advice for parent of ASD/High functioning aspergers child

shawbridge
Thu, 06 Dec 2018 15:41:07 +0000

@nativeNYer, I think you have gotten some useful advice. I think the list of things he needs to be able to do was excellent, although as I’ll explain below, I’m not sure my son had experience with all of them before he went to college.

My perspective: I grew up with a clearly Asperger’s dad – brilliant theoretical physicist who, like many of his colleagues, was not strong at connecting with other people or reading cues even though it was clear that he was a warm man. I had to learn social skills when I went to college. My son is also incredibly smart and not Asperger’s but severely dyslexic (reading and writing physically hurt him) and executive functioning was quite a problem. But, he got his people skills from his mother. He also had serious sleep apnea during HS. Given the sleep apnea and the disabilities and the EF, we did a lot of the life organizing around him. As such, he had no practice with some of the things on that list. He hadn’t really done budgeting and usually didn’t do his own wash. We always picked up the medicine for him though he took it on his own. … His rooms at home and in college were both pigsties, but I don’t think personal hygiene was an issue. We figured our job was to help him build the academic skills and he’d either add the life skills as he went or do like his dad and hire folks to do that (I hire an executive assistant who takes care of many aspects of my life, not just work, because I’m very good at big picture and concepts and not so good at details).

Things we did that might help you.

For the EF issues, we hired a coach who would work with him in HS on planning work (this had been started when he was in a middle school program at a private school that took six boys with LDs and high IQs and tried to teach them the skills they needed). She then worked with him remotely while he was in college. (She specializes in very bright kids with issues like Aspergers and LDs). The coach had access to his emails in college (it seems like everything was done via email) and checked in with him by phone.

He took a gap year (in part to apply to colleges and in part for the sleep apnea surgery). He thinks this really helped him.

We looked primarily at colleges that had no or non-onerous distribution requirements so that he could play to his strengths (and in particular avoid courses with 400 pages of reading a week). He believes that playing to his strengths was particularly important.

We picked a college (an elite LAC) over an Ivy because the Disabilities Services Office and the Dean of Freshman committed to helping him succeed and giving him appropriate accommodations (extra time on tests, readers for courses with a lot of reading, some assistive technology, and sometimes someone to dictate to). In grad school, all they gave him was extra time on tests (and assistive technology if he didn't have it).

He voluntarily checked in with me regularly to discuss what he was working on and his time allocation. Usually he just wanted my affirmation that he was doing the right thing.

We put a 4 or 5 hour driving radius on college applications, so we could scoop him up if there was a problem

Our daughter (ADHD and very bright) started at a university where there was a peer mentor program run by the DSO. An older student in the same department met with her weekly, helped her plan her time, gave her a sense of what to expect, and also told her what to study for on the tests (and may have given her his old tests). She particularly liked the test prep help but the EF help was meaningful.

The good news: EF really kicked in and by the end of college, he didn’t need the coach. He did incredibly well in school. He enjoyed it. He had a limited amount of energy and we didn’t push him to do things like internships, which we would have done without the disabilities. This probably would have hurt him if he’d tried to take a conventional path, but instead started up a company with several kids. After running it for 1.5 years, he applied for grad school and got into probably the best MBA and data science programs in the country given his interests and then co-founded a company a year before he graduated, and raised several million dollars from VCs. He and his company are getting accolades a year in. Perhaps more importantly, he and his partner took my suggestion and hired an executive assistant who knows she is supposed to help him with personal stuff as well as work stuff.

I don’t know if any of that is helpful but happy to answer other questions if you have them.