[00:03] Jason: Welcome to the Autism and Neurodiversity podcast.
[00:06] Debbie: We’re here to bring you helpful information from leading experts and give you effective tools and support. I’m Jason Grygla, a licensed counselor and founder of Techie for Life, a specialized mentoring program for neurodiverse young adults.
[00:19] Jason: And I’m Debbie Grygla, a certified life coach. And maybe most importantly, we’re also parents to our own atypical Young Adults.
[00:30]Debbie:
Friends. Hello. Welcome. I am so glad you’re here.
So I have to report. Jason and I took our girls to New York, and we had an amazing time. We got to meet with a lot of really great people, some amazing educational consultants, and met with a lot of parents that were looking for programs for their young adults. And it was a great time.
And then while we were there, we got to go see Hades Town, which was awesome on Broadway, original cast. And then we also went to see we had to go see Wicked, of course. But it’s so hard. There were so many good shows, and it was so hard to choose what to go see and whatnot to see.
And we got to go see the Statue of Liberty and the 911 Memorial and Central Park. There’s just so much to do in New York. So anyway, we got to do that stuff.
And then Jason also surprised us and got tickets, and we went to go see Harry Styles in concert at the Madison Square Garden. And that was amazing. 20,000 screaming girls and the energy in that room, and holy cow, it was amazing. And he actually has a lot of really great music. Our daughter really enjoys his stuff. Anyway, I actually really enjoyed it too. I may have screamed a time or two while I was there, also. Anyway, great trip.
So today for this episode, I want to talk to you about how to motivate autistic and virgin young people. And this is actually a question that Jason and I get all the time. How do you motivate them? And I hear parents all the time fretting they’re not motivated or they just lack motivation or I don’t know what to do. Nothing ever works. Nothing motivates them. Really struggling with this whole idea and area of motivation.
And Jason and I, through the years, we fostered six kids, adopted three of them, and then we have our own two biological children. So we’ve like parented and fostered children from lots of different genetic pools, lots of different amounts of trauma that they’ve experienced or not, and neurodivergent and neurotypical.
And we personally have wrestled with this question of how to motivate them not only personally with our family, but then also professionally and working with our students at Techie for Life, our school for neurodivergent young adults. We help them with their next steps and then also with working with their parents.
And so we’ve really worked to understand and practice what is actually long term and sustainably effective. Jason and I we’re done with the whole like short term, like all this kind of work, but then it stops working. Like we really care about what is long term and sustainable to get the best outcomes for our young people.
And when you look at this question, answering this question, how do you motivate them? The short answer is you can’t. You cannot motivate someone. You cannot jump into their brain and create motivation juices and get them going. It’s impossible. You just can’t do it. We put this pressure on ourselves that somehow if we do it just right, that we’re going to be able to motivate them. And it’s not how it works.
But what you can do is you can tap into their own desires, their own internal motivation and support their success and build your relationship as you do that through a neural developmental mentoring approach.
That is the approach that Jason and I have developed over the years is through a neuro-developmental mentoring™ approach. Our autistic and neurodivergent young people have good desires, they have hopes, they have dreams, and they have real things that are keeping them stuck. And Jason and I found that it is possible to contribute to their success, their growth, their development. And you don’t have to be frustrated all the time.
This episode is for you if you’re ready to stop banging your head against the wall all the time. I’ve been there, done that. It’s not fun. So we have to look at why, number one, many of our approaches don’t work.
We have to take a look at that first and often it’s because we are believing that it’s a motivation issue. Okay? We’re thinking if they were motivated, then they would do it. If they were motivated enough, then they could behave better, or get good grades in school, or go off to college, or practice good hygiene, or do jobs around the house, or all the different things that we’re trying to get them motivated to do. And so then we’re looking at, okay, what consequences can we give to get them motivated to do what we want them to do, right?
So then we’re looking at rewards and punishments and those kinds of things might seem to work in the short term. They often actually do kind of work short term. I mean, there is some level of effectiveness to that. But then what happens is that they stop working or a lot of times things will actually get worse. Or you can’t ever stay far enough out ahead of like making the reward worth it enough to them or the punishment hard enough to make it effective.
And the problem with this line of reasoning is that there’s a lot of assumptions in it around why someone performs or doesn’t perform the way that we would like them to. And what’s happening is that when we’re looking at how do I motivate them and what rewards or punishments can I offer to get them to do what I want them to do. We’re probably reliant on external motivators, okay?
And the problem is that external motivators only work as long as you’re putting enough pressure and it’s enough of an external impetus to make them do the thing.
But what happens when you remove that external motivator? What happens when you take it away or you’re not there? Like they’re away from you, or they’re off to college or you go on a trip and they’re left to their own devices that external motivator leaves. And if that’s only reason they’re doing it is because of that external pressure that you’ve been putting on them, then they go back to whatever they would just rather do or would normally resort to.
The other issue with external Motivators is that they actually and studies show this, but it actually will extinguish internal motivation or replace internal motivation.
So, for example, kids that love to do artwork, they’ve done studies, and I’ve mentioned this before on the podcast, but they like to do art. And so they took a group that likes to do art and one that doesn’t. They had the control group, and then they had the group that they’re like, let’s start paying them or giving them rewards treats if they do artwork. And the more artwork they do, the more treats we give. And they saw a bump in like an increase in production level.
And then over time, they actually found that the quality of the artwork went way down. And over time, kids stopped doing it. They didn’t want to do any artwork at all, especially when they removed that reward. They didn’t want to do artwork. They lost their desire to do art and to be creative that way because their internal motivation had been trumped by an external motivator.
And the only reason they were doing it now wasn’t for their love of doing the artwork. That was to get that reward. So once the reward was gone, there was no point to do the artwork. That is so sad to me. And so there’s that piece, right, of when we’re heavily reliant on external motivators, what that actually is creating, what are we teaching, or we’re doing it for the external motivator.
So a lot of us have assumptions about what actually motivates us short term and long term. So that’s something we want to be looking at. And then what we really want to be doing as parents and mentors is to tap into and support their short term and their longterm internal motivations and support their growth and development over the long term.
So you can actually do this through a neuro-developmental mentoring approach that Jason and I teach that takes into account, one, their neurology, how their brain works, what it needs, what its deficits are, strengths and weaknesses, how the brain develops. Right?
Two, development in general. Like, how does development occur, what is needed to support development, what does it look like when development is happening. And three, a mentoring relationship which provides safety and trust and connection and support.
So how do you actually do that? Number one, it’s examining those old assumptions. So one of the things the questions you want to be asking yourself is why do you want to motivate them? Is this more about you or is this more about them? Is it all about what you’re wanting for them? Or are you looking at what do they want? Where are they at maturity wise, developmental wise, and their own personality and their own unique strengths and weaknesses and quirks? Why are we wanting to motivate them? And then you’re looking at, like, is the approach you’re taking working or not? Is it actually working? Because doubling down on what’s not working is not an answer. And I used to think it was, oh, I just need to try it harder, or a different angle. I need to give a better reward or a harder punishment, and I would keep trying these putting more and more energy into approaches that just weren’t even working.
And then when you look at practicing and taking a nerd about mental mentoring approach, what you’re looking at are four main things when you look at motivation. Number one, their desire. What are their desires? What are their short term desires? A lot of times the short term desires are a very strong need for safety. They need to feel safe. Motivation will come when they feel safe. So they have a short term brain needs, safety.
And then second, long term, what are their long term interests, desires, hopes, dreams, and really connecting to what that is.
Number two, you want to look at and this is especially true for neurodivergence true for neurotypical, but especially true for neurodivergence. You want to be looking at what is their mental, emotional, behavioral capacity, what are their stress levels, how much can they handle?
What is their resilient level, what are they dealing with, what’s going on for them. That is a huge, huge piece of why someone may look like they’re not motivated or when they look like they’re motivated. We have to look at and understand where they’re at mentally, emotionally, behaviorally, their capacity that their level of distress or wellbeing is going to be. It’s always a huge factor in whether they are performing and functioning in life and whether they’re looking motivated or not.
Three, it doesn’t matter how motivated you are. It doesn’t matter how much you want something and desire something and how committed you are. You have to look at capability and disability, what are their capabilities, what are their disabilities, and being understanding of that, because there’s a lot that goes into that.
And if we’re upset that they’re not doing something, but there’s an actual real capability issue that they’ve got a real disability happening. And really a lot of the disability in with someone that has a neurodivergent brain is oftentimes that part of the disability is their ability to manage their stress level, to be able to manage their fight flight freeze response.
And so you’ve got to be looking at their actual capability and how is their disability playing into how they’re functioning and what they’re doing. And then four, the fourth thing that we have to look at is what kind of resources do they have? What kind of resources are we offering and what kind of supports do they need and what kind of supports can we offer? So I might have desire. I might have the emotional, the mental, emotional, behavioral capability to do something. I might or capacity to do it. I might have the capability. But then if I don’t have the resources and supports I need, I’m going to be at a loss. So there’s a lot more that goes into play than just are they motivated? Especially with our neurodivergent young people. We have to be looking at the whole picture.
And if we’re asking ourselves, why aren’t they motivated, that’s probably a really good queue to say, hey, I got to look at things from the bigger picture. What else is going on here? There are some real things that can get in the way of a kid being able to get forward momentum. And if it feels insurmountable, if it feels overwhelming, they’re going to shut down, they’re going to quit, and it’s going to appear like they’re not motivated when it’s actually something very different.
So how this looks when you take a look at the bigger picture in these four areas. Let me give you an example. If you have an autistic or neurodivergent young man, let’s say, is bright and wants to go to college, but he seems really unmotivated.
He stays up all night gaming. He can’t get himself up in the morning, he eats terrible, he doesn’t exercise, he has no friends, he can hold a job, and he’s just really comfortably miserable, as we like to call it. As Jason likes to say, comfortably miserable.
If you were to look at that, you would look at desires. What are his short term desires and needs? Does he have friends? Does he have his basic needs getting met? Does he have like, a direction? And then long term, what are his interests, what are his desires? What might be a direction to take? What could be a viable educational career path for him? That’s something we want to look at for the long term.
And two, we’re wanting to look at what is his mental, emotional, behavioral capacity? Is he really stressed and anxious? Does he have just no life, no peer connections? What’s his resilience level? So that’s a big factor in it. And then you’re looking at capability. Like what are his life experiences? What are his life skills? What has he practiced? What habits or skills or things has he developed? What is he lacking?
There’s a lot of skill sets and experience that needs to happen for someone to be able to go to college and be successful. Being bright is helpful, but there’s so many other pieces to being a successful college student that our neurodivergent young people struggle with, and they struggle to develop those.
And then you got to look at the fourth thing. Are we giving appropriate amounts? Meaning, are we giving too much or too little support and resources? If we’re providing too much, we’re doing it for them. They’re not learning for themselves, but if we aren’t giving enough, they don’t have the opportunity to be able to take that next step.
So that’s how it looks when you’re looking at what are their desires shortterm and long term? What is their mental, emotional, behavioral capacity? What are their capabilities or disabilities? Looking at their life skills and life experience? And then for the appropriate amounts of support and resources, are they receiving those? So that’s what we’re looking at. It’s not just simply, are they motivated? And then we try to reward or punish them into being a college student, that we’re all there and we are hoping that they can become.
When you look at those four things, you realize it takes connecting to them and their unique situation and having the kind of relationship where you can collaborate with them to be able to work together to get what they need and give them the support they need to be able to actually move forward.
But when we’re looking at it through that, oh, they’re just not motivated, really passing judgment and to say, oh, they’re just not motivated. If they were motivated, they would do it, and we need to motivate them, then that’s when we start to get really desperate and stuck. We try to force coerce. You fall into kind of manipulating, yelling, getting angry, all that kind of stuff, right? We fall into that spin of worry, like, why isn’t this working?
We’re doing all the mental workload, and it’s not getting us anywhere for, like, trying to get them motivated. When we’re in that spin, it’s just so exhausting and so frustrating, and it’s no fun.
So what Jason and I are offering is a complete shift to practice and invest in a neuro-developmental mentoring approach. Not a quick fix that’s only temporary and gets temporary results. And then you’re just more frustrated when it stops working than you were when you started.
So what Jason and I each and we advocate for is to practice an approach that takes into account neurology and the latest brain science and understanding the human brain and whether it’s neurodivergent or neurotypical. Understanding development and how we develop. How the brain develops. What are the stages of development. What is needed to support development and how it looks.
And then utilizing the longest. Most evidence based intervention. Which is a safe and trustworthy connected mentoring kind of relationship. This works whether you’re a parent or a grandparent or an aunt or uncle. A teacher, a coach, a neighbor, a boss, a therapist, a psychologist, an employer. This practice works in whatever role you’re in understanding the neurology development and having that kind of relationship.
And there’s just so much more to this that we teach in our Neuro-developmental mentoring program when we go into how to actually do this. But I wanted it to give you this kind of taste of, like, what it looks like when we go beyond just the question of how do you motivate them, there’s just so much more to it, and there’s so much more we can be doing that’s actually fun and enjoyable and effective and supportive.
So if you could use more help and support in this area, I encourage you to get on our email list and learn about how to join our program. I hope you have an amazing week. Take care.
[13:07] Debbie: Thanks for joining us on this episode of Autism and Neurodiversity with Jason and Debbie. If you want to learn more about our work, come visit us at jasondebbie.com.
