House Work Challenges & Autistic Adults

Introduction

Pondering my own experience, this morning as I decide to make things more comfortable for myself. I will tidy up and organise the kitchen and the lounge. As I start on the kitchen bench I see everything is a clutter as things have landed on the bench and gotten no further than this. There are lightbulbs, half-filled water bottles, a couple of screw drivers, leaflets, and the list goes on. I systematically put each item where it goes and generally clean and tidy.

This household executive functioning issue goes through the generations in my family. My Grandmother often told the story of her three daughters and how different they were. She said the eldest had immaculate drawers where everything was perfectly in its place. Her youngest daughter was in between and her middle daughter, my mother, had all her belongings completely jumbled and disorderly.

Now I realize that this follows my mother throughout her life and has me wondering whether my mother has executive functioning issues.

I too, struggled with keeping a home functional and orderly. Some may say this is because we were never taught and yet my Grandmother had three different daughters when it came to being orderly and tidy. I myself was not bought up by my mother after the age of 5 years old, I was bought up with my very organized and orderly father.

I remember watching my former husband organise the bench top and he was very fast and knew immediately where to put things and how to organise it. I wondered as I watched why this was never so simple for me and now I think I have executive functioning issues.

Judgement Central for women

When I was doing my Counselling Diploma, we had some women come into speak with us about gender related issues. We were asked about our own experiences. I mentioned my experience of not feeling organized, untidiness and what this had been like for me as a woman. They were speechless and looked completely dumbfounded. Where they empathized with other womanly experiences they simply seemed to not be able to connect with mine.

Orderly, tidiness is so much associated with womanliness and believe me it is my experience that women who are not these things are harshly judged. Men can get away with this in my experience. And in many examples in my life an untidy household it is always the woman that is held responsible.

When I look deeply at any issue I often find societal myths that get in the way for many people. One of the societal myths around these issues is the myth that people often CAN do something and yet they annoyingly CHOOSE not to. This myth creates much unhappiness for all concerned. If we instead assume the best of people and believe that if they could do it they would then naturally this starts an exploration of what might be getting in the way for a person. A much more helpful and productive view!

For me when I examined my life experiences around household tasks I also find that it is even more than an executive functioning issue and for any autistic person this may be informative and uncover many contributing factors where someone needs assistance. If we do not explore other aspects of autism and even how trauma impacts we may not find something that truly helps.

How other information processing issues may be impacting

How thinking differences may be impacting- seeing the bigger picture. For me for example; I don’t think I could see the bigger picture of what difference household tasks made to my own life or how not doing certain things ultimately made life more challenging for me.

There came a time when I was going through a hugely stressful time and I needed all my energy to get through this time. My children were primary school aged. I started to notice that if certain things weren’t done they created more problems for me and that I had to use my energy wisely when I did have it.

The two big things at that time were washing the dishes in the evening straight after tea and putting my car in the garage. With the latter not done there was frost to clear up before the school run and with the former waking up to dirty dishes drained my energy and created chaos I did not have the luxury of experiencing. I learnt from this time almost to work backwards from what created problems in my everyday life if it was not done and to make this a priority to avoid this from happening.

How thinking differences may be impacting- being focused on details

For me, being focused on details sometimes would get me stuck. I would be doing a specific aspect of a household task at depth and it was hard to shift from this. It did not get the whole thing done and was time consuming. Other times I would flit from one task to another never truly getting even one thing done and in that way, I would get frustrated.

How thinking differences may be impacting- seeing other people’s view point. Another difficulty for me about this is possibly my ability to see how this was an issue for other people. My point of view was considerably different. Household tasks were boring and there were so many other much more interesting things to do.

How trauma may be impacting

For me I had trauma around household tasks. I had a very demanding step parent with extreme standards and lots of name-calling and yelling when things were not done to her expectations. I realize as an adult it would feel like when I started household tasks these would never end. This was because with the step parent she would continue to add things onto the tasks already done. Such as after folding and putting all the washing away she would claim a sock was missing from a pair and have us undo all we had done to find it.

Many autistic people experience trauma as the people around them struggle to know what to do and they themselves get frustrated and emotional. The trauma may differ for each autistic person and yet it is something when helping an autistic person that also needs to be explored. Some autistic people have not told anyone of their difficulties because they simply do not know to do this. These compounds the trauma experience.

To help, questions need to be asked so the autistic person can be invited to explore trauma impacts and therefore become aware and being given avenues to work through this.

Help with Executive Functioning and Household tasks

As with other issues a good starting place is with the ways that we know can help autistic people.

Visuals- breaking the task into specific, manageable steps

For example, creating visuals that break the task into manageable parts using pictures and or words that work well for the autistic person concerned. There also could be a tick box so the autistic person can track their progress.

Helping the autistic person understand the importance of the task

Talking with the autistic person about what it means for them if the task is not done may be extremely helpful
Incorporating special interests also may help. Either incorporating special interests into the task so that it makes it more interesting or having the person do the tasks and then participate in a special interest afterwards.

Find ways to honour energy limits

As autistic people find everyday life more draining it may be very important to decide how and when tasks are done. When for example does the autistic person feel more energetic and when do they feel most drained? What is going to make the most difference to the quality of life if it is done and what can be left?

Brainstorm creative ways to create short cuts. Also, are there shortcuts or innovative ways to complete tasks to preserve energy?

For example, I hang clothing up on coat hangers on the clothes line so that they dry effectively and can go straight into the wardrobe when bought in. I also use, those fold up racks with many pegs for and underwear so it’s easy to bring them in and hang them out.

Help the autistic person with problem solving. For many autistic people problem solving is challenging. For many this means if it’s a problem for them they will avoid whatever seems a problem for them.
So, exploring things like what gets in the way and possible ways to deal with these issues may be extremely helpful.

Conclusions

Executive Functioning issues for autistic adults may have huge impacts on the quality of life. Common disability supports are designed for intellectual disability, physical disability and mental health concerns. Often this means providing a support worker to do the task for the person. For some autistic people this may be exactly what they need. However, for others it is more helpful to empower them by providing help with the aspects of executive functioning that the autistic adult is experiencing. It is helpful to have an understanding and self-awareness about why these things are difficult and the ways that may be helpful to overcome these issues. Every autistic adult is different so spending time exploring what this means for him/her is imperative rather than assuming everyone is the same.

With appropriate help the quality of life for an autistic adult and those around him or her can be greatly enhanced.