Question:
Do children with ASD know that their parent /carer is under stress because
they have important things to do and thus play up more, become more noisy,
sleep less, nag more, become more obsessive etc? The behaviour was also more
extreme when supervised by other adults, in a regular activity,
necessitating parent's repeated intervention, which is unusual. Has anyone
else experienced this or is it just perception, even though it has appeared
to happen before?
Answer:
Not necessarily, but the child is likely to be more stressed...
especially if the parent is constantly trying to hurry them up
and stopping them from doing any activities they're interested
in doing at that moment in time.
This is my opinion of what happened when I was a child. My Mum
would always blame herself, or think that me and my sister were
somehow *trying* to wind her up when it was nothing of the sort.
In fact, while I was aware of her stress/emotion levels being
higher (due to various reasons, such as her telling us :P )
it didn't necessarily mean I *could* stop if/when I tried.
Many of us do pick up on stress levels in the environment very easily, and
then become stressed out by them ourselves. It's very different than being
able to read facial expressions or something.
I think there is a difference between picking up on stress and becoming
infected with it at a subconcios level and the awareness that ones parents
are stressed for instance I have a friend and I spend the day with her from
time to time, and sometimes she gets angry and snappy with me, because I
have persisted in something and not noticed she is stressed. If I knew she
were stressed I would have been able to control what I was doing in order
not to get that reaction from her
If the adult's stress / rush alters their regular behaviour (whether
they themselves are aware of it or not), then this could easily stress
out the child (by disrupting the expected routine, and the pattern of
responses which they've learned to expect in a given situation),
resulting in the observed reactions.
IOW it's *not* perverse "acting up" because they're *aware* that the
adult has urgent / important things to do - but a response to the
adult's changed behaviours causing the child increased stress.
