Friends. Hello. Welcome. I’m glad to have you here.
We’ve been getting a lot of snow here in Utah and so of course we had to go on a ski trip. We took our girls, we both loved to ski and we just had a really great day. It was like perfect weather, perfect snow. We started playing follow the leader.
We’ve never done this before, but Jason came up with it and so we each took a turn and we chose which trail we wanted to go down and where on that trail and how fast. And the goal was to keep up with the person and oh my goodness, my little eleven year old, she likes to go through trees, which is slightly terrifying, and she had us going through trees and then she likes to go fast and we had a super fun time trying to keep up with her. The goal was to keep up with that person, so we had a good time.
And this episode is going to release in January of 2023. And it’s this time of year where we’re thinking about New Year’s resolutions and you’re thinking about what you want this year to be like or what you want it to be different and what your goals are.
And when we’re parenting or working with young people, we’re really the leader. We’re the one that is setting the goals and is setting the direction and the focus and at what pace, hopefully informed by our family’s needs and where our children are at developmentally. But we’re the one kind of setting that focus and direction.
And I think we make a lot of goals for weight or fitness or people make financial goals or just different personal goals. But especially when you’re parenting an autistic or, and or a neuro divergent who has higher support needs, and especially if they’re struggling, being intentional about your parenting goals becomes even more important if you want to be able to meet their needs effectively.
So I encourage you to consider choosing one or two goals in your parenting. A focus, a direction, a path to spend some time on. Because often we’re getting pulled in a lot of different directions and we have a lot of different responsibilities. And having one or two clear parenting goals can be really helpful to constrain your focus and your attention. And when you can focus in, you actually evolve quicker as a parent and as a mentor, especially if there’s lots of issues going on. So sometimes it can just feel so overwhelming. My kids, this and that and they need this. I’m having this problem.
When you just pick one or two things to focus in on, it helps you actually get some momentum and clarity, and you can assess easier because you’re not spread so thin. So the other thing to remember, too, is that parenting and mentoring is an amazing opportunity to develop and stretch yourself. And when you make goals in your parenting or in your work with young people, our young people have a way of stretching us and challenging us. And when you’re working on goals and working towards goals and achieving goals, there’s ripple effects into all the other areas of your life, right?
When your parenting experience isn’t going well and you’re struggling, I don’t have to tell you, but it affects all the other areas of your life. Your work, your related marriage, your friendships, your relationships, like your health. All of the other areas are affected when your parenting isn’t going great.
So I encourage you because without a clear goal or clear focus, it’s just so easy to get overwhelmed, and it’s so easy to stay entrenched in the same old patterns and habits and keep doing things the same way and then being frustrated and upset that things aren’t changing. Right? We’re like we want our kids to change, but we’re not doing anything proactively to do it. You can stay in that same frustrated place.
Having a clear focus, I mean, think about it. How cool would it be to have this year look different than last year? If you’re listening to this in January or really anytime you do this, right? Yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, this approach that I want to go over with you applies to all of that. How cool is it to think this week we could have a different week, or this month could look different by the end of this month because of working on a goal?
So there’s a couple of things that I want you to consider when you look at choosing a goal. Before you set a parent or mentoring goal, it’s really helpful to assess where you’re at. And when we assess, that means we’re doing it without judgment. We don’t want to judge and be negative about ourselves. We just want to assess where we’re at so we can figure out where we’re starting from. So it’s really important to do that without judgment.
And there’s two things that you could look at assessing. One yourself, right? For example, maybe as a parent, you’re feeling disconnected and you want to create more connection. Or maybe you’re yelling and you don’t like that you’re yelling, and so you want to do less yelling. Or maybe you do a lot of worrying and it’s exhausting you, and so you want to learn how to not worry so much.
The other thing you could do is assess your young person and just look at where they’re at and assess that what are their needs, or what’s one area that you really want to focus in to support them. So maybe, for example, they’re struggling socially. And so you make a goal this year to help support them, to get their social needs met. And you want to put time and energy and attention into that focus. You can either assess yourself in your parenting or the mentoring role that you have. If you’re a teacher or a coach or a therapist, and then you’re going to look at the young person, or you can look at the young person that like, what are they needing? And then you’re going to assess.
We’re going to look at two things, super simple two things, but it’s really important which order they go in if you want to be more successful with this. So the first thing you want to assess is what’s working. Our brain wants to go to the negative, but I encourage you to start with the positive, what’s working? Because you’re not starting from zero. There are things that are working, and so we want to look at those because you can build on that and build from that. So what’s working?
If you’re feeling disconnected, where are the places that you’re connected and you are connecting? Or that you do have moments where you feel close to your child, for example, or your young person isn’t completely socially isolated, there’s got to be some social, like, what is working socially for them? So that would be two examples of looking at what’s working. And then you can go to what’s not working. What do you want to change? What do you want to be different? What are you not happy with? Let’s look at what’s not working for you. So those are the two main things that you want to assess now.
It’s really important once you’ve assessed that you’re going into what’s not working. That’s like the problem focus. I want you to shift out of that and go into creation mode. Okay, we know what’s working, what’s not working. Now, given that information, what do you want to create? What do you want to do? What would be cool, what excites you? What would feel really good to you? So when you look at that, like, what in your parenting and mentoring experience would just be amazing to work on an end, to be successful in, what support would be really meaningful to provide for your young person? What needs do you want to support better? So these kinds of questions you’re kind of thinking about, what do I want this to look like? You kind of visualize.
So if you’re in January, you can visualize December of the year I’m in right now, recording. This is December of 2023. So I’m looking ahead, and I’m visualizing, what do I want in my parenting experience this year. In December of 2023, for me personally, I’m looking at my two girls left at home. I don’t have only a couple of years left with my daughter home, and then it’ll just be my younger one. And I’m thinking about what do I want this year to be about and what’s important to me. And so I’m visualizing what that looks like.
And then you want to ask yourself, why? Why do you want it? And get really clear on that. Why? Because that’s what’s going to keep you committed to the goal. And then you’re going to look at that why and how you feel when you achieve that goal. So we want to look at the why you want it and how you’re going to feel, because that feeling, that emotion is going to be what fuels your action. What fuels your commitment is how you’ll feel. And you’re going to want to start practicing that feeling. So that’s kind of like the process, right?
And then how do we really just do this and actually decide on a goal and a focus and a direction? So there’s three things that can be helpful with this. One, you want to be really specific and make it measurable. So, for example, if it was like yelling, maybe it’s, well, I’m yelling like, five times a day, and so I want to reduce it to three times, or I want to not yell anymore. Or I don’t want to yell out of anger. Like you make an actual specific thing. Or maybe it looks like I always yell at my kids when it’s time to leave and we’re running late, so maybe it’s just when we’re leaving, I’m going to make a goal to be calmer and not raise my voice when it’s time to go. So you want to get as specific as you can, something that’s measurable that you can say, yeah, I did that. I just want us to be happier. That would be so vague that you can’t ever know if you’ve actually done it and how do you measure it. Right? So be specific. Make it measurable. And two, set a time, set a date. Like, if you’re, at the beginning of the year, have a goal by the end of December of this year. I am. This is what it looks like. This is what I want it to be. But it can be that month. It could be the week you’re in. It could be your day. It could be the next hour. This is my goal, this next hour. Okay.
And then the third thing is make a plan. And I’m going to offer some tips and go into more detail on making a plan in my next episode to really help you set yourself up for success with your goal. So I just want to encourage you to set a parenting or mentoring goal, and I encourage you not to put it off. Just choose something. What’s kind of what are you feeling? What is like, the most urgent thing you want to work on or what would be fun to work on, and you can always change it later. You can always adjust it. I encourage you to choose something and then write it down and put it in a daily reminder or on your calendar somewhere to remind yourself of your goal.
And I just can’t wait for you to actually achieve your goal and what you’re going to gain from that process of working on it. Whether you achieve it or not. It’s such a gift that you give to yourself and to your loved ones when you’re intentional about your parenting experience and what you’re hoping to do while you’re hoping to mentor the ones that you love. And it’s an especially big gift when you have an autistic or neurodivergent young person that you’re parenting or mentoring for you to have an actual focus and clarity on it, because they are dealing with a lot. There’s a lot going on. And when we’re more specific and intentional, there’s such a ripple effect in that. We’re not just getting by, but we’re like, hey, what can we do here to help things and support things? And whether they can express it or not, they’re going to appreciate that work that you’re doing for them.
So I encourage you, and I hope you’ll join me in your goals and share them with me. And this month on my social media, I’m on Instagram and Facebook. I’m going to be offering different tips and things to help you with this, so join me there too. All right? 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.
