To have insisted teen DD pick this up?

[GlamourFuss]

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?

No you aren't being unreasonable..... autism or not they need to learn some responsibility. My son is also autistic but i have to remind him constantly about things. Yes it does my head in sometimes x

How does she react to a "the real world won't tolerate this" type chat?

I'd leave the laundry until she has no clean clothes. Then say 'my rule is I only wash what is in the basket'.

The clean/dirty laundry is trickier. Could you take your stuff and leave hers?

Stuff falling out of the cupboard, shove in her room/bed if needs be. Make it inconvenient for her (as annoying as that is for you!).

She needs a bit of natural consequences.

She doesn’t appear to grasp the concept of the real world . She’s very intelligent but her rigid thoughts mean she only sees one side of things . Hers.

She is genuinely not being lazy, it has to do with her worrying about carpet getting in her bed (it doesn’t !) so she will not get out to do anything. But we feel this does not excuse her from doing things.

I agree with @MultiplaLight on the natural consequences. She throws clean laundry on the floor and won't put hers in the basket, you stop doing her laundry. She leaves things in the middle of the floor, put them in the middle of her floor. Talking/arguing isn't working at the moment so you have to switch it up some how. As long as it's done with calmness and no anger/spite I think it's better than conflict/verbal stand offs. You calmly explain the consequences once and then wait and see if she comes to you when it gets too annoying.

For things like this I'd recommend a practical solution - slippers to slip on or a laundry basket in her room that she can transfer to the main basket in the morning, something simple like that.

No YANBU

I have an 11 yo with ASD and whilst there can be the odd flash point he understands there are tasks that are part of family life and non optional (of which laundry sorting is one).

Unfortunately the only people who suffer from the natural consequences are DH and I. We have tried refusing to do her laundry previously but this backfired and resulted in a huge meltdown in which we missed a very important event. She does not understand things until they impact her, but when they do, she believes it’s our fault and is unable to link the natural consequence. We are at a loss.

She does have slippers and this could potentially work if they were put beside her bed.

Agree with YesThatsATurdOnTheRug

Ask her to come up with a solution. If she cannot think of options, give her some suggestions and let her pick an option.

My DS is autistic and I absolutely make him come back and sort out things he’s just left behind thinking it’s my job - taking his shoes off and just abandoning them in the doorway such that I can’t even close the front door is his usual trick. But he won’t learn unless it’s more inconvenient to him to come back and sort it out than it would be to put them where they go in the first place. He is completely capable, he just thinks his gaming or desire for a snack immediately upon entering the front door is more important.

I do try and work out what’s mostly an unthinking and self centred tween/teen issue and what is an autistic one for him - I talk to him in calm moments at other times about what his thinking is with the shoes or whatever and he admits it’s just laziness. Other times he’s said actually that thing you thought was laziness was because anxiety/OCD like behaviour/some very weird misunderstanding and we’ve sorted things out.

That said I would also make life easy for myself and pick my battles - I wouldn’t tolerate laundry thrown on the landing, but I would get the kid a laundry basket for their own room.

I feel for you, it’s exhausting and the endless picking apart of “can they help this or not” “is this a won’t or a can’t” etc is really hard sometimes.

You need to play the long game and accept the suffering. I know it's not easy, and if you miss stuff it's awful. But she has to learn somehow. The alternative is to build life around her, but accept that probably no one else will.

Laundry basket in her room is a good idea.

Put the stuff in her bed though.

Can you frame it in terms of a "job" or "school", you wouldn't open a cupboard there and leave stuff on the floor.

She is autistic, and inflexible in her thought processes. I assume you are not. I agree with a previous poster about maybe putting a laundry basket in her room or similar.
I wonder if she might have PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance). So maybe consider rewording the way you ask her to do something. There is a good website which gives you tips on how to do this.

She did have a laundry basket for her own room but I removed this as it all ended up on the floor. I would consider putting it back if she will use it, if it’s near her bed it may help.

@MultiplaLight I think building life around her is where we have gone wrong previously. We have always tried to accommodate her and make life easier for her where we can (life is very hard for her) but with adulthood not far off, I feel we need to be cruel to be kind in order to prepare her for independence.

@TheSoapyFrog I have wondered about PDA and will read up on it.

I don’t know for sure, but I would challenge this suggestion that just because she is ‘inflexible in her thought processes’ doesn’t mean that’s it, give up, just accept.

Surely her bias to be inflexible doesn’t mean a parent can’t try to teach her that leaving clean laundry everywhere is inconsiderate, or that leaving shoes in the hallway is a trip hazard or that when she is behaving in an entirely self-serving way, her behaviours might annoy others?

Otherwise how do people like this cope as young adults when they go away to uni? Does their selfish, rigid thinking continue and just annoy all their housemates and they have no friends? It must be a better option for a parent to try and mitigate that when they’re still young and can at least try to live in community with others.

Or are they set at 13, and that’s it, they are never able to learn, change or mature? I’m not being contentious - it’s a genuine question. I just feel it’s limiting to never expect better from a child just because they’re ND.

This may not go down well with a lot of posters. Our DS is autistic and we were very much of the opinion that one day he won’t live with us and would need to be able to function in a world where not everyone would understand his thought processes. We worked very hard with him on using laundry baskets, cleanliness, picking up after himself, putting dirty dishes away etc. It was honestly relentless some days but slowly he got better at putting laundry in his basket, picking up his shoes, hanging up his jacket, showering daily, changing his bed as well as lots of other life skills. I felt like some days we were constantly reminding him to do things but it worked, eventually it became his routine. I’m not for one second saying this works with every child but it worked for us. He could refuse to do things all he wanted but that was not going to be an option for an adult in the work place was the way we viewed his future. Employers are not going to change the way they ask for something to be done in most cases. He lives away at Uni now and copes really well. As I said on another thread last night, the world can be a really cruel place to be at times, we know we won’t be here forever and we didn’t want his siblings to feel responsible for him in later life.

She needs a routine set in place. Storyboarding it might help.
Find top, clothes go away THEN she can get in bed. Does she have any input from anyone at school who can help reinforce this with her?

If her dirty clothing doesn't get laundered that should be on her.

She has to learn to adapt and you are doing what's appropriate for the real world.

This is the autism. She's taking the piss speaking form experience. Keep going and stand your ground!

I have a young teen DD with autism. She's only fairly recently diagnosed but has had a really tough past couple of years with severe anxiety. She is also very inflexible about doing things like picking clothes up off the floor or even putting plates in the dishwasher. I try to be lenient and pick my battles as she's going through such a difficult time but like many other posters, I am worried about developing necessary life skills. Reading these posts makes me worried I've been doing too much for her but she's in such a fragile place I don't want to be constantly nagging her at home.

Could you work with a psychologist so she can gain some life skills?

She has to learn to manage in a household and to keep things organized.

You also need to look for points of stress and sit down with
her and resolve them. If getting the laundry to a communal bin is a problem, put a laundry bin in her room.

with my own ASD dd she was constantly piling laundry in the bathroom. So we put a laundry bin in the bathroom.

trouble finding clothing, we now have a system for how things are put away, including labels for where items go.

she has 3 small trash bins in her room. She is responsible for emptying them, but we have one at every spot she was leaving trash and now we don’t have a problem anymore. Most people could handle one, but she needs one at each point.

actually, I have multiple little trash bins in my own bedroom. i also have ASD, I need these things too. I have to be hyper organized or my world dissolves into utter chaos and I just melt down.

dont make something a battle if there is an easy solution. A lot of ASD is just finding the world is not set up properly. So set up her world properly, her stress goes down, and these battles stop happening.

We've had the same battles (DS14) for the past couple of years and whilst we do get flare ups, it's much better.

I instigated an "if you leave your towel on the bathroom floor, you owe me a load of laundry" rule. I.e. he had to sort a load from the laundry basket and take it down and put the machine on, when it was dry, it was his to sort (initially) and fold.

Pre-organized consequences are your friend here. Ensure she runs out of clothes only when it won't affect family/school. E.g. when DS wasn't putting his underwear in the basket, I washed enough to get him to the weekend so he faced the consequences when we would be home for the day.

Laundry I would insist he re-fold, although not necessarily immediately.

Is this autism or just teenage slovenly behaviour as it sounds very much like my teen dd!
And yes I would make her come and pick everything up, even if she was in bed (although not if she was sleeping at night).

This sounds a lot like demand avoidance - being told to do something just automatically kicks off the ‘no!’ response. My dd is the same and the way I ask things makes a huge difference. If I say ‘come and pick up that box now!’ there will be a million reasons why she can’t. If I say ‘could you put that box back when you’re passing the cupboard next please?’ she probably will (as she controls when she does it). She also has a small laundry basket in her room and that’s really helped (before that, her floor was a jumble of clean and dirty clothes all mixed up). If it helps to know, I’m also autistic and as a teenager was horrifically messy/disorganised… I also felt a lot of guilt about it, not that I’d have admitted it. I never did any of it out of malice or on purpose, but just because my thinking was all over the place and I just simply forgot (and then hated myself). I think try to be creative, meet her in the middle, and pick your battles.