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Self-Advocacy at Home

A woman and a teenager share a moment in a modern kitchen. The woman holds a coffee mug and a piece of toast with greens, while the teenager holds a peach, smiling at each other. A plate of peaches, a salad, and a tablet are on the counter in front of them.

Welcome to our Self-Advocacy at Home Series, where we will be taking a closer look at ways that parents and caregivers can build a safe environment for self-advocacy for an Autistic person they are supporting. 


We will start in Part 1 by taking a closer look at the different components of self-advocacy and how they might apply at home. In later parts we will focus on creating a supportive environment, making choices across the day, and troubleshooting issues that can come up in attempting to create the best possible self-advocacy environment.


When we think about self-advocacy, the immediate image that comes to mind might be the act of speaking up and making a request, or perhaps the more dramatic act of standing up in the face of gatekeeping. But self-advocacy encompasses all the actions we take in our own interest, from determining our own needs and goals to choosing how to pursue them. 


Sometimes this entails asking for help, other times it might entail building up the executive functioning skills necessary to ensure our needs are met.


The one thing in common between the wide variety of skills that make up our day to day self-advocacy is that they can be practiced, and home can be an important safe environment for practicing self-advocacy, especially if it is difficult in other areas. But what kinds of skills are we talking about and how might we approach encouraging the practice of those skills? Let’s take a closer look at some categories that we can use to frame the big umbrella of self-advocacy skills!

Self-Awareness and Knowledge

Self-awareness and knowledge is all about learning our own needs and preferences! While it might feel obvious that we like what we like or want what we want, it can be all too easy to get caught up going along with the things we think other people want from us. Fostering an environment that encourages self-awareness and knowledge can involve offering lots of opportunities for the person you are supporting to express their preferences, or to talk through their thoughts if they are uncertain. 


Crucially, although self-awareness is a process and our view of ourselves might change overtime, it is important to be supportive when the Autistic person or people in our lives do take the step of expressing those preferences merely because our own might be different. Creating an environment where everyone’s preferences are of interest and celebrated is a great first step to ensuring that the person you are supporting has strong reason to continue working on self-awareness skills!

Goal-Setting

One common challenge of goal setting is not necessarily having the “right” goal, but fitting a long-term goal into our regular executive functioning. In a supporting role, you have the ability to both act as a sounding board for deciding on goals and to practice the process of working toward a longer-term goal in smaller steps. One way to begin fostering that environment is to talk about plans for known goals, and working together to establish achievable steps. 


A great example might be saving up for a moderate-sized purchase - we can break that down into a concrete dollar amount every week, and the tasks we can do to make that dollar amount. While real world goals are rarely so simple, starting the process of framing goals in this way can go a long way toward practicing the skill early and often!

Choice and Decision-Making

Choice-making can be a paradox in some households - it is simultaneously important to offer choices so that each member can operate with as much autonomy as possible while respecting that sometimes too many options or too many different decision points can be overwhelming and being ready to step in when the situation calls for it. 


One great starting point for making choices if it is a skill that requires more practice is to limit the scope of choice to known safe options. Once the person you are supporting gets used to making more choices it can be easier to introduce more options over time. If you have ever checked out our free Self-Advocacy IEP Goal Bank.

Problem-Solving

We all run across problems in our day-to-day lives, and learning how to identify, navigate, seek help for, or resolve them can be an important difference maker in our well-being! Working on activities like puzzles can be one way to work on our problem-solving skills, but so can talking through problems we are facing day to day and the different solutions we can pursue. 


One way to help start this process is to lead by example! Talking through a reasonable problem of our own can help the process feel that much more relatable and normalize the idea of talking through those challenges with people we care about.

Self-Regulation

One of the most helpful ways you can help to foster an environment of self-regulation is to create a designated decompression space when the person you are supporting needs a break. Crucial to such a decompression space is that it is always an accessible space. Even if we are arguing we respect when someone needs time to decompress before they can continue the discussion. 


Creating an open opportunity to self-regulate when needed will also offer the person you are supporting the opportunity to practice different types of self-regulating techniques depending on what they think might work best for themselves.

Self-Determination

Self-determination is a crucial component of self-advocacy in that acting on our own behalf is a crucial component of acting in our own best interests. This is another area in which it might seem self-evident that we be able to act on our own behalf, but it can also be all too easy to go along with what someone else wants to avoid conflict. 


Offering the person or people you are supporting many opportunities to decide, while also respecting that declining to choose is also a valid choice, can reinforce the importance of self-determination in your household. Another great starting point is to offer the lead on a family activity, whatever feels best suited to the interests and skills of the person you are supporting!

Involvement in Individualized Education Plan (IEP)

In our last section, we are referencing an important legal right and component of educational development for many Autistic people. Autistic people who receive an IEP at school are legally entitled to be part of the process, and it is one of the best opportunities to set guidelines for the types of goals we might want to pursue at school. 


One great way to introduce this form of self-advocacy is to bring the person you are supporting to their IEP meeting even if they don’t want to directly contribute yet. You can go over what happened during each meeting, and as they grow more comfortable in that space they can advocate for themselves more directly!

Conclusion

We hope these different categories of self-advocacy have inspired some ideas on how to foster the practice of self-advocacy skills at home. While the umbrella of self-advocacy might be wide, the bottom line is that the more we respect and prioritize the ability of the people we are supporting to operate with autonomy and in their own interests, and the more we can offer a safety net for when there is a stumble, the more we can create that sense of safety that makes practice that much easier.


We also hope you will tune in next week for Part 2! If you have any questions in the meantime or wish there were a topic we would cover more closely then we would love to hear from you! Just drop us a line at hello@autismgrownup.com and stay tuned for part 2, when we will do a deeper dive on what a broadly supportive environment might look like!

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