Re: Re:The future of our children/Sue

[Guest guest]

Sue's post had me thinking of my father who is 72 now. My father was always very smart and mostly self taught. He went on to become an machinist in the auto industry where he had little contact with only a few men in the shop. He got blueprints to work off of and his information came from the papers laid out in front of him. He didn't have to rely on his boss for the input, just the blueprints. I get it now that this was the perfect set-up for my father. Eventually, my father set up his own tool shop in our backyard and used to work out of there--all alone. It looked pitiful to me and outsiders, but my father never complained. He always preferred the newspaper or a book to people or tv. My mother was a quiet, timid woman--a fit, I guess for the both of them.

On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 1:31 PM, rushen janice <jrushen@...> wrote:

 

Sue,

 

I have tears running down my face...you wrote a beautiful post...beautiful in that you are so correct...so right on...but don't give up (which I know you won't).  There is a place...a niche...a job out there for your son...and finding it may be a challenge...but in my heart I know there is something he can do....somewhere he will fit in...and I am not talking Mcs. Don't listen to those teachers.....if he has computer skills...he will make it.  No all jobs require " people " skills.  My husband, I swear, has AS but was never dx.  He is 62.  He has made it in this world...even with his lack of social skills and awkwardness...why?  Now that I sit here and think about it...I realize it was because I was behind him pushing him all along.  And, you will do the same with your son...and some day...I pray...he meets the right woman who will do the same thing. 

 

Keep plugging along....take it a step at a time...I think you are doing an awesome job...and let me tell  you ...I cried reading your post. So much is true...but keep working on the social skills...tune them a little...but in the long run..he will find the right job at the right time. I have no doubt about it...and it will not be a Mc's job.

 

Watch the movie Adam....I know it is just a movie....but it is exactly how I feel about our gifted wonderful loving children.....

 

jan 

" In the Midst of Difficulty lies Opportunity "     Albert Einstein

 

Success is not measured by one's position but by the obstacles one has overcome to obtain that position

From: Pamela <susanonderko@...>

Sent: Tue, July 20, 2010 11:35:07 AMSubject: ( ) Re:The future of our children 

Dear Sue, What a wonderful and thoughtful explanation of the type of issues often kids with Asperger's Syndrome experience.Pam

>> I hope I'm wrong, but I read you post as a kind of criticism of how many of us are raising our children. And I hope you're right. I hope what you're doing with your son will head off the many problems that develop as these children get older. We have three sons with AS. The oldest is 19. The other two are 15 and 12. The 15 yo is less affected, and will, I think, have a relatively normal future. The 19 yo and the 12 yo are facing a different set of challenges.

> > When my 19yo was 7 the way your son is now, I too thought he had a bright future ahead of him. There were problems at school but none of his classmates had really sophisticated social skills and they were very nonjudgemental. He also had a friend and we had just learned that his verbal IQ was/is about 200. He taught himself to read grown-up novels shortly after his third birthday. He was truly brilliant. I was envisioning a future for him that might include being an author or a college professor. You know, quirky, but brilliant.

> > When he was 7 1/2 the military transferred us to a different state, and we elected to move into a district that had a fabulous program for gifted kids. The biggest problem for my son was that he eventually lost contact with that one friend he had (and has never been able to make another one).

> > At 8yo he was moved to a full-time gifted program. I was so proud of him and it just reinforced my hopes for his future. AS wasn't going to stand in the way of anything for my son. It wasn't going to be an excuse for a failure to achieve. Yeay! Unfortunately, a gifted program involves lots of transitions all the time. The typical gifted children thrived, but my son was totally overwhelmed. The day came when the principal told us that if we brought him back to school the next day, he would expel him. I was completely new to the IEP world, and didn't know that this was an empty and illegal threat, so I pulled him out and homeschooled him for the next couple of years--all the while working on social skills and learning coping mechanisms. He did *wonderfully* academically, but when I put him in school I asked them to have his repeat the year we had just completed to give him an extra year to prepare socially for middle school. The school agreed, and, again, I was hopeful that things were back on track for a successful future.

> > Middle school was a mess. He got lumped in with ED classes because he needed a smaller group and the same district that has such a wonderful program for gifted kids has literally nothing for kids with high functioning autism. The ED kids victimized my son--especially in gym class--to the point that his teachers had him pulled out of that setting and moved to an LD setting instead. Well, so much for that brilliant academic future. LD classes don't move as quickly as even general ed. classes for obvious reasons.

> > High school rolled around, and my son got a wonderful case manager who took a personal interest in him. He was available to support my son throughout the day, and many of the problems we'd seen in middle school improved a lot. But he still had no friends, and he was constantly getting in trouble with his grades because he was so very disorganized. You see he has executive functioning deficits. Keeping himself as organized as a typical high school student is literally impossible for him. Where could he get more help with staying organized? The LD classes. He did, however, have some non-special ed. classes. Latin for example--and he did *very* well on tests and quizzes because he has a photographic memory--but he was still so disorganized about his homework. Also, by now his lack of friends was really hurting him. He wrote an entry in his journal concerning how hopeless he felt and wondering why he didn't just kill himself. I got a call to come to the school immediately. We talked with his case manager and I took our son home for a mental health day. We also contacted his psychiatrist (by now he was on several meds--including ADHD meds in an attempt to improve his executive functioning skills--so he had a psychiatrist. He was also in social skills therapy with a social worker, and we brought her in on the problem. The specialists couldn't really do much about the root of the problem though. The boy was lonely and you can't *make* other kids accept someone as a friend. We hoped that he'd make friends with someone from his social skills group which had several kids with AS, but what we found was that then *neither* boy had much in the way of social skills, and they would tend to get involved with their focal interests and ignore each other.

> > Skipping forward a couple of years, we found that it was time to start thinking about what our son would do when he finished high school. I was still thinking that a 4-year college was a natural choice for such a smart kid. The case manager gradually broke it to me that our son should get some trade skills in case college didn't work out. I was seeing here on this board that *many* parents who tried to send their AS kids to college were failing despite herculean efforts. Our son's social worker told me that AS kids " crash and burn " in college. Her daughter--also with AS--had just completed the required classes for a degree in teaching, but at the last minute, the faculty informed her that she wouldn't be granted the degree or certificate or whatever because they knew she lacked the social skills to teach and they couldn't in good conscience grant her the credentials she would need to become a teacher. She fell apart (including moving out and becoming homeless for a while), and her mother was desperately trying to pick up the pieces.

> > We decided to let our son try the high school's technical school. Two years later, he has five professional certifications in the computer repair/website design area. He loves the work, but his instructors informed me that they don't think he'll be able to hold a job in the field. Lack of social skills. For example, he finished the unit way ahead of other kids, but when his teacher asked him to help a fellow student who was having problems, he wound up asking the kid if he was stupid or what? Also, that executive functioning issue is rearing it's ugly head again. He can't really problem solve the way he would need to be able to in a professional capacity.

> > Then there are the day to day issues. He can't remember to take his medicine by himself. Simple problems confuse him because he has trouble generalizing one experience to a similar, but different, one in the future. Personal hygiene is getting better, but we still have to remind him every day to use deodorant, shave, and brush his teeth. If we don't do that, it doesn't get done because he really can't see why he should care about how other people see him.

> > So here we are. He's 19 and taking a fifth year of high school to give him a little more developmental time (kids with IEPs can do that). His psychiatrist suggested that we needed to make him our ward because he still needs someone to take care of him--we're hoping he'll " grow out of " this, but realistically, only time will tell whether that's possible. I've had him evaluated by the Department of Rehabilitative Services, so he can get job placement and job coaching help--but I'm worried that means they'll get him hired on at Mc's to sweep the floor. I *still* want to see him go to college, but we've learned that colleges that offer support programs for kids with AS are *very* expensive. There's a really attractive program at NYIT--but it's so expensive that we can't possibly afford it. I'm supposed to be working on getting our son qualified for SSI because we could use that income to help him with a program like that, but I'm kind of overwhelmed and *he* certainly can't do it himself.

> > This has gotten hideously long, and I hope I haven't lost you, because what I really want to say is that even *very* high functioning children (and their parents) have major hurdles to overcome. The social and executive function deficits are *so* much more handicapping than you think they are when your child is very young. Also, children who can be diagnosed at 5 or 6 yo probably *aren't* all that high functioning. Most kids who are truly high functioning Aspies aren't diagnosable until they're in late grade school or even high school because they can compensate up until then.

> > As a parent, raising a child with Asperger's can mean dealing with the death of one dream after another for your child's future. It truly is heartbreaking. I know because we're living it. My son is still a wonderful person. He's sweet and innocent in a way that other people aren't. He's cute. He's brilliant. And yet none of that is enough to keep him from having the sort of limited future I could never have envisioned for him when he was 7yo.

> > I sincerely hope that your experience with AS follows a different pathway from ours. It's entirely possible that it will because every person with AS is different from every other person with AS. I'm just saying you need to be careful about judging other parents because you could so easily be walking in their shoes in ten years.

> > Peace.> Sue> > > > The future of our children> > Posted by: " " teamjakob06@... teamjakob06> > Mon Jul 19, 2010 12:48 pm (PDT)> >

> > > > > > Lately I have been reading some of the posts on here and thinking a lot about my child's future. I have NO doubt in my mind that my son will be a productive, sucessful citizen. I homeschool him and we get very indepth with certain subjects. He can learn much better than at a private or public school and the resources are endless. He is 7 now and when he graduates he will attend college like every other child in America. It will not be a special college either, it may very well be Washington University as it is in our city of Fredericksburg. I know that one day he too will have a family and I look forward to having grandchildren. Not one time have I ever thought that he would be a stock boy at Walmart or the service guy at our local Exxon, Shell, Wawa, etc.. Not one time have I thought that he would never amount to much or ever let him think that. Never ever have I thought of his disability as a bad thing. There is greatness in all these children and our job is to guide them to become greatness! Sometimes I think that we tend to hinder our children more than their disability by setting the bar so low that they believe thenselves that they can't do anything or won't amount to much.

> > > > We used to live in Georgia and they had very little resources to help, so I moved to Virginia, where I was born and my parents were raised. Here there is a lot of help, BUT DON'T RELY ON THE SCHOOL SYSTEM TO TELL YOU ABOUT IT OR HELP YOU GET IT! You have to do your home work as I have read that many of you have and you have to know, have to have faith, and have to believe that God blessed you with this special child for a reason! The road is less traveled, tiring, and we all feel that we are treading on broken glass barefoot, but we all choose to be parents even though God choose us to be parents of Aspie children, again for a reason! If you stop clipping their wings and allow them to fly, who knows how high they will soar!

> > > > >