You explain to your child as clearly as possible what they need to do, and they still don’t do it!You can share your best strategies with them, fountains of wisdom that never seems to get applied. What gives?
In my experience:
- Executive function gaps (e.g. planning, getting started, memory, etc).
- Perfectionism
- All-or-nothing thinking
- Risk-aversion
- Fear of failure or success
That’s the short list.
When you’re raising a child, living with a spouse or working with a colleague diagnosed with (e.g. Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, and so on). You’ll bear witness to wells of competence along with oceans of struggle.
They don’t always know why they struggle, only that they do. So they may lack the language to describe their experience, and self-advocate effectively.
I spoke with a parent this morning who’s experiencing this now and we created a plan to help his child increase his ability to think in the gray area, and develop more curiosity to buffer his fears about taking risks.
There’s more to this of course, the breadth, and depth of my education, and lived experience are a powerful combo here. It allows me to provide solutions that are personal, a fit for that person and their values.
It isn’t enough to learn tools, and strategies. You need to thoroughly understand what makes it difficult for your brain to use any of it. Are the reasons neurological, psychological, emotional, a combination?
The answer is all of the above. Like this parent, you can’t be expected to navigate this minefield alone. I have my group of experts as well, have since the beginning.
There’s a myth that parents are supposed to have immaculate perception when it comes to knowing their own “flesh, and blood”. To know their child better than anyone.
Countless parents have beaten themselves up for not having encyclopedic knowledge of how to raise a child with such unique, and complex challenges.
Most folks barely know themselves. How can they be expected to open themselves to the raw truth of their child’s experience, when they’re in so much denial about their own.
I’ve learned how to break through the resistance I described earlier. The stuff that gets in the way of you, and your child sharing their brilliance with the world.
Remember, it isn’t what you know, it’s how well you can apply it.
