When one of the children, teens, or young adult’s you’re parenting or working with is autistic and/or neurodivergent they have higher support needs. Having parental goals is important if you want to meet their needs effectively. Choose a goal and achieve it so that this year looks differently than last year. See full show notes here: JasonDebbie.com/80
Many of our autistic and neurodivergent children, teens, and young adults are being traumatized, triggered, shamed, and misunderstood because their unidentified needs aren’t being addressed in their treatment plans or by their clinicians and providers.
Tatiana shares valuable insights from her extensive experience and expertise working individually and in a case management role with autistic and neurodivergent clients with sophisticated co-occuring diagnosis.
Some of the topics we discuss with Tatiana include common stereotypes in the mental health community leading to poor care, patient blaming, what good case management should look like, glaring wholes in psych testing, signs a therapist or provider has quit, and what is needed to improve outcomes for our autistic and neurodivergent young people.
If you want the autistic and neurodivergent child, teen, or young adult you parent or work with not to fail, meaning you want them to succeed with their goals, you’ll want to teach and model HOW to fail. The right way to fail. The useful way to fail. How to use fails to succeed. Failing and then shutting down and giving up is a common issue for many or our neurodivergent young people.
Staying curious may be one of the essential ingredients to empathy and our ability to connect with the young people we parent and mentor. One of the goals of NDM or Neuro-developmental Mentoring,™️ the approach we developed and teach, is to shift our focus from trying to fix a problem to a focus on mentoring development. To be an effective mentor you you can’t fake curiosity. There are nuances to utilizing curiosity effectively.
When our autistic and neurodivergent young people struggle and get stuck and their development slows or stalls out, there’s one thing that’s usually at the
Are you heading for an identity crisis? When so much is required for supporting someone who is neurodivergent, oftentimes our identity, our labels for ourselves and how we see ourselves turns into a focus on giving and being there for our loved ones. This can create issues for us especially when things shift as they get older. Jason has some great tips for dealing with this.
Motivation can be a big challenge. We want our autistic and neurodivergent young people to succeed in what their motivated to pursue, create, and do in the world. One of the biggest mistakes parents and mentors make is in how they’re unintentionally demotivating their young person. Learn how to break the patterns that are sabotaging your efforts to support them.
Aging into legal adulthood is not the same thing as developing into an adult who is ready for the rights and responsibilities governmental laws bestow on adults. Our autistic and neurodivergent young people often still need our support and guidance even if they have turned 18, which is the age most states and countries consider by law to be a legal adult. This legal shift can be intimidating especially if you’re not ready for it. There are ways you can still advocate for what they need until they are developmentally ready to do it on their own.
When you are parenting or working with autistic and neurodivergent young people there is a line between giving your best and martyring and burning yourself out. Don’t set yourself up for failure. Learn the equation for assessing how much to give and to who.
Many of us with good intentions are sabotaging development. Overtime, this can be really discouraging when you’ve invested your time, energy, emotions, and even money, and your neurodivergent young person is still struggling and not making much progress. Listen in for one of the biggest things we see that gets in the way of development.