embarrassment!! Is it a good thing?

Well, there was a time when my daughter didn’t care what others thought, so now that she’s self-conscious to the extent that it could even bring her to a melt down if someone sees her make a mistake or get hurt, it adds a new challenge to our life-the need to comfort while reigning in the anger and containing the “crash”.  It is quite ironic that embarrassment ends up drawing more attention to her because of her behavior. Maybe someday this will motivate her to hold in her anger and frustration, cooperate, use calming techniques, maybe even laugh it off- be thick skinned, be human!  Could this low level “peer pressure” grow into motivating her to try harder, learn more, be more mature, be more positive? We can only hope

this is what happened-

after 6 years of horse back riding, 2 years of cantering, 6 months of jumping the inevitable happened- her horse refused the jump. she’s seen it happen to many girls and many horses, it’s pretty typical any time the horse is tired, the rider hasn’t given the right cues, the horse hasn’t picked up enough speed for the jump, or there are too many distractions in the arena. It can mean that the horse is being stubborn or, as in this case, is protecting his rider in an unsafe situation.  The horse is communicating that something is wrong and stops short. It can be dangerous, we’ve seen riders be thrown off, although this is rare. Usually, and this time, the rider (maribel) was just startled….. and scared, then embarrassed, and then mad!!! at the horse, at me (?), at the trainer, at the other girls looking at her, and at herself. We’ve seen other riders work through this scenerio- you scold the horse, turn him around and do the jump over to teach him that you are the boss and he can’t just decide which jumps he will and will not jump, then praise the horse when he does the jump successfully, then you move on- it should be a nonevent. she knows this, but couldn’t pull herself together enough to do it.

she was tired and hungry so for this to happen at the end of her lesson only added to her being physically exhausted.

this is what i did-

gave her privacy for her tears (asked other riders to give us one side of the arena)

gave her a surgery drink (her blood sugar gets low when she’s upset and i keep something on hand)

listened without criticism

set limits if she started to swear or be rude, or if she was scolding or hitting the horse  “not allowed!!”

gave choices (ride appropriately or get off)

had her move forward- having the horse walk slowly seemed to comfort them both

calmly and privately left the arena, untacked the horse and left (she went to the car on her own to rest)

spent lots of time assuring her that her horse was protecting her from jumping when he wasn’t ready

Now we have to work on rebuilding trust, it will be a slow road and she might stop jumping for a while (she loves it, but now she’s scared). We will also write out a strategy for how she can handle it better next time.

and then we can talk about how it felt to be embarrassed and how to handle that uncomfortable feeling! growing pains seem to be so much worse when you have autism, but i believe the horse helps build confidence and will eventually motivate my daughter to handle these new emotions and her reaction to them.

like my husband said- “at least she cares what others think!”