Don’t ask a question unless you are prepared for the answer

Or, you’ve got a good follow-up to the answer.

My daughter has been having a rough time at her day program and her group home. Things at her job seem to be going well. 

So except for the job, everything sucks. She wants to quit her day program because the groups are all repetitive. She wants to move out of the group home because 1 housemate seems to always be an attention seeker, and the chores aren’t fair. I talked to the house supervisor and got the information on what’s been going on. It seems she’s been having some meltdowns, bursting into tears for the littlest things.

I decided since she had 3 days off during the week she should have a home visit and we’d go over things. We had lunch and I went over a few items on my outline of things to discuss. A major one is equal or it’s not  fair. I explained to her how things aren’t always equal, but things even out, even if now seems really unfair. (Where do I get these lines from? Oh, right! My Mom!)

Later, I made up a set of questions that in a backwards kind of way get her to think about how her problems can be resolved or worked through. 

It was 10 questions that started with, list your coping skills, then for each, list how you can use them. List the things in grade school that you learned by repetition. The last 3 questions were about goals. What do you want to accomplish in the next 3 months, 6 months, year? See how I made her think about things she learned through repetition? 😏

She answered all the questions and came up with some really good arguments against the issues she’s having. In other words, she came up with her own solutions and I didn’t need to say ‘you have to go to day program.’

The 3 month and 6 month goals were very much expected. The 1 year goal through me for a loop. My spouse’s jaw dropped when she read it. My daughter wants to be living independently with her significant other (her words) and having her first child. She is 25, in a year will be 26. I was 32 when I had her. My Mom was 33 when she had me. Sooo, that’s what I’m going with.

Update:So we had lunch again Thursday. We went over everything again. We talked about her 1 year plan and I told her how old I was when I had her, and how old my Mom was when she had me. Using the comparison and saying how both my Mom and I were more mature and better able to be a Mom. I also asked her to remember the last time she was around a baby and how she saw how much is involved. That really made an impression.

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