Update: I’m now familiar with the term “demand avoidance”. One recommendation for caregivers is “declarative language”. On LessWrong we might call it “guess culture” or perhaps “tell culture”. Aesthetically I dislike it, but it works for this child (in combination with other things, including your good advice of persuasion and positive reinforcement).
Although I don’t quite fit the broader diagnosis, the phrase “demand avoidance” does describe how I’ve been at my low points—what I wanted most at those times in my life was to be free from obligations in general, such as the obligation to go to school, the obligation to get out of bed, the obligation to eat food, etc. - for there to be absolutely nothing that I would “have to” do if I preferred not to do it. Unfortunately, taking that impulse—to be free to do absolutely nothing, without anyone or anything influencing me otherwise—to its logical extreme would mean being dead, because, given physics, nonexistence is the only state in which that condition actually holds.
Update: I’m now familiar with the term “demand avoidance”. One recommendation for caregivers is “declarative language”. On LessWrong we might call it “guess culture” or perhaps “tell culture”. Aesthetically I dislike it, but it works for this child (in combination with other things, including your good advice of persuasion and positive reinforcement).
Although I don’t quite fit the broader diagnosis, the phrase “demand avoidance” does describe how I’ve been at my low points—what I wanted most at those times in my life was to be free from obligations in general, such as the obligation to go to school, the obligation to get out of bed, the obligation to eat food, etc. - for there to be absolutely nothing that I would “have to” do if I preferred not to do it. Unfortunately, taking that impulse—to be free to do absolutely nothing, without anyone or anything influencing me otherwise—to its logical extreme would mean being dead, because, given physics, nonexistence is the only state in which that condition actually holds.