage.
There were similar battles over homework, and various other life skills. The homework would just follow her, she would sit at the table until it was done, and if she tried to out will us until the weekend she had a shock on Saturday morning when she had to sit at the table again til it was done.
It was brutal and we all hated it, because it meant our evenings and weekends were spent monitoring this stuff until she thankfully learned and grew out of it. It was a punishment for us just as much as her, and we were sure to let her know this. No one is having fun right now, this is life stuff that just has to be done.
yakko@feddit.uk 3 days ago
Thank you so, so much. Especially for the offer to talk about this stuff. I’m dreading the upcoming summer holiday. My mother is in town for most of it, and she’s useless at any kind of control, routine, or discipline. Every time family stays with us it’s great - free childcare - but also, all routines and hard-won norms go out the window for at least a month after they’re long-gone.
Something I said to him last night after thinking about what you told me was explaining about how rules should be generalized. I told him “rules exist for reasons, and those reasons are the real rules.” I went through a few examples, and he seemed to vaguely get it. I know I’ll have to explain this again at least a few more times, but if I can get him pilled on the idea that rules have conceptual depth, maybe that will help him with compliance and masking somewhat. Have you ever tried anything like that? I feel like the more self-aware he is, the more he cooperates with measures taken to mitigate the things he’s not good at. He is a sweetheart, but that always shines through best when he feels like we’re on the same side.