Reading the Research: Building Confidence

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today's article showcases an important step in living a happier life.  For everyone, really.  Everyone benefits from learning independence skills and having more control over their lives.  It's particularly relevant for autistic people, though, because we don't have the same opportunity to learn these skills.  

This article focuses on medical self-care skills.  Things like filling a prescription, scheduling a doctor's appointment, managing co-pays, and understanding insurance plans are stuff I had to more or less learn on the fly.  Even now, I'm not honestly sure I have the latter one all figured out.  

Which is why the assessment proposed in the article would be so helpful.  Typically, you don't really know you lack these skills until the time comes to use them, by which point it's very "sink or swim."  For people who don't typically thrive on improvisation, such as myself, this added challenge on top of all the other life challenges is not a kindness.  It's exhausting.  

I'm pretty sure if I took the assessment, I'd probably score low in the "how to deal with law enforcement" section.  Maybe average to above average in the rest, since I've been on my own for a while.  All the same, I kind of wish I could take the assessment and whatever training might come with it.  Being an adult is shockingly complicated, especially when you factor in complicated medical needs and support services.  

The thing is, a lot of autistic people tend to lack confidence in our skills.  Myself included.  The world, and sometimes even our friends and family, spends a lot of time telling us that we're disabled and can't do things for ourselves.  Sometimes this is true.  Sometimes this is only temporarily true, and with practice and education we can manage things for ourselves.  

But we do have to be given the chance to try, and that's where a lot of the autism parents I've run into struggle.  Making the transition from being Protector from All Harm to Square One is something done in stages, and requires trust, patience, and the willingness to let the person fail.  

Teaching self-management skills, such as these medical self-care skills, is one piece of that.  No matter how good a job you do protecting a person from the world, there will always come a time when you can't be there.  Doesn't it make sense to prepare them for it, rather than hiding from it as long as possible?  

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)