…also known as the last three months.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s been a roller-coaster, a whirligig, and a challenge in every dimension, but here we are facing the next with renewed excitement.<\/p>\n
First there’s the college situation.\u00a0\u00a0 Our son did in fact have problems typical of autists in both the Transition to College and the Reading classes.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s worth examining these to see how his autism affected his understanding of (clear to most people) instructions.\u00a0\u00a0 He had been working willingly and consistently, so it wasn’t lack of motivation or laziness causing the difficulties.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In Transition to College, he was supposed to write an essay covering eight questions about his goals and intentions in college.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He had been working through these at home.\u00a0 But the instructor said “Turnthe paper with the questions on it into [specific office] on Thursday.”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So…M- turned in the paper with the questions on it (not his answers, just the questions) at the correct office at the correct time.\u00a0 Literal interpretation of instructions, with no insight into the purpose<\/em> of the instructions…no “street smarts” in other words.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When he got the email from his instructor asking why he’d done that, he panicked–he thought he’d done everything right.\u00a0 It took some emails, a visit to the admin office,\u00a0 and a lot of parental scaffolding to get this straightened out.\u00a0\u00a0 However, at this time we were told that there were no interim grades reported for the Reading class, but that his overall average was B.<\/p>\n I was still concerned about his reading comprehension, and the fact that the Reading class was so unstructured.\u00a0 But on the basis of what we were told about his grades at approximately mid-term,\u00a0 and the summer schedule recommended for him (the lowest level Writing class and the next Math class) we decided to move him into the city, into an apartment near the community college campus, rather than have to drive 80 miles\/day, five days a week, to transport him to the nearest bus connection…especially in light of some health problems of our own that might have compromised our ability to ensure his regular attendance.<\/p>\n This decision led to a lot more complications (a later post on that)\u00a0 but a few weeks later we found that he was now flunking the Reading class, and might need to re-take it in the summer.\u00a0 The Reading class had only two tests–one late in the\u00a0 semester and a\u00a0 final exam.\u00a0\u00a0 After consultation with the counselor, we tried intensive tutoring for the last couple of weeks of the class, and M- improved enough on the final to just pass the course.<\/p>\n His problems with reading comprehension are fairly typical; even at the high school level, students are expected to be able to “get” the point of view of others, including that of someone writing an article.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He was supposed to detect obvious bias, intent, etc.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 These higher literacy skills depend on pre-existing social skills for the same tasks…social skills he is still partly or mostly lacking.\u00a0\u00a0 Again, it’s the lack of “street smarts” and “school smarts”–the ability to assess a situation, facial expressions, tones of voice,\u00a0 the likely motivations of others in real life–that makes “reading” these things in written texts almost impossible.<\/p>\n But not completely impossible.\u00a0\u00a0 Intervention did create gains.\u00a0 He will need more coaching, probably for several more years, but the good news is that he is getting a grasp on what he doesn’t understand.<\/p>\n The next step to independence is the big move (next weekend and week) into his own apartment in the city.\u00a0\u00a0 He has been living across the street in a house we own, paying his own utilities and managing his SSI and minimal earned money on his own for two years, doing most of his own cooking,\u00a0 his own grocery shopping, etc.\u00a0 There have been glitches, but he’s gotten a lot better at it.\u00a0\u00a0 Today, he and his father went to the city and bought his textbooks for next semester and he signed the lease for his apartment.<\/p>\n Now we’ll find out if he’s capable of managing his life on his own, fifty miles from parents, in an environment at least partly new to him.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (If we didn’t think he could, we wouldn’t have gone this route….but we don’t know for sure without trying.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Will he be able to keep up with the two classes he’ll take this summer?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Will he manage his time well?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Will he keep track of his money?\u00a0 Remember to lock his door?\u00a0\u00a0 Will he be able to work part-time at all?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (His manager at the pizza place where he’s been working part-time said he would contact the manager of\u00a0 a store in the same chain that should be accessible by bus from the apartment, but all the links aren’t in place yet.)\u00a0 The financial end will be tricky, due to the rules governing SSI disability payments, but at this point we are still around to help.<\/p>\n Motivating a young person to seek more education and grow more requires that they find home “not enough” and see possibilities they have not yet experienced.\u00a0\u00a0 In M-‘s case,\u00a0 the early travel we did with him exposed him to more places with more different kinds of environments; he became dissatisfied with what’s available in this small town.\u00a0 The year he spent in the more restrictive conditions of a group home convinced him he did not want to live like that the rest of his life, and once out of that, he began to talk about college and finding jobs.\u00a0\u00a0 This motivation grew–he insisted he was ready to try college, and though he had difficulties this past semester, his commitment to more education never wavered.\u00a0\u00a0 We’ve also seen noticeable advances in his social skills (still not “there” yet, but moving the right direction) in the past months.<\/p>\n Our goal for him has always been the most complete independence possible.\u00a0 Moving to his own apartment is a huge step…what I see as the next to last huge step (the last being finding work that fully supports him so he can get off disability…and that’s one that will also be strongly affected by his autism.)\u00a0\u00a0 He’s a little apprehensive (he’s always worried about making mistakes, making people mad, etc.) and I’m certainly twitchy as well…but the young bird can’t ever fly if it never leaves the nest.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So….here we go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" …also known as the last three months.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s been a roller-coaster, a whirligig, and a challenge in every dimension, but here we are facing the next with renewed excitement. First there’s the college situation.\u00a0\u00a0 Our son did in fact have problems typical of autists in both the Transition to College and the Reading classes.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,12,26,10],"tags":[3,40,13,51,23,43,27,25,50,22,8],"class_list":["post-123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","category-life-on-the-spectrum","category-parenting","category-socialization","tag-autism","tag-college","tag-communication","tag-education","tag-flexibility","tag-independence","tag-initiative","tag-motivation","tag-parenting","tag-progress","tag-social-skills"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions\/124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}