DD is 13; she is autistic and her way of thinking is very rigid. I feel we make adjustments for her as far as possible but sometimes the softly does it approach or trying to “understand” everything can actually be detrimental to her functioning in the real world.
Two days ago, she rifled through the clean laundry to find a top; she got her top and then left all of the items of clean laundry in pile on the floor, which got muddled with dirty laundry. I came downstairs to this and was obviously cross. DD didn’t get the issue and her thought process was that she needed a top quickly so she just left it. She could not grasp that I was annoyed because I would have to re sort the laundry because she couldn’t take a minute to put the clean laundry back.
Last night, she wanted something out of the cupboard; she took a box out of the cupboard and left it on the landing floor right where someone would trip or hurt themselves. DH called after her to put it back but she was already walking away and had settled in her bed so she refused. DH repeatedly asked her to pick up after herself and she outright refused because she was now in bed. She had also thrown her laundry outside of her room but could no longer move it because she was in bed.
We (DH and I) refused to accept this and explained to her that she was being disrespectful and this is not how family life works. It became a bit of a stand off, we kept calm mostly but DD was upset and thinks we were unreasonable. I offered her a hug but she thinks I only want to be nice to her because I want to control her and make her do things (such as picking up after herself!).
Tonight, she has once again thrown laundry outside of her room because she is now in bed and cannot make the trip outside her bedroom to the laundry basket. Again, she does not see what the issue is and says we don’t understand her. I do sympathise with her reasoning but I also wonder how on earth she’s going to cope in the adult world if she refuses to try to adapt her rigid thinking in any way at all.
These types of situations are constant and it’s exasperating. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect her to tidy up after herself?
The gentle approach only gets us so far. WIBU?