{"id":2990,"date":"2024-03-11T01:18:06","date_gmt":"2024-03-11T07:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/?p=2990"},"modified":"2024-03-06T01:42:32","modified_gmt":"2024-03-06T07:42:32","slug":"parenting-an-autistic-teen-with-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/2024\/03\/parenting-an-autistic-teen-with-prayer\/","title":{"rendered":"Parenting an Autistic Teen with Prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

When I was a young mother, I was physically exhausted. I was sure that parenting would get easier as my son got older. But nobody told me that teens are way harder than babies to parent. You go from physically exhausted to emotionally exhausted. And there is so much drama! One kid is trying to make another look bad to make them look good. And as a parent, there is nothing you can do about the mess except try to support your kid.<\/span><\/p>\n

Social stress<\/span><\/h2>\n Parenting teens is challenging<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Recently I have spent a lot of time on my knees. I worry for my son. His autism<\/a> makes social situations harder because he doesn\u2019t always get social cues. <\/span><\/p>\n And the other teens aren\u2019t old enough or experienced enough to express themselves well. They don\u2019t deal well when social cues are missed. I watch kids at church as they try to fit in. There are a lot of kids on the autism spectrum in my congregation.<\/span><\/p>\n One girl I know well is struggling because she keeps giving another girl (who happens to be on the autism spectrum) hints that she needs space. She tries and tries until she has had it and snaps at the girl. The poor autistic girl never understood the hints and only saw the snapping and is devastated because she doesn\u2019t know what she did wrong.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Online Influences<\/span><\/h2>\n** ** **Because social situations are hard, my son has a lot of friends online. You have one less interactive tool when you are online, and sometimes that makes a big difference. It\u2019s easier with less stimuli for a lot of kids on the spectrum. There is also more time to think about your responses, which reduces the stress of an interaction. My son is very social and is often searching out new online forums to find more friends. It stresses me out because online it is easy to hide who you are.<\/span><\/p>\n Prayer is a vital parenting tool.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n** ** There is another serious concern because a lot of kids on the spectrum take things at face value. They don\u2019t see the potential danger in online interactions. And some even think it is fun to do dangerous things. One group of kids my son knows love to doxx each other. (Doxxing is when you publish personal addresses online.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n ** We have worked hard to teach our son how to be safe online. He no longer shares information that he shouldn\u2019t. But things are getting more complicated daily, and scammers are getting smarter. And I worry about his safety online.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n ** **I also worry because some would try to influence unsuspecting kids to try things that can hurt them. As a parent, you think to have the \u201cdon\u2019t drink or do drugs\u201d talk. But what about the \u201cdon\u2019t inhale compressed air\u201d talk? I never thought of that one. And I worry there are more I missed.<\/span><\/p>\n Parenting through Prayer<\/span><\/h2>\n**** ** ****After a particularly trying week of teen drama and autism worries, I decided our family needed to be on the temple prayer roll. Every LDS temple has a Prayer Roll. It\u2019s a list of people that temple patrons have a special concern for.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n At every temple session (about one per hour), prayers are said for those on the prayer roll. They pray not only for that temple but for every temple around the world. It equates to millions of prayers being said on behalf of those on the temple prayer rolls. I have seen many miracles brought about by that intensity of prayer. If you have someone you would like to add to the Temple Prayer Roll<\/a>, it\u2019s open to all.<\/span><\/p>\n I had tried everything else and was still parenting blind. But within hours of placing our family on the Prayer Roll, I felt better. Life still had the same challenges, but I felt I could handle them better. And as I kept following my feelings, things started to work themselves out.<\/span><\/p>\n Therapy\/ Parenting coach<\/span><\/h2>\n**** ** ****We started family therapy, and that has been amazing. My husband and I see the therapist for parenting coaching. Parenting an autistic teen is nothing like a neurotypical teen. We have our son see the therapist too. He needs someone to confide in who isn\u2019t his parents. <\/span><\/p>\n Teen years are hard, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n**** ** ****As a group, we are growing through some of our challenges. I highly recommend that you find a good therapist if you have an autistic child. Honestly, with how challenging parenting is in this world, I would suggest you get a good therapist no matter what.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ve started praying daily that my son will find good friends. I was impressed to encourage him to go to a Seminary<\/a> class. It\u2019s a class for teens that teaches them about the scriptures and God\u2019s love for them. <\/span><\/p>\n My son\u2019s teacher has a special gift for helping connect the scriptures to daily life. As he has gone to Seminary he is finding more peace in his life. I can see it on his face. He seems like he is having fun, and willingly continues to attend class.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Socializing<\/h2>\n****** ** Soon after he decided to go to the Seminary, he wanted to attend church youth activities. He hadn\u2019t previously gone to either one; avoiding church for years. He finds it stressful. As you can see, I was very concerned that he had limited his contact with the outside world. I know he wants friends but locking himself away wasn\u2019t the way to find them. Now he has a much better chance of success.<\/span><\/p>\n ** I\u2019m still praying daily. And I\u2019ve decided to keep our family on the Prayer Roll till my son is out of the terrible teens. I call it parenting via the Prayer Roll. I never expected parenting a teen to be this hard. But with God\u2019s help, I am muddling through. I am praying for clarity and understanding so I can anticipate his needs. With God\u2019s help, I can see a light at the end of the tunnel. My son is a great kid. And soon he will become a great man. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ** ******When I was a young mother, I was physically exhausted. I was sure that parenting would get easier as my son got older. But nobody told me that teens are way harder than babies to parent. You go from physically exhausted to emotionally exhausted. And there is so much drama! One kid is trying to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3521,"featured_media":2996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,8],"tags":[6,91],"class_list":["post-2990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-autism","category-overcoming-trials","tag-autism","tag-parenting"],"yoast_head":"\nParenting an Autistic Teen with Prayer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When I was a young mother, I was physically exhausted. I was sure that parenting would get easier as my son got older. 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I'm Abby Christianson, a transplanted Mormon living the dream. In my life, I've lived in seven different US states and visited other countries. And the thing that amazes me is that in every place I've been the LDS (Mormon) church is the same. The people have hearts of gold, and their love for the Savior is unchanging. But for some reason, people still think Mormons are weird, backward, and sometimes even Amish. I'm here to try to help clear up the misconceptions about Mormons by showing you that we are just like you. We love our families, eat junk food, love movies, and spend time with friends. And just like you, our faith and values go deep. So join me as I keep trying to scatter sunshine everywhere I go. And hopefully, you'll find your faith in Christ strengthened along the way. Autism and more I'm also here to talk about Autism, and being an Autism Mom. There were few resources online when my son was diagnosed. So I want to be a support to those parents who are trying to figure out their child, and how best to support them. My wonderful son stretches me and helps me grow every day. I love being his mother and the things that make him unique. In 2020, every autism service stopped. So I got trained to be an RBT (Low-level autism therapist) with BehaviorUniversity.com. It has made homeschooling and doing at-home ABA easier as I understand my son better. They have some courses for parents to help them understand autism better, and I highly recommend them if you are searching. We have been home-schooling off and on for 6 years now. And it's wonderful to see my son thriving. Education and background Although my degree is not in education, I do have degrees from BYU Idaho and Southern Utah University in public relations, interpersonal communication, and marketing. I was lucky enough to get to teach a couple of freshman classes at SUU as part of my senior project. I have the best memories of those times. And it showed me how much I love to teach. While at SUU I was on the debate team. I wasn\u2019t great, but I loved the team and the feeling of unity we had. As a member of the Lambda Delta Signa sorority, I spent a year as VP of my chapter. I served on Institute Council and in leadership with my choir. And I was a member of the Lambda Pi Eta honor society. Funny enough, I was nominated as SUU\u2019s personality of the year in my senior year because I was so involved When my son was small I was part of the PTA at bus school \u00a0I even served on the PTA board and taught art classes to the kids. \u00a0I also volunteered to help out in the cafeteria. And I was a \u2018recess duty\u2019 meaning I got to be outside as a responsible adult during recess I love to write and wrote for LDSblogs.com as Abby Christianson and as Patty Sampson for many years. I took over editing LDS Blogs when our beloved editor Terri Bittner passed away suddenly from brain cancer in 2017. Then in 2020, LDSblogs.com stopped publishing after the pandemic affected their funding. But they are still online and some great stories are there if you are interested. I'm a lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I've been married for 23 years, and a mother for 15 years. I love people and creating in any capacity I can. I hope you'll join me as we navigate this crazy world we live in.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/author\/achristianson\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Parenting an Autistic Teen with Prayer","description":"When I was a young mother, I was physically exhausted. I was sure that parenting would get easier as my son got older. 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I'm Abby Christianson, a transplanted Mormon living the dream. In my life, I've lived in seven different US states and visited other countries. And the thing that amazes me is that in every place I've been the LDS (Mormon) church is the same. The people have hearts of gold, and their love for the Savior is unchanging. But for some reason, people still think Mormons are weird, backward, and sometimes even Amish. I'm here to try to help clear up the misconceptions about Mormons by showing you that we are just like you. We love our families, eat junk food, love movies, and spend time with friends. And just like you, our faith and values go deep. So join me as I keep trying to scatter sunshine everywhere I go. And hopefully, you'll find your faith in Christ strengthened along the way. Autism and more I'm also here to talk about Autism, and being an Autism Mom. There were few resources online when my son was diagnosed. So I want to be a support to those parents who are trying to figure out their child, and how best to support them. My wonderful son stretches me and helps me grow every day. I love being his mother and the things that make him unique. In 2020, every autism service stopped. So I got trained to be an RBT (Low-level autism therapist) with BehaviorUniversity.com. It has made homeschooling and doing at-home ABA easier as I understand my son better. They have some courses for parents to help them understand autism better, and I highly recommend them if you are searching. We have been home-schooling off and on for 6 years now. And it's wonderful to see my son thriving. Education and background Although my degree is not in education, I do have degrees from BYU Idaho and Southern Utah University in public relations, interpersonal communication, and marketing. I was lucky enough to get to teach a couple of freshman classes at SUU as part of my senior project. I have the best memories of those times. And it showed me how much I love to teach. While at SUU I was on the debate team. I wasn\u2019t great, but I loved the team and the feeling of unity we had. As a member of the Lambda Delta Signa sorority, I spent a year as VP of my chapter. I served on Institute Council and in leadership with my choir. And I was a member of the Lambda Pi Eta honor society. Funny enough, I was nominated as SUU\u2019s personality of the year in my senior year because I was so involved When my son was small I was part of the PTA at bus school \u00a0I even served on the PTA board and taught art classes to the kids. \u00a0I also volunteered to help out in the cafeteria. And I was a \u2018recess duty\u2019 meaning I got to be outside as a responsible adult during recess I love to write and wrote for LDSblogs.com as Abby Christianson and as Patty Sampson for many years. I took over editing LDS Blogs when our beloved editor Terri Bittner passed away suddenly from brain cancer in 2017. Then in 2020, LDSblogs.com stopped publishing after the pandemic affected their funding. But they are still online and some great stories are there if you are interested. I'm a lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I've been married for 23 years, and a mother for 15 years. I love people and creating in any capacity I can. I hope you'll join me as we navigate this crazy world we live in.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/author\/achristianson\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/scatteringsunshine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}