Join Dr. Regan for her third episode in a series about transitioning back to school while navigating daily life. This episode focuses on the role of mentoring in helping your autistic teen or adult navigate obstacles and challenging life experiences. Understanding Autism Book Series Autism in the Adult website Hello, everyone. This is Dr. Teresa Regan. I'm happy to be joining you for another episode of Autism in the Adult podcast. I'm a neuropsychologist, a certified autism specialist, and mom to a young adult on the autism spectrum. We're continuing our series about transitioning back to school for the autistic student. Now, let's go back to our student, Alyssa. We have talked about her as an example for the first two episodes in the series, and I'd like to continue with her as our illustrative point. She entered ninth grade cautiously optimistic, and she really did quite a good job of preparing for that transition. She knew where her classes were. She practiced opening her locker. She organized her school supplies. And then as she transitioned back, the days accumulated and began to feel like school was really costing her nervous system more than anyone had anticipated. And so by the end of the week, she was becoming quieter. She started sleeping after school. Her stomach started hurting on Sunday evenings. And getting to school just became much more difficult even though there hadn't been a real traumatic thing that had happened. So one of the things that I think is difficult for parents is what is the parent's role at this point? Is it to, you know, grab her and put her in the car and drag her to school? Is it to let her stay home until she feels comfortable enough to go without stress? Where is that balance point? What is the role at that age? So I think that the sweet spot of balance, is something much more interesting and useful that we can do as parents, and that is to begin mentoring our students about how to navigate daily life. And I love the word navigate. I think about the image of sailing or boating. And the reason I like this image is that it's true that we can learn an enormous amount of facts and knowledge by reading a book about sailing or boating. We can learn the names of the sails. We can learn how the rudder works. We can memorize different kinds of knots. We can steady weather patterns. And at the end of all that, we could probably take a test about sailing and get every question correct. Why? Because we can memorize the facts, the knowledge that is written out in this book. But I would still not necessarily want to get into a sailboat with you during a storm. How does this knowledge that we have, this memorization of facts, how do we translate that into actual living and doing and navigating? Knowing about sailing and sailing are not the same skill. And sometimes we treat them like they are. So sailing means taking everything you know and applying it to a particular boat on this particular water with this weather pattern, this wind movement, and this moment. And then something changes unexpectedly. Of course, it always does. The wind changes direction. The water changes pattern. Something about the boat isn't working quite as we expected. And now what? And that's where this ability to navigate, how do we use the knowledge that we've memorized? How do we navigate? How do we live life and turn these factual things we know into actual doing? And that's the incredibly important distinction for any human being, but also particularly for the autistic. Now, the autistic often has a great memorization ability and enormous amounts of knowledge in their brain. And they can often memorize information much better than the typical person. They may understand the rule perfectly. They may even be able to explain to someone else what exactly is supposed to happen. And that's why it can feel so confusing to see this person struggle in daily life. We might say, but this person is so smart, they're full of facts, they're full of knowledge. Why are they struggling with day-to-day things? And that is, though, the most common pattern of strength and struggle for the autistic, that, they have great amounts of knowledge and facts, but this translating and navigating into everyday life may be something that needs more mentoring. sharing. We may say she knows she's supposed to ask her teacher if she doesn't understand something, or he knows how to do laundry. I've explained it before. She knows that she feels better after she takes a walk or reads a book. And that's true. They're filled with knowledge, but knowing is only one part of the process. And the much more complicated question becomes, how do we take what we know, and use it to navigate this particular situation? And that is where mentoring becomes so important. With Alyssa, perhaps we start here. We can see that something isn't quite working, but we don't know what it is. What is the barrier to going to school, to getting through the day, ...
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49 min