Is planning ONLY ok if you made the plans?

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I just read the thread regarding what you hate about NTs and saw that one of the things was the "lack of planning" or not adhering to a plan.

As an NT to my adult son with AS, I am a bit confused. I ask questions best by actual example, so here goes:

Every year, I have planned a family vacation to Catalina Island in the summer. Every year I also reserve my sons their own each individual condo because I knew that 1.) at their age, they did not want to spend it rooming with their mom and 2.) my son with AS needed his alone time and privacy during the vacation. But because Catalina is a very busy place during the summer, I would always make reservations for the activities which we would be participating in (ie - chartering a fishing boat, zip-lining, excursions, barbeques, etc). This had been going on for years until 3 years ago when my son with AS finally told me that, although he enjoyed going on the trip, he HATED that I made plans for everything and my planning would just stress him out.

I still plan activities, however, now simply let them know that we have reservations made for this or that and if they would like to participate, we would be here or there at a certain time. If they decided not to come, that was fine with us. This has proven to be a very successful way of handling my "planning" of activities and everyone is much more relaxed and happy.

So, my question is this: Is planning ok ONLY when you make the plans??

I am fine with plans from anyone, as long as I know them in advance.

What I dislike is when, for example, someone asks me if I want to go out to lunch with them. But then after lunch, they want to stop at some stores and look around. I only planned for the lunch and I will at the very least have a lot of frustration and anxiety about this.

I am going to give an uncharacteristically short answer today and say: sometimes yes, sometimes no. It's not so much that I care about whether I or someone else made the plan, it's more that, whatever the plan is, I want to adhere to it. If I made the plan, I wish to follow it through to the end, if someone else made the plan, I want to follow it as well. I'm currently in the process of trying to learn how too be a lot less rigid and a lot more flexible with regard to this.

Other people's plans are always strange, imprecise. More to the point, they are not mine. The only way I can cope with them is by not caring what happens (this happens often).

I am OK with others making plans and me following along. Ackshuly, I would rather have others make my plans for me than me have to make my own plans. I do not enjoy making plans, and I am not good at making plans. Making plans for vacation activities would stress me out a lot.

For me, it is the changes in the plans that are not good. The most hated changes are the ones that involve prolonging an activity beyond its planned length. Let's go to another store and another store and another store on our shopping trip. Let's visit this unplanned place to spend an unplanned hour in this unplanned place doing unplanned things. These are my problems with plans. When I am doing things with others, I like the things to end when they are planned to end, because I can only handle a certain amount of others and the world before my brain goes fry-fry.

The short answer is, Yes.

I find that sort of situation easier if i've bought into the plan.
Would it be possible for you to include him in the plan making?

Does your son specifically have his own room? It helps me a whole lot knowing that a have a refuge available.

Maybe you could ask your son if he would like, for example, to be the one who plans the zip-lining?

I certainly would love for him to make any of the plans, especially if it was for something that he would enjoy doing.

Unfortunately, much of his time is spent in his room or on the patio, just relaxing. He will bring multiple items from his home to use in his condo (computers, musical equipment, etc). He always brings along a friend, so I think that he waits for his friend to motivate him to go on certain events which I have planned.

That sounds on the positive side that he brings a friend along.

If there are one or two events you most want you son to attend, maybe you could just tell him this. (some 'obvious' stuff is not obvious to us and that's the zen of it all! we still do care about others)

Yes. I always get each son a 2 bedroom condo which consists of the 2 bedrooms each with their own bathrooms (my son also has what appears to be IBS), living room and kitchens. All fully equipped.

He loves having his own condo to get away from the rest of us whenever he wishes to.

I always ask him if he would like to plan an activity and he seems somewhat indifferent. That's not to say that he doesn't enjoy those activities which he participates in though. Most all of the times he does enjoy getting out. Just getting him to go would prove difficult. So now he simply chooses which activity he wants to go on.

Thank you for this.

I am learning that you are absolutely right about 'caring about others'. Until recently learning about AS, I had begun to believe that he didn't care about me. Now, I just want to learn more so that I can understand and not always apply my "NT thinking" about his actions and/or reactions.

This forum (and everyone here) has helped me tremendously. I know that my son will also visit here from time to time since learning about WrongPlanet.

For me personally, I don't mind if someone makes a plan providing I have no conflicts with it and I know in advance. I can't stand being invited out to places at the last minute on the day its actually happening. I like to prepare mentally for doing things, anything spur of the moment just makes me feel anxious and annoyed.

I prefer to make my own plans, but can occasionally handle plans by others if I know well in advance. They had better not make any major changes without letting me know, though. I tend not to like to go along with the plans of others, though, due to my health issues. Due to sleep apnea and IBS I have a very irregular sleep/wake schedule, so it is very difficult to handle rigidly scheduled activities of any kind. I am usually too tired to go any where, and I suffer from usually only getting about 4-6 hours of sleep at a time, so I often have to go back to sleep after a meal and a bathroom break. My IBS keeps me in the bathroom a lot, so it is difficult to be ready by a specific time. Because of this I prefer to make my own flexible plans, that allow me to make changes based on how much sleep I've had, and how long I had to use the toilet, and by whether I can be ready in time to go to the desired destination long enough before they close to get anything done there. If things don't come together right, then I can just stay home and do stuff here or go back to bed to try to get some more sleep.

I have no problem with others planning activities; just tell me what's going on and what you need me to do, and give me some advance notice. Sudden change of plans don't always go over well with me. If something takes longer than planned or happens later than planned, it can really aggravate me, especially if I was going to do something afterward.

I would prefer to have some control in choosing what to do. Following other people's plans is okay if the plans are for things that I already know I like doing and if I have enough time to prepare for them.

If I went on vacation, I would not like to be constantly doing unfamiliar things. Doing new things is okay, but I need time to recover after doing each new thing. For example, when I went on a trip last year, I did several new things, but in between them I needed time to go back to the hotel room.

If I do something new and I like it I will want to keep doing it, and having to stop will be bad. If I do something new and don't like it I will want to stop immediately, and not being able to will be bad.

Regardless of how much I might like doing some new things which I try, doing multiple new things in a row is overwhelming. I have learned to try one new thing per week. That's a good way to learn about a wide variety of things. But multiple new things in succession is difficult to handle.

Last edited by matt on 16 May 2012, 3:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.