Parenting a child with autism can be incredibly difficult and frustrating. Being in a situation where you feel as though you’re constantly fighting an uphill battle can be exhausting, especially when you can’t figure out what you’re supposed to be doing or how to respond to certain behaviours.
As hard as it can be in these situations, it’s important that you continue to prioritise care and understanding. This might sound like an impulse that’s much easier to understand in theory than in practice, but doing what you can to keep it in mind might be more straightforward than you expect.
Learn How to De-Stress
Straightforward isn’t at all the same thing as easy, however. One of the most important steps in this process could be to focus on how you respond to frustration in the first place. That’s not a criticism at all, but the first response to frustration is anger, especially in a situation that’s highly stressed and demands your consistent attention.
Instead, if you try to learn some techniques that are specifically designed to bring down your stress levels, you might find that you’re better able to calm yourself in these kinds of situations. It’s something that takes time, but one of the most frequently suggested ways to go about this is to embrace breathing exercises, so learning some quick ones that you can deploy wherever you are is a good idea. This is a skill that you might find useful not only in this situation, but also in any scenarios that induce anxiety.
Respond to Them
One of the more difficult aspects of this is trying to understand your child’s behaviours and how you should respond to them. There’s no immediate guidance that you can read up on in order to identify what this will be in your particular situation, it’s something that you’ll have to become familiar with through experience.
That being said, there are services, such as www.autism360.com, that are catered towards providing parents in your situation with a wide library of resources that can be particularly insightful.
At times, you might even find that some apps are designed for your child, as a way to focus their attention or help them cope in particular situations. Knowing that such options exist provides you with more flexibility in any given situation.
Understand Their Condition
In moments of high stress, it can be very easy to respond with emotional reasoning. You can use your own frustration as an anchor to construct why your child is behaving that way, such as thinking why they would act like this when you’re only trying to help. This is often a reflex, but it can be worthwhile to take the time to better understand the specifics of the condition that they’ve been diagnosed with.
Unlike breathing techniques or mindfulness, this might not be something that you’re able to deploy in the heat of the moment to calm yourself down, but it’s a level of knowledge that can provide you with a greater appreciation for how they experience the world.
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