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Troubleshooting to Support Self-Advocacy

A smiling woman and her teenage daughter fold colorful clothes together on a table near a large window, enjoying the shared task in a bright, airy room.

Welcome back to our Self-Advocacy at Home series, where we have been discussing the ways that we can encourage the practice of the broad set of skills that fall under the self-advocacy umbrella at home as parents and caregivers. 


In Part 1 we broke down self-advocacy into smaller categories of skills.

In Part 2 we talked about some ways we can build a supportive space for practicing self-advocacy. 

In Part 3 we considered the process of making choices across the day.


In this post, we will be talking about troubleshooting some common issues that may come up when we are doing our best to encourage the self-advocacy of the Autistic person or people we are supporting.


In stressing the importance of encouraging self-advocacy at home and creating a safe environment for practicing self-advocacy skills, it is also important to acknowledge that no skill-building process is without its hiccups and that even if we have the best of intentions things may go wrong from time to time. 


When we are talking about troubleshooting, we are talking about issues that fall outside the boundaries of everyday choices and might require special consideration. So let’s take a look at some examples.

Choice Paralysis or Burnout

One reality many Autistic people face is that a large volume of choices can become overwhelming over time and even lead to burnout. 


When a person you are supporting is struggling to choose it might feel difficult to know how to help, and you might feel torn between wanting to give them as much space as possible and making sure they are OK. 


One helpful way to navigate that kind of burnout is to offer singular yes/no choices or even to take over decision-making entirely for a little bit to take the pressure associated with choosing off for a little while.

Dangerous Choices

While earlier in this series we encouraged accepting the reality that sometimes self-advocacy will lead to mistakes. But what about times when a choice really could become dangerous or harmful? 


It is fair to consider ways we can act differently to prevent harm to the best of our ability. In these scenarios we can be more direct about the ways we cannot help with such a choice and why we cannot support it. 


We can make an effort to distinguish between the specific harm of that choice and our usual support for self-advocacy. In difficult situations none of us are perfect, and we hope the takeaway from this section is that promoting autonomy never requires you to allow harm to come to another person.

Responding to Mistakes

Mistakes are a natural part of the learning process, but somewhere along the way some of us become more anxious about making mistakes than others. Perhaps we have had to deal with someone who was extra critical or maybe we are just predisposed to worrying about mistakes more than others. 


When mistakes are punished or called out as a horrible thing it can make it that much harder to continue practicing. Alternately, when basic mistakes are normalized and recognized as part of the learning process it is that much easier to continue practicing knowing the real thing will be ready soon enough!

Needing to Say No

One component of encouraging self-advocacy is acknowledging that the person we are supporting will make the lion’s share of decisions about their own life and priorities. 


Sometimes, however, a given choice or need might require our resources or participation to succeed, and sometimes we simply might not have those resources available for that purpose. So how do we say no without discouraging the act of self-advocacy? 


A good starting point is expressing appreciation for the request and explaining clearly why you can’t meet it, and perhaps even expressing hope that they will ask you in the future even if you can’t always say yes. More important than saying yes every time is creating an environment where asking is a comfortable and safe process!

Conclusion

We hope the last post of this series has offered some ideas on how to navigate some tough situations associated with self-advocacy at home. 


We also hope that this series has offered a helpful framework on how to approach encouraging self-advocacy at home. 


If you would like to see us cover more topics related to self-advocacy, go more in depth on self-advocacy at home, or share your own experience then we would love to hear from you! Just drop us a line at hello@autismgrownup.com and keep an eye out for our upcoming series!

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Previous article Executive Functioning Concepts at Home
Next article Making Choices Across the Day

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