Daughter thinks I am not "on her side"

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Has anyone else dealt with this?

My daughter's primary remaining deficits are social ones and often it is because she is not properly deciphering social context or is misperceiving the intentions of others. The way I deal with this is to listen to what happened and ask her questions. Then I offer alternative perspectives or things that she could try to do differently next time in hopes of getting a different outcome.

I thought I was being helpful, and my son actually finds it useful to verbally process things and listen to another perspective.

Sadly, my daughter does not see it the same way. After discussing a misunderstanding with her social group, she looked at me with tear-brimmed eyes and said "You never take my side. You always say I am wrong." I felt genuinely bad when she said that because I am always on her side. I just want to help her to learn to decipher the things that are confusing to her so that she doesn't have avoidable problems with her friends. She has difficulty learning social things implicitly, so I am trying to make them explicit. Sadly, it's the only way I know how to "help" her, but I am clearly not helping her if she is feeling like I am not on her side.

Has anyone found a way to give your kid social feedback without making them feel like you are always finding fault? Or a way to point out the flaws in their perceptions? "Flaws" sounds horrible. What I mean, for example, is that she will think that someone did something with premeditated negative intention directed toward her, when in reality there is no negative intention and it wasn't directed toward her. For example, if someone chooses the topic she wants before it is her turn to choose a topic, she will think they somehow knew that she wanted that topic and they deliberately picked it, simply so she couldn't have it. So she gets mad and lashes out at the kid, and they are left feeling blindsided because half the time I don't even think they understand why she is mad. It does not occur to her that they have no way of knowing what topic she wants, that they perhaps just have a similar interest to hers, and that they were not thinking of her at all when they picked their topic. When I try to bring these ideas up with her, she insists that I am taking the other kid's side. I'm not taking anyone's side, ykwim?

I've been on the other side of that equation where I really was not interested in my mom's social advice. I think that is normal mother/daughter dynamics. She may want empathy from you as opposed to solutions. Maybe if someone else was the advice giver she might be more receptive? Generally, I was more tolerant of it if my dad did it, but then he did it far less.

Perhaps you are right...perhaps she only wants empathy. I will admit, it would be very hard for me to stop at just empathizing. Sometimes I feel like my "teachable moment" radar is permanently stuck in hyper-drive.

Her brother sometimes tries to give her advice. That is always interesting. To say the very least!

Maybe try two things:

1) empathize more
2) tell her clearly what she did wrong instead of suggesting alternative somethings

I have always found the alternative somethings to be annoying for some reason.
It doesn't seem to help in learning social things, while someone telling what went wrong helps more, and someone empathizing can lead to figuring out together what went wrong, but the alternatives is all negative and no positive for some reason.

Interesting...because all this time I have avoided telling her directly what she did wrong, thinking that offering alternatives was less...I don't know...blaming.

So, using the example I gave about the classmate choosing "her" topic...how would I tell her clearly what she did "wrong" because I am not sure what she did "wrong"? I don't think she did anything wrong. I think she just doesn't look at things from the other person's perspective...although I guess maybe that is what she is doing wrong?

Yes, if she is doing something wrong, it is failing to appreciate the other persons perspective.

I don't learn well being told what I did wrong. I need to hear or see an alternative. I think if you're not thinking of others it may be more helpful to be told what you did wrong, I tend to be trying really hard to think of others. So depends on your daughter. If she's exhausting herself trying to think of others, though, she'll likely be more sensitive to even slight criticism.

My daughter hates her high school, and any effort by me to be encouraging, suggest she get involved in activities, and problem solve tends to make her more angry with me. She tells me she wants me to support her, and I think I am.......very disheartening.

So I agree with ASDMommy, more empathy.

Just tell her what when wrong like she was thinking X and the other person was thinking Y and their thoughts didn't match up and there was misunderstanding. This is best way to help autistic kids understand, IMO.

It is a hard thing because no one wants as much of a critique as sometimes kids with ASD need. We have days, too, where almost everything that happens is a teachable moment. It is easy to feel remiss when you let one float by.

Edited for grammar.

Last edited by ASDMommyASDKid on 12 Sep 2014, 8:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

I think it's key that she not feel she's failed or disappointed you in any way. If she's confused or if she thinks she knows what's going on and you want her to realize she's confused, that's going to make most people anxious, being confused that is. And beyond a certain low level of anxiety, most people don't learn this stuff well.

Yes. I do believe that would help. I think in my conversation, the piece I am missing is "their thoughts didn't match up." I usually just say that the other person didn't know what she was thinking and wasn't thinking of her. I think your approach would work better because in a very concrete way, it is what happened.

Yes, Waterfalls, it is disheartening when you think you are being supportive and you are told you are not.

Sometimes it's better not to try to solve the problem and just be sympathetic and let them solve it themselves. Or even ask if they want help and if they don't, to accept and wait until they do.

The only other thing I can think of to add is to make sure you point out and compliment her when she does have a successful interaction or does the "right thing".

Somewhere I read to "catch them being good" (meaning children) and to make sure to point that out as much as times when they need discipline or direction.

I am trying to remember this with my girls ( one on the spectrum and both teens) and I think it can help a child feel that you are "on their side".

I also love the idea of the description of "their thoughts not matching up"....I'm going to remember that for my daughter on the spectrum!

InThisTogether - I can totally relate. My daughter (13 and 8th grade) seems to take every comment from me as a criticism of her. It is disheartening because I love her so much and want to help. She functions at a high level academically but had some lingering social issues - but she does not want advice or input from me. It is hard to see her upset and not offer a solution to "fix it"

She has told me explicitly that she knows she will make mistakes, but she will learn from them. She had a recent situation that where she was invited to two birthday parties on the same weekend (I realize a good problem to have) and she had accepted the first invite before the second one came in. She did not want to hurt the second girls feelings so she made up a (totally unnecessary) lie about why she could not attend, which then was found out. She then lied to cover that up. It was a disaster and when she was sobbing and telling me about it I didn't know what to do. I just said, "Well, did you learn something from this?" Ugh!

Anyway, I have no real solutions to offer - just that I can relate, and to send support to all the moms here. All the best to you and your daughter.

I am going to agree that, at heart, this sounds like a mother-daughter thing, and mirrors what happens when I try to help or teach my daughter. I get accused of telling her she can't do anything right, of never being supportive, and so on and so on. I think ASDMommyASDkid is probably right that what our daughters want from mom is simply empathy, beginning and end. When they want advice, they will say they want advice.

It makes it so hard for us to protect our daughter's from repeating their own mistakes.

I think that puts you in a particularly tough spot because it sounds like your daughter definitely has trouble understanding the situations and, well, often IS reaching incorrect solutions. Someone has to teach her those things. I wonder if getting another family member to present the information would work.

DW - not sure if your reply was to me or InThis -

I would say my daughter is definitely reaching incorrect solutions, but my hope, and it seems her desire, is that she learn from that process. Her attitude is I'm a good kid, I'm an "A" student, so stay out of my social life. Obviously, as a parent I monitor things, but at this age, and with all the outlets kids have with social media and such, and the fact that she spends most of her time at school and activities, I often don't know of things till after the fact and only if she chooses to tell me. The teen years are soooo complicated and I've she's just entered them.....I feel much wine will be consumed in the next few years. By me I mean, not my daughter.....at least hoprfully.....

InThis - sorry if I hijacked your original question.

No worries about hijacking...I do it all the time, and to be honest, I do not even really agree that there is such a thing as hijacking. We are having a conversation, it is only natural that people in this conversation will respond to other people besides me.

One of the things that I think makes this even more difficult for me is that she is only 8. It is much easier for me to take a step back when my son asks me to (he is 12), because even though he also has social issues, he has learned more than she has and has a little more experience to draw from. It is also difficult with her because she always thinks she is right so self-reflection does not come naturally to her.

I guess am going to try to simply be empathetic with the "small stuff" where the consequences are low, and save the teaching for things that are either more pervasive issues or have a larger potential for escalating. But I am definitely holding on to the phrase that her thoughts don't match the thoughts of the other person. She is a visual kid, and I think this is a very visual explanation of what happens a lot of the time. It is also a similar feel to the materials from socialthinking.com, which she is familiar with and seems to "get."

Things would be a lot easier if she was like my son. He hardly ever questions my social judgement. He just recognizes that mine is better than his, so he listens to my explanation of why something happened and tries to learn from it. But then again, he is a laid back, easy-going kid. Those are not words that you would generally use to describe my daughter!