community

1 May 2018

Autism Transitions: Full Nest

Turning 23

I didn’t mean to wait a full year to post, but I think I am glad I did. For many families turning 22 means an empty nest, but not us. Much of this first year has been characterized by a sense of relief for him that not everything is changing at once. I share that relief, wholeheartedly. As we prepare for our other children to leave the nest, I am admittedly grateful to know that this man will linger. I understand that we can’t let contentment morph into denial. I also understand that even typical brains aren’t fully developed until age 26 and so extending the transition process beyond 22 means we still need to continually assess the whole person and the whole picture, giving equal weight to the futures of his siblings. Our family is evolving and nothing is truly settled. We are not ready for the long term plan, and if the transition has taught us anything, it’s that planning ahead is an art, not a science. There are few absolutes, and in this political climate we can’t even plan on even the most basic levels of support for our man beyond the family unit.

Not for the first time, it occurs to me that I’ve built my life around this family and any personal ambitions I may have had pale in comparison to what has turned into a life’s work: this person who now stands before me, nearly grown. While I try mightily to extricate myself from the lives of my other children, he fits so easily into who I am now that he is in so many ways an extension of me, and I know my husband feels the same way. We, the three of us, are a single symbiotic organism and even when it is maddening it is also plain that I cannot breathe without them. I don’t think it will always be this overwhelming, but it the feeling that we are thriving together instead struggling to understand and survive is shot through with a kind of success that is difficult to describe.

That said, one year into the transition we are dealing with only a few of the issues I thought we’d face, establishing social connections and opportunities being the most difficult challenge by far. There’s a bit of waiting for the other shoe to drop, for sure, but the best part is that he is controlling the dialogue. So long ago I prayed for him first to be able to say yes or no, then to tell me if he had a good day, then to outline his fears and desires. I got all of those things and more, even as he remains as vulnerable as a preschooler. I still bask in the miracle of him becoming so much more than I was told we could have hoped – but my hope never waned, and never will.

 

22 January 2015

Autism Transitions: Parental Developmental Delay

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He sleeps on.

A boy comes home from a long day at Kindergarten, climbs into his mother’s lap and both fall asleep in the dwindling winter afternoon. That was today. Except the boy is 19 and he’s a Kindergarten teacher’s assistant. Still, his 5-foot-7 body folds into my lap as easily as a toddler’s, his head fits neatly in the nape of my neck and his sleep is as deep and blissful as an infant. When I close my eyes I literally cannot tell the difference in age, so complete is his ability to shift his weight and meld his body to mine. I have waited for this phase to end for roughly 18 years and miraculously, disconcertingly, it never does.

As we navigate the transition to adulthood, such moments become more poignant. He’s making it harder for me to let go by being such a perfect man-child.

Over the Christmas break I had to run to the Post Office one morning – I was gone for 20 minutes, tops. When I returned I was met by a flummoxed husband and my boy pronounced, very matter-of-factly: “Mom, Dad and I find life very difficult without you!” There was a medication question – I had forgotten to leave out the morning pills. If I had been out of town they no doubt would have figured it out easily, but my unplanned outing sent them into a tailspin and no one even thought to call me on my mobile. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that I’ve become such a fabulous enabler. The rewards of caring for this family are so epic that even when things are horrifying and dysfunctional they still make a good story.

After waking, tea with Panda. What part of me would ever want to miss tea time?

After waking, tea with Panda. What part of me would ever want to miss tea time?

Consequently, I’m doing a lousy job at making myself obsolete. As other women my age with kids the same ages as mine plan their next act I find myself trying to perfect the at-home game – which, under normal circumstances I was never very good at. My husband is a far better housekeeper than I am but he works and travels a lot – after 21 years at home I think I’m finally picking up a few of his good habits, but it really has taken that long. The good news is I can cook and I’m well-suited to dealing with the monkey wrenches autism keeps hurling into our lives. I’m grateful that my husband’s work allows me to focus on our family. Sometimes I allow myself to wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t been able to stay home. My boy would have survived but probably not thrived and I would likely have succumbed to some rural suburban mother madness (which is still possible). Maybe I would have revived my old career instead of trying to carve a new one out of the Internet, but even as I try to create new opportunities I can’t really bring myself to take my eye off that autism ball. Like the shoe that periodically came flying from the back of the minivan in years past, it has a tendency to smack me in the back of the head if I turn away.

So, yes, I am having trouble outsourcing my job so that my man-boy can be more independent, partly because he keeps me warm but also because I’m avoiding thinking about what else I should be doing. Even as I try to write on other topics, I am emailing job coaches and setting up meetings to create community networks for adults with disabilities. I’m tracking legislation and figuring out SSDI. I know what I do is making his life better, but I’m just not sure I’m ready to make his life better without me. I want to have it both ways, and I’m going to figure out a way to accomplish that. Later, after tea time, maybe.

9 December 2012

When they were handing out Christmas Spirit, he got in line twice

We volunteered to throw the class Christmas lunch at our house and found ourselves in major prep mode. The light snow that had been falling all day put us in just the right spirit. When walked into the supermarket they were playing a snappy version of Jingle Bells. Our boy started to bop a little as he walked in time to the music; I did, too. We bumped shoulders a little and headed toward the bakery, bopping together. I was lost in the moment, having fun.

“Hey there!” Busted, dancing in the store, by the mother of a classmate of my daughter – someone I know well enough to be a Facebook friend but not so well that I didn’t feel sheepish. I threw up my hands.

“Okay, you caught us dancing the supermarket! We are modeling good holiday behavior!” He was bopping off without me so I had to move on, but we left her smiling. When I caught up with him he was very busy at a table piled high with Christmas cookies.

“We have to move these cookies to allow the train to go through!” Among the piles of cookie boxes there was indeed a buried train setup. The cookies were encroaching on the tracks and had dislodged the train from its proper spot. He worked quickly and efficiently, keeping the cookies in neat piles but reorganizing them so they would not interfere with the train setup. He was the spitting image of his father in every wonderful way, so I took a picture to e-mail his traveling Dad and tell him how we’d been caught dancing.

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When I finished sending the mail on my phone I looked up and the teenager who works in the bakery was standing a few feet away, watching us in bewilderment. She had come out from behind the counter to watch us warily and I saw it dawn on her that he was doing a good job, and was improving on what I assumed to be her cookie arrangement.

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He finished up and surveyed his work with folded arms, pleased as punch.

“There! That’s better!” I looked at the girl.

“Is this okay?” I asked.

She nodded slowly, “Oh, yeah.”

And then he was off.

“C’mon Mom, we have to track down that sneaky pizza crust!”

If there is a future in holiday cookie displays, we are in great shape.

4 December 2012

Taking Umbrage

I’ve had some brutal conversations recently, and one in particular yesterday left me speechless with indignation. Hard to believe, I know.

But I’m not speechless anymore.

I have been speaking with parents for many years, and in recent months the talk has turned, not surprisingly, to adult transitions for people with disabilities. It’s complicated. The kids are complicated and the system beyond the School District is complicated. There are multiple agencies that providing multiple, sometimes overlapping services. The eligibility criteria – now under revision by the Commonwealth – is maddening, placing undue weight on IQ scores. Kids with scores over 70 get far fewer supports (if any) after age 22 than kids with scores 70 and under. Just like getting typically developing kids into college, parents compare scores and experiences. That score, and how you access the social service system – through the Department of Developmental Services, the Department of Mental Health, Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission and probably some agencies I don’t even know about yet – affects how we move through the system. We have learned that we can get conflicting answers on what to do and what is available from people working at the same agency. We knew it wouldn’t be easy.

What I did not expect is the juxtaposition of complacence and entitlement that emerged during these conversations. People tell me matter-of-factly that it is futile to negotiate and collaborate with the School District to better target support for a child but they follow it up with the expectation that, come age 22, the Commonwealth should be poised to provide full-time employment opportunities for the student emerging from the system. They are shocked to discover that this is not the case. While, in my experience, the Commonwealth makes no promises, they give the realistic expectation that students may have a chance for part-time work.  People with an IQ under 70 may be eligible for additional support though day programs and group homes, but those with an IQ over 70 will likely get nothing at all, regardless of their ability to access the potential indicated by the score. The difference in what the state provides is determined to some degree by how families access the system and advocate for their disabled young adult. I am only just starting to sift through this information, so don’t quote me on my facts just yet.

The barriers to employment for adults with autism is all over the news, partly because there are so many high functioning autistic people out there that people can see the untapped potential they could bring to the marketplace.  And yet I find myself yet again pushing back against the perception that an autism diagnosis presents some kind of unfair advantage in the school and social service system just because there happen to be so many people with autism coming of age at this point in history. And let’s be clear: they aren’t talking about people with IQs near 70. I find myself apologizing for the fact that my disabled child is the one slated to fall through the safety net because he is autistic – this is the conversation that sent me into orbit. The conversation in which the person whose child will get more support than mine feels cheated because my child is viewed as higher functioning when he is only differently disabled than hers. Is there such a thing as disability envy? Sometimes I think so. Contrary to popular belief, the autism label isn’t opening any doors for us; I’m pretty sure I can hear them closing.

There is no glory in needing or asking for help. There is no greater helplessness than knowing there are limits to what you can do for your disabled child, and knowing that you are going to have to go outside of your family to assure that they get what they need so that they will need you as little as possible as they – and you – get older. We do not want to let them go; sometimes just letting them go to school is tough enough. But one way of making this excruciating process bearable is trying to do things that help more children than just your own. I have said this part many times before: We have tried to advocate for our child with an eye toward building programs that help others like him but also toward building a school system that serves all children well.

But to hear from parents that the teachers are great but that nothing has ever really changed, that a child is not getting this or that even though it’s in the IEP but that’s just the way it is, that the high school is bad at this or the middle school isn’t addressing that, that the Commonwealth is a self-sustaining bureaucracy and nothing more and there’s nothing we can do about it – that just doesn’t match up with my reality.

Our School District has changed and is changing every day. My indignance comes from the sense that people are complaining about things that have been fixed, that our high school is better suited to serve our kids than it was 2 years ago and infinitely better than it was 5 years ago, that education is a partnership that requires communications and work inside and outside of school by all parties involved and that, most importantly, complaining is not the same as advocacy. Things are changing because parents are speaking up in ways that foster change – which doesn’t mean bitching over the phone or in the parking lot. It means calling a meeting when the District is not meeting the terms of the IEP, making sure the IEP addresses the needs of the child, and that the teachers and staff have the time and means to serve the child.

Here's something else we accomplished: we created and funded an Education Resource library for parents and teachers to research specific disabilities.

Here’s something else we accomplished: we created and funded an Education Resource library for parents and teachers to research specific disabilities.

I am driven to distraction by the perception that we can neither penetrate nor change the system and that the progress we have made in recent years in our own schools is invisible. People say to me with a straight face that it is a waste of time for them to try to change things in a school “because it won’t ever happen.” I know that  the improvements to the program that their child is in were not an accident that happened while I was advocating for my own child – I asked for change, lobbied for it, called meetings about it, talked to the School Committee about it, got funding for it. And when other issues were brought to my attention, I did the same thing for programs that my child was not in. There are a lot of us doing a lot of work out here and we can’t take sole credit for that progress but it galls me to discover that some people think that parents and citizens have not fueled and contributed to substantive change at our high and middle schools in the last five years. There is always more work to be done but this is a moment where I feel the need to stand back and appreciate what we have accomplished so far. Within the last few years we have increased all of these supports:

  • therapeutic classrooms
  • school adjustment counselors
  • assistive technology
  • transportation for community inclusion
  • after school opportunities
  • community-school employment partnerships
  • small-group instruction
  • language-based instruction
  • behavioral training and support

And we accomplished it not because my child is has a certain diagnosis but because I – and many parents like me – put in the time and energy to advocate for changes that would make our schools better not just for our kids but the kids who come after ours.

So many parents face bigger hurdles than I do – and some of their hurdles are in my future. They work harder and better to accomplish things I haven’t even dreamed of yet. Whatever work I have done pales in comparison to theirs. I know that we will benefit from their dedication, wisdom, persistence and tenacity and I don’t ever want to them to think I take their work for granted; I am finding out just how many people do.

15 July 2012

First Phone Call: Permission to Breathe, Granted

Week two. We have proof now. He is still the same boy we dropped off last week. He is as strong as we knew he was and so much stronger than the school experts – and I use that term loosely – said he could be. He is always capable of throwing us a curve but he will never let us down when it really counts. Everyone who knows him well knew he would rise to the occasion.  The voice is still a little flat, the answers short but sincere, and no discernible traces of angst. He is still wary, still not entirely comfortable with being so far away from home (I see the Scooby Doo he smuggled to camp tucked under his arm now and then, a telltale sign) but he sounds safe and brave and proud. And in the typical role reversal he has given me permission to be braver and prouder than I was a week ago, because I have as much confidence as I have ever had that he feels and is safe. These are rare moments, indeed, for in this world there are few places that provide both haven and meaningful activities for people with developmental delays, and the older they get, the narrower the choices become. So many people are working to expand the options and opportunities for adults with autism and I can see that I will soon be joining them in building a community of which we can all be proud. I still don’t know what it will look like but from the sound of his voice it appears, for the first time, truly possible.

2 March 2012

The Pledge

Earlier this week our boy was asked to help lead the Pledge of Allegiance at the opening of a School Committee meeting.  He’s done this once before; this time the was filling for another boy, who could not make it at the last minute.  I asked what happened to his friend, and to my surprise my son answered, “I think he is too shy.”  Here he was, someone who struggles with his own anxiety every day, recognizing it in someone else and willingly stepping in to help.  Add to this his cheerful acquiescence to the immediate nature of the request – we had to just hop in the car and go – and the evening was already extraordinary in that it was so very ordinary.  He sat quietly in the back of the school library as people filed in and I chatted with the Superintendent.  He greeted former teachers and administrators who made their way over to see him.  He was a little distracted, and little awkward, but composed and charming in his way.  He was prepared.  He and his classmate beamed as the Superintendent introduced them; his hand fluttered ever so slightly as it made its way up to his heart and they led the Pledge.  School Committee meetings are televised; he looked straight into the camera, fully cognizant of the moment.  Everything went perfectly.

And then a member of the Committee rose from his seat and strode over to shake each boy’s hand, warmly and sincerely.  I was struck by the authenticity of this gesture and how it underscores my hope for us as a community.  Recently I have been agonizing about how inclusion for behaviorally challenged kids can really work in a high school setting.  At this age it is much harder to accommodate the differences in learning and socialization; there is so much to prepare for in life that successful behavior in the classroom setting just doesn’t seem like an important goal anymore.  Having spent all of these years trying to make kids successful in the school setting, now our attention necessarily turns to life outside of the school building and in the larger community.  So many people are worried about how their college graduates will get jobs; in this economy the odds are doubly stacked against those for whom an advanced degree is not in the offing.  But these small moments – a public appearance, greeting teachers and friends, a handshake from a leader – they change everyone’s lives.  I’m glad that, against the odds, we have stayed in public schools and that we have taken on what is sure to be a battle for the resources that will allow our boy the training and education he needs to be successful outside of the classroom.  I have always believed that everyone can benefit from what we teach our children with disabilities because it gives them a chance to teach us in return.  Inclusion comes in many forms, not just in the school but in the community, and it means we not only have them in attendance but we recognize that they are there and that what they have to teach is worth knowing.  I was starting to think that it was just talk, that our efforts will result in little more than the minimum required.  And then someone got up and shook his hand and I realized how much more is within our reach.