A wise psychologist shared the following insight with my husband and me when our son was in second grade: “We all start out with $5.00 in the bank each day. During the course of the day we draw down that $5.00. Hopefully, by the end of the day we have a little bit left. If we draw it down too quickly, we ‘hit the wall’ before the day ends. You might use up $0.25 deciding what to wear – but some days, that might use up $0.50. You might use up another $0.25 commuting to work, but if you are running late and there is a terrible traffic jam, you might use up $1.00. For kids on the autism spectrum, everything is harder. Some days, just getting out the door might use up $4.00. They’ve got $1.00 left for the day – and that means that at some point, they are going to hit the wall, and when they do, you need to just give them a place to regroup.”
My husband and I see this phenomenon with all 3 of our kids (and ourselves). Over time, we have seen our son learn more and more strategies for coping with life in ways that don’t draw down his daily bank account – like eating breakfast alone (without having to endure his sisters’ jabbering) and setting aside the exact same time for homework each day. He accomplishes far more in a day than he used to, and rarely “hits the wall.”
But, what happens when he goes to college? I worry that figuring out how to live independently, may be so overwhelming (at least at first), that he will use up all $5.00 on social and living skills, with little or nothing left over for the academic pressures that college brings. Things that other kids take for granted – figuring out directions to get from one class to the other, remembering a schedule that changes each day and then remembering what to bring for classes each day, keeping track of money, remembering to eat, getting laundry done, these can be overwhelming tasks (at least at first) for a kid on the autistic spectrum.
My daughter, who is a freshman in high school, routinely forgets her backback, lunch and sweatshirts. The phone rings at 9:30 or 10:00 many nights with friends trying to figure out their Spanish or Biology assignments. So, these so-called "neuro-typical" or "NT" kids are also struggling with some of these life skills. But here’s the big difference – within the first 2 months of school, our daughter has a network – they find her back pack and bring it to her, they call each other to figure out what the teacher expects on a given assignment, the sophmores share advice on how to stash your shoes at the dance so they don’t get stolen. The "NT" kids figure out how to help each other.
Kids with NLD and on the autism spectrum, on the other hand, don’t know how to build these social and living skills networks. Many don’t even feel comfortable using the phone. What happens to kids who arrive at college with a disability that makes social and living skills their greatest challenge and that also makes it almost impossible for them to penetrate the support networks?
So far, I’ve learned about 2 programs designed to help NLD kids with the social and life skills aspects of the transition to college: AHEADD (which stands for Achieving in Higher Education with Autism / Developmental Disabilities) (http://www.aheadd.org/ ) and College Living Experience (http://www.cleinc.net/).
Our job, as parents, during the next 2 years, is going to be to help our son figure out ways to make that $5.00 daily allowance last all day -- through getting out of the house in clean clothes and the right materials, to finding class, to passing classes, to getting fed, to making friends. We are looking forward to building a social network through this blog, to help chart the course.
