Are you feeling lost as a parent of an autistic child? In this podcast episode, Dr. Gutstein and co-host Kat Lee, go a little deeper into the feelings that surround us as parents of a child with autism. Why do we feel so incompetent at times and how do we become empowered as parents again?
Dr. Steven Gutstein: When your primary function which is growth promotion, remember growth promotion, is taken away from you, what are you going to focus on? As a parent if your not there to promote their mental growth, what’s left? And I think that’s where these sort of other things, cause you got some parents who get hung up on behaviour, some speech, right, some on you know if the child has some more rote academic skills, they love that, they get involved in that or try to stimulate if they don’t, But they focus on things that are sort of substitute for the main function of a parent, you know, if you think about main function past survival , you know maintaining the child, but once that’s established, the main function is promoting their mental growth. And you take away growth promotion and you have a child that is not growth seeking, right. What is my relationship going to be like with this child? What am I , what is my common focus going to be? And so then you can see why other things become, you know rise to the forefront right, become predominant, because it has to be about something. What is the topic of my parenting going to be about right?
Kat Lee – I think it’s interesting too because since you have been sharing with us the research showing that the growth seeking just doesn’t take place , it’s that whole what’s missing piece. And nobody identifies except the work that you’re doing with RDI, nobody’s identifying that it’s a missing piece and in fact I think, I can say this too as a parent , your friends and your surrounding relatives and people who care about you , when you start seeing something’s missing but you don’t know what it is , something’s not quite right. “Oh they just have a different personality than your other child “ or “ oh some people are more this than that “ so you kind of have that from an early start, like so it’s not occurring maybe to parents that at all.
Dr. Steven Gutstein: I think it is occurring and you know the growth seeking of a child is so , it’s just so much a part of us as human beings that and part of children especially, it’s not something that you to cultivate, it’s not something if you have a typically developing child you ever have to think about. It’s something their, you know, they’re using a lot of energy to initiate, to maintain to engage you in that . Ummm and when it’s not there, when it’s never been there, when it’s there it’s lost. I think then that you can feel it, you know when a child’s gone through some trauma, or accident or injury, you know it and you can see. But when it’s never developed, I think you really have a harder time becoming aware of it but some parents do, there are some umm they may not use that term but they will know that something you know is getting in the way umm of that. But it is, it’s one of those things I think that in human beings that is so, is considered so much a part of us that when it’s not there, nobody thinks about it . It’s just , I don’t know what else to say about it. It really impacts everything.
Dr. Steven Gutstein: If you think about it with this dynamic system, the family, the parenting, when you take the primary function, what becomes the primary function starting at the second half of the first year of life and becomes more and more of the primary function, who knows what the impact is going to be. I think for different families it’s going to be different but it’s going to be extreme for everybody. And I think that for the child as well as for the parents and you know for the way they impact each other, the way they influence each other. It’s just removing this huge chunk of what we’re about. What a family is about, what parenting is about. And you know there’s a lot of different ways, a lot of different projectories then, can occur.
Kat Lee: and that leads me to my next popular topic that parents will start out with, which is. I really and this is already knowing about RDI some, a little bit, limited and I wondered, I think it’s because they still haven’t made that discovery about the impact it’s making on them.
Dr. Steven Gutstein: Another issue, which is that they feel so inadequate, they feel so hurt and damaged. I think that if you take any parent who doesn’t feel that and they have a child with a problem, they’re not going to come to you and say I don’t want to focus on me, they’re going to say just the opposite. Tell me what to do, help me learn, you stay away from my child, tell me what to do here, you know, no I’m serious, I think that’s exactly what you’re going to hear from a parent unless they feel so damaged, so inadequate,where they say please don’t It’s almost like their saying please don’t put me in a position where I’m going to fail again right. So my response is always going to be , in a very non defensive way, well tell me why you know, you don’t want to learn what to do ? Because that’s the message you think you’re hearing right?Directly, you take over my child and leave me out of it is what you’re hearing right?
Dr. Steven Gutstein: And you know it’s almost, it’s sort of crazy to think you have to say well parents are critical to children’s development. I mean it’s condescending, who wouldn’t know that right? Why would you even have to say that? I don’t think that’s the issue that you would have to tell people that because you don’t have to have any education to know. You could be a tribal person in any culture and know that, whether it’s the extended family, the nuclear, you know that’s what family is. So when someone says that, you really wonder what , we have to know what it is their saying. The other thing is, are they saying don’t blame me, right, which could be what their saying or their saying please don’t ask me to do anything cause I am feeling so inadequate.
Dr. Steven Gutstein: Because really Kat, think about it ,you have a typically developing child, you know now the exception would be if you have a obnoxious , oppositional teenager where you say I don’t want to be in the room with, just do something, fix it, ya know. It’s the same feeling, it’s that same feeling except it’s more a phase where you just feel out of control and your saying, I can’t do anything , right. That’s why you would say it,, other than, right and if you think about it as a parent but there’s no other, if you don’t want people doing stuff to your kid out of your control, if you’re a parent that wants success{?} , you want to have control. Why would you want to give that up to somebody you hardly know ?God knows what their going to do. So I do think that it’s important when they say that. It’s not the time to talk to someone out of it, it’s really the time to say something to try to understand it. Say you know, it’s a important thing your saying, tell me why, tell me why it is that you don’t want to be the one learning to guide your child. And think about that, think about someone asking you that question.
Dr. Steven Gutstein: Why would you not want to guide your child? And most people are going to say no no of course I want to guide my child, oh well what is that you really don’t, you want to make sure you know. What is that you’re really saying that you want or you don’t want? If they say can’t you just work with my child. Is that what you’re saying? Well sure, but then what are you going to learn if I do that?
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