I believe there is Much We Can Hope for The Future of Individuals with Autism
As parents we worry about where are adult children will live and be cared for after we die or get ill. For Trent, my autistic son, I want him to be physically and psychologically safe, live in his house he rents from his brother, emotionally supported in routines he enjoys and his art interests, connected to people with similar interests, and have close individuals (family and friends) who have his back.
I believe no matter, we want our children to live with their core emotional needs met, and someone to have their back.
I have something valuable to bring to the Autism table about emotions and adaptation.
Emotional Adaptation Planning
*I help individuals with autism and emotional impairments reduce their social anxiety, fear of new settings, and connect them to the work, studies, or career that draws upon their best strengths. (What would that look like for you? or your son or daughter?)
SLIDE 2 Takeaways for this session.
-Create safety for individuals with autism at any age.
-Enhance the individual’s strengths and value.
-Recognize and develop their self emotional awareness through the process of developing strengths.
-Understand how interdependence offers expansive opportunities for the individual to share and contribute his strengths in work, studies, and life outcomes.
-Take the Marquette Strengths Index for Careers for FREE, for this conference. Just email me your email to get started.
SLIDE 3: Picture
SLIDE 4: Emotional Adaptation Model:
The purpose is to lessen anxiety and fear and to bring ease and contentment, supporting individuals with autism as it relates to daily living and their life/ career goals.
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1. Create safety for individuals with autism at any age. I offer my six E’s.
E-1 Entrust them with safety, to emotionally know contentment, and free from pain. Create emotionally safe settings. Home settings.
E-2 Offer Exposure to engage with their world – Create exposure to environments, people creating positive experiences. This may draw uncertain and fearful emotions through the process because of sensory overload and social settings. The key is to not stay only in #E-1. Rather create a structure, familiar routine. Create supports and/or take something that brings predictability from #1 in order to be effective in #2.
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2. Enhance positive emotions through the development of strengths.
E-3 Encourage and Enhance the development of self through exploring strengths and interests. The value here is the individual gains and positive emotions.
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3. Develop strengths through self emotional awareness.
Always pay attention to positive emotions through an activity. Don’t struggle working on cognitive levels, functional ability and independence without first paying attention to emotions. You must start with emphasis on emotions.
a. Using qualifying data from over a decade of my research, I designed the The Marquette Strengths and Career Index:
The Marquette Strengths and Career Index contains 177 strengths in these 4 areas:
Hard Skills (Cognitive ability to learn and apply; academics),
Self Expression (those interests and talents that make a heart sing),
Personal Preferences (the essence of who he is, the strategies that personally contributes to his adaptation. Yet without these, failure often occurs, Personal Preferences is behind all that brings about acceptance by others) and
Emotions – drive everything we do, it drives individuals with autism.
We tend to look at hard skills separately, personal preferences separately, self expression separately, and rarely do we look at developing self emotional awareness through strengths.
SLIDE 8 picture
SLIDE 9 We must integrate: Hard Skills, Self Expression, Personal Preferences, and Emotions through Activities, Work, Studies, and job/career on their behalf.
b. E-4 Enwrap – one’s life with meaning and love, united and connected to people who have the individual’s back, (i.e. united closely to others who care and love, or individual is linked to a cause whereby one feels strong and connected).
c. E-5 Enlarge one’s self awareness— When one expresses high emotions when pursuing their interests or developing talents, this can reveal options for vocations or careers. Explore vocation and career options.
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4. Interdependence offers expansive opportunities for the individual to share and contribute his strengths in work and life outcomes.
a. E-6 Expansion of Self through Interdependence – Giving or sharing unique strengths, abilities, or talents to something larger than self.
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b. Interdependence is about being mutually dependent upon each other. Each individual brings something to work, career, someone else, or to the group, etc. We are all better because of what each of us brings. It is about relying upon each other.
c. Independence in positive way produces autonomy so one is not overly reliant on another. But it loses its usefulness if held to a standard that excludes one from settings, events, or people.
SLIDE12 Video
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“Life doesn’t make any sense without interdependence. We need each other, and the sooner we learn that, the better for all of us.” Erik Erikson.
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“We must consider lifelong goals for our autism community within interdependence models, it just makes good sense. The interdependence concept promotes safety, individualism through developing strengths, and self emotional awareness for daily adaptation and careers.”
Thank you for coming to my session.
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These are copyrighted materials. What We Can Most Hope for: The Future For Individuals with Autism (c) Dr. Jackie Marquette Ph.D., 2016