If you are naturally rebellious, how do you handle discipline at work?

[tinypea]

My son who is 18 has Pathological demand avoidance (PDA) and I do worry how he’ll handle work.
He’s had a couple of jobs but they’ve ended as soon as he’s received any discipline and instead of accepting negative feedback he argues back.
He had lots of behavioural therapy but any sort of criticism or feedback just destroys him and sends him into attack mode.
At school he didn’t care about discipline and so didn’t take much notice and has a tendency to be rude and dismissive of anyone in authority this was avoidance because rules and discipline cause anxiety which is caused by low self esteem.
He’s spent a lot of time working on himself and reading self help books and his esteem seems to be improving but I know he’s trying to focus on his positives and not his negatives which I can see is helping but if an employer was to give him negative feedback or highlight his misgivings I see the cycle continuing.
He’s never been in trouble with the law and I don’t think he ever would, he’s not antisocial he’s just full of anxiety about being criticised so he is defiant and oppositional to counteract the feeling of anxiety and if someone with authority criticises him he will get quite personal and make quite cutting personal remarks in response.
I don’t know what to do about him, he’s had CBT and medication but nothing helps.

Is he also ASD?

As a teacher, I've worked with a lot of teenage boys and have always taken the approach of teaching them that some things are social conventions.

E.g. if someone confronts you about something (in context of course), the convention, particularly in the UK, is to say 'Sorry.'

I always made sure to tell these boys they didn't actually have to mean it. But to apologise as an automatic response.

I know it's controversial, saying they didn't have to mean it, but so many children don't have that response taught to them, that they totally don't understand the British convention of apologising.

It isn't solving the whole issue, but an apology will often defuse a situation. For example, kid swearing in class. I tell them off, they apologise, it's instantly forgotten.

Is some of this also perhaps about poor management? However your son needs some support because he does have to learn to take feedback and not to argue back and make rude personal comments. Might some coaching help? Probably expensive.

Might he be able to do a BTEC through FE for a.couole of years ro give him time to matire a bit more?

How was school?

I was a bugger at school for this . Now I’m older I just seeth under my breath instead .
It is very hard and at 18 he’s so young to be able to control this ! I think maybe explaining to the employers in advance might be more helpful

I'm not sure whether this is helpful for someone with PDA, but the way I accept critical feedback is by considering it "new data".

By thinking about it as new data that I can understand and build from helps decouple it from my sense of self (both self preservation and self worth).

I don't disagree with him and was raised to not always accept what somebody tells me just because they are in 'authority.' I have raised my own children with the same advise.

Of course we should all listen but it doesn't mean the other person is correct just because they are a manager, teacher, policeman etc..

Sounds as though he is trying to work on ways to not react immediately. I would probably just keep advising him to listen initially without comment and give himself time to sleep on and think about whatever feedback he has received before commenting on it.

Would some counselling be beneficial?

In many large organizations, especially in science, Autism and autistic traits are ‘protected’ by DEI, so he would potentially have a level of leeway.

Can he articulate how he would want to be informed that he has done something incorrectly? We all make mistakes, and how would he like to be informed of that.
What about when people just disagree with him?

I was awful at school - hated being told what to do and still do.

I think the key is finding the right job and management style. For someone with this kind of personality being micromanaged won’t help. I’ve been through a few jobs with this kind of management style and it always always got my back up.

I think with the right job he would be great. Where I work now, we have a career coach as well as our normal line manager and they can help and advise with this sort of thing. For example if I wasn’t in agreement about a particular policy or an aspect of my job the first person I would reach out to would be my career coach and we would decide on next steps.

We also have a focus on providing feedback - and rather then being ‘criticised’ the focus is on development points. Everyone always has something they can improve on, it can be hard not to take things personally but when you can see the intent is genuinely to help you progress then it comes across differently.

I’d really research the company and just try to ensure he ends up in the right place, it won’t necessarily happen first time.

I’ve been working full time since I was 17, I’m almost 36 now and after a few false starts I’ve been at a job which really suits me in terms of the structure and management style and flexibility for just over two years now.

You could also ensure the employer knows about his diagnosis and they would have to make reasonable adjustments

Good luck!

Yes ASD and ADHD which he’s on medication.
I do try and get him to apologise and help the situation and to see it not as an insult but to see how they’re criticising his performance not him but even though he agrees he has trouble seeing that rationally in the moment.
I think not being accepted is behind his anxiety and he sees the criticism as someone seeing the truth behind the mask that he doesn’t feel he’s good enough and he’s hiding it while they highlight it.
He has terrible imposter syndrome.

I do sympathise.

Did your son ever watch the Big Bang? I know it's a bit passé now, but Sheldon Cooper, and the explanation of the need to do things we have no understanding of, but that are politeness strategy / social conventions is spot on. I used it on my ADHD / ASD child and it works for them. Too well at times, because DC is frequently totally insincere. But it definitely works.

Could he rehearse it in front of a mirror to accustom himself to doing it?

I'd be pragmatic - if you keep arguing back, you will keep losing your jobs. Yes there will be feedback in most workplaces. No you don't need to respond every time. No the feedback is not a personal attack on you. Take a breath/count to 10 before reacting. How did he manage this in school etc?

You could try and review the scenarios with him after - what happened, how he responded, how did it work out for him, what he would like to do in similar scenario next time. Are the jobs he went for a good for for ASD/ADHD?

If I had an employee with this difficulty, I would be happy to share feedback/development points differently but not stop sharing them.

If he has PDA he has done amazingly to get a job and to manage all of the demands of working. So this feels like it might be the last hurdle!

A reasonable adjustment might be for any negative feedback/ development points to be provided in writing after his normal working hours have finished so that he has some time to reflect on them before his next shift.

Another option would be for him to request meetings to be split across two days. In the first feedback is provided but he isn’t expected to respond (then “all” you have to do is work with him on keeping thoughts internal) and then a second meeting for any discussion.

At 18, if you can’t work out another way to do it, an employer might agree to have you in those sort of meetings with him, especially if they’re a big company with a strong hr department. Although I’d use this as a last resort because it would probably be seen negatively, there is an assumption that 18 year old staff can manage these things themselves.

Is this an area your son wants to work on? Does he see it as problematic for him, and what would he like to change the most - to feel better about himself, to argue back less, to find and keep a job, to not feel criticized, to not have to respond to authority?

A few points that might help:

• People generally don't bother giving workplace feedback when they don’t have any interest in the individual. Particularly when that individual is a teenage new start. It’s much easier just to get rid of them than try and improve them. So the feedback is coming because they think that your son is worth it.
• You need to learn to take feedback to stay employed. Being unemployed sucks (Youre the person who has to make sure it sucks, full time housekeeper for you to earn keep if not earning).
• Giving feedback is a fundamental part of being a manager.

@ImSweetEnough
Of course we should all listen but it doesn't mean the other person is correct just because they are a manager, teacher, policeman etc..
No, they may not be correct (in our opinion) but they are all in a position of power so, unless you're prepared to lose your job, be excluded or arrested, calmly express an alternative POV by all means, but best to go along with the voice of authority.

This is a really difficult one to manage. I'm naturally rebellious/suspicious of authority and my instinct is always to go "fuck you" when challenged by authority.

I was terrible at this as a teenager and young adult and, looking back, threw away a lot of chances in life through belligerence and refusal to take legitimate criticism on board. I'm in my 50s now and I have learned the hard way that the person you most harm by refusing to listen to criticism is yourself so I now grudgingly accept it and try to learn from it.

I have always taught my daughter to see feedback as an opportunity to learn and thus as a gift, and I keep hammering away at the idea that its a second chance. It's also a reality that a person in authority always has more power, so kicking off without cause is shooting yourself in the foot.

Having said that, I also think its important for people to have an instinctive sense of judgement around whether "feedback" is genuinely constructive or not. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. In my current job, "feedback" is often used as an excuse to pursue personal agendas and sometimes to be downright nasty. Internalising someone else's bullshit agenda will only hurt your own self-esteem.

So while I do think its important for children to learn that a hair-trigger denial of feedback is a bad idea, I don't think they should blindly accept every critical comment which is meted out. It's important to develop a strong sense of your own barometer on how you are performing.

Couldn't disagree more. Being in authority does not automatically make someone right.

You have taken what I wrote out of context, too. I also wrote 'I would probably just keep advising him to listen initially without comment and give himself time to sleep on and think about whatever feedback he has received before commenting on it.'

'best to go along with the voice of authority'. This is dangerous advise.

....and lose your job or get arrested? Hmm.

You really need to think about the advise you gave 'best to go along with the voice of authority'

I got by as a younger adult by telling myself I was roleplaying a character at work. The person I was pretending to be cared what the manager thought (even in I personally thought they were an officious idiot).