Great video @dfbdfb! Made my morning!
For a bit of irony, send the video to your “soulmate” and see how they react. If they react just like you, then maybe they truly are your soulmate. I laughed out loud…my DW would NOT find it funny.
Just kidding honey!
copies link and sends to all his high school and college buddies
@socalmom007 I also probably wouldn’t use the word soulmate, but I definitely understand what you mean. I was absolutely like your Dd. My dh and I started dating when I was 16. I turned down a full-ride scholarship to follow him to his college. We gave my in-laws a conniption when we decided to get married while we were in college. 
We have been happily married for 30 yrs. Our oldest ds fell in love with his wife when he was 12. They started dating when he was 16. It was no surprise to me when they told us they were getting married in college. They have been happily married for almost 7 yrs. (They got married when our youngest was a newborn.)
Finding friends with similar values and life goals is vital. Even though BYU has fabulous language programs and would have been affordable, there is no way Dd would have applied there. 97%+ Mormon definitely meant she would not have found deep friendships with similiar views to hers. Equally, a lot of CC darlings would not have been a good fit for equal reasons, just in a different direction.
@5redheads I’ll answer your question here instead of that thread since this thread probably gets less general traffic and this is a very child specific situation. Since autistic kids fall across a spectrum, how they function really depends on how they are impacted. Our ds has multiple comorbid issues: anxiety is the worst, OCD, ADD (when he was little, he was ADHD extreme), motor control issues with left-side weakness. He has an incredibly high IQ and school was never, ever an issue. Unfortunately for our ds, when he hit puberty, he became extremely obsessive and had huge temper tantrums (things like punching pencils into walls if we asked him to stop drawing manga to come eat dinner bc the picture he was currently drawing was almost perfect and we ruined it. His obsessions, and drawing manga was one, controlled him.) At one point, we actually had to send him to a special boarding school for 6 months bc our younger girls were showing serious signs of stress (like hiding in a closet or under a table if they heard him raise his voice.)
On the other side of puberty, his reactions are far more controlled. But, unfortunately, his over all ability to cope is noticeably worse as an adult than a child or teenager. He cannot manage to keep all the adult balls juggling at the same time. We tried the community college and living at home route first. He did well until he hit a class where he had an open-ended project. He didn’t understand the assignment and when he went to tak to the professor, the response was basically, what is there not to understand. We had to help him figure out the project bc it wasn’t a clear do this type of thing. He withdrew for spring semester. Our next step was to find an autistic support program that worked on campus with students and even helped them interact with professors when they didn’t uunderstand assignments like the one described above. He managed to function for 3 more semesters but that 3rdsemester it was a fight to get him to register for the classes he needed. He only wanted to take classes he wanted. He thought it was stupid to have to take classes just because they were required for a degree and he really started to dig in his heels. What would have been the 4th semester in that program, he flat out refused to register for classes required for his degree. At that point, we refused to continue to pay for him to attend school. He had a 3.8 GPA. So doing the classwork was not an issue at all. The support program was an additional $8000/semester which was beyond huge for our family. We couldn’t afford for him to just take classes with no degree at the end. (I didn’t mention it above, but ODD is also mildly in the mix and this was definitely an issue at play here. He was adamant about not taking required classes.). It was also probably mixed with anxiety bc his anxiety can cripple him.
In the long run, even if he finished his degree, I am not convinced he would have been able to hold down a job beyond anything 100% rote. His anxiety controls his life. He wouldn’t go into the library near his apt bu himself to get a library card. His younger brother took him in and helped him fill out the paperwork to get one. Then, he wouldn’t use it by himself until I took him in and walked him through every step in that specific library. (He has used a library his entire life. It isn’t as if he didn’t know what to do.) That is how his anxiety manifests itself. Another simple example is that they offered him a promotion and a dollar an hour raise at work. He turned it down. Why? Bc he would have to answer the phone and answering the phone involves too many unknowns on the other end. Too much stress! Not exaggerating. He is very serious about not being able to handle the stress of answering the phone of unknown people. He has caller ID and will only answer if he recognizes the number.
Right now at 25 he manages to live in his own apt and gets up and walks to work at Goodwill on his own and cooks his own meals. He cannot manage his budget bc he is impulsive and would spend all of his $$ without thinking about the fact that he wouldn’t be able to pay his rent or buy food. I pay all of his bills and take him grocery shopping. He won’t do his laundry in the apt laundry mat (OCD working against him here. Irrational, but it isn’t a rational issue.)
Anyway, that is the very long way of saying that there is no answer that applies across autistic kids. It only really matters about your own child’s issues. If you had told me at 18 that he would have ended up working at Goodwill and that is probably a great place for him to work, I would have burst out laughing and have been insulted for him. He is an intelligent guy. But he is not just “quirky.” His disability is very real and it impacts his ability to function.
(In terms of roommates, my ds is very self unaware. He has bizarre sleep patterns and would not think he was being loud and disruptive by getting up in the middle of the night. He steps on things totally unaware that they are there. He is messy beyond extreme and has no sense of personal boundaries. Sharing a room with him was not easy for our sons.)
(I am multitasking to extreme, so no idea if anything I typed makes sense.)
@Mom2aphysicsgeek – I am speechless…you are a wonderful Mother!
Very interested in your conversation @Mom2aphysicsgeek and @5redheads , I have a 10 year old son with autism. You just scared the crap out of me with all the puberty changes, that wasn’t really on my radar. We’ve done so much therapy, specialized school, etc… my guy is doing very well right now and mainstreamed at school with some support, also wicked smart. I don’t know what his future holds, but I anticipate him being able to go off to college, though we’ll need to be aware of potential pitfalls.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Hugs and admiration >:D< ^:)^
@socalmom007 To put things in perspective, Aspergers was not a classification in the US until 1994. Our ds was 2. Our pediatrician thought he was autistic (his Dd was autistic), but we could not get any psy to agree. He was not autistic in classically idenfiable terms that most were used to at that pt in time. Only “cutting edge” psy’s were up on Aspergers and ours most definitely were not. The most effective therapies are definitely the ones when they are younger, and unfortunately our ds missed out on them. Therapies and awareness have definitely improved and increased since he was little.
But, equally, the message about Aspergers is also PC positive spin a lot of the time. Employment issues are very serious. Statistically 88% of Aspies are unemployed or underemployed. We have worked with the Dept of Rehab in 2 states and they have dedicated specialists just for autistic spectrum adults bc employment issues are so serious. We have known adult Aspies with multiple degrees who cannot hold down a job. Other issues at play are being methodical like our ds. He is a hard worker, but he is definitely methodical. In places where pace and output involve the bottom line, employers want to get their $$ worth from their employees.
I don’t want to scare you, but if you want to be informed about issues beyond the PC version put forth by certain autism societies, google unemployment/underemployment in Aspergers. The anger issue is another “squashed” PC topic. It is also another huge issue. We had alsomhad to have our ds hospitalized at one pt bc he attacked me while I was holding his baby sister. He wanted the password for the computer and I wouldn’t give it to him. (He wasn’t meaning to be aggressive. It was obsessing and not letting go.) Somewhere around that time, Salon published an article called something like “The Monster Inside of My Son.” I read it and I just burst out crying, It was the first time ever that I realized we weren’t alone bc all of the groups around us insisted that there was no connection to anger. They were quirky, not aggressive. False. For some kids it is a serious problem. Thankfully, our ds was NEVER as bad as the young man in that article, but honestly, I can see it so easily happening to kids with serious comorbid issues.
Fwiw, I think mental health care for kids in this country s*cks and even for adults, it can be very difficult to find good dr’s. Also, as an adult, if our ds doesn’t want to take meds or see a Dr, we have no recourse.
Still don’t have a good answer to the question that brought me to CC last summer.
How important was the new writing section of the new SAT. What were universities going to do with this new score. What was a “good” score on the writing part. My S had a excellent multiple choice SAT but only a 17/24 on the writing and I was trying to decide if he should take it again just for that part.
The decision was not to bother re-taking it & it wasn’t likely to be an important part of any college decisions. More of a they did well enough type of thing. It seems highly doubtful it was the deciding factor in the one rejection that said they cared.
@JenJenJenJen Social Fit is a big deal for my son. All 3 schools we have narrowed it down to are very similar in academic fit. There is a price difference and I’m trying to figure out how important is social fit vs. playing that “extra” that makes it a bit out of price range.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek thank you so much for sharing! My little boy was diagnosed the year after they stopped using the designation of Aspergers, so it’s all just considered autism now. My husband will sometimes refer to him as having Aspergers, just because people will get a better sense of what we are talking about, high functioning autism escapes people. We had aggression issues when he was small, like 3-6 years old. He’s had extensive ABA therapy, years of 20-30 hours a week of ABA, then we put him in an ABA based school. He’s actually super reasonable now and I can easily redirect him when he starts to obsess. No idea what the onset of puberty will bring. He’s a very happy and joyful child. He likes people, but he can be annoying to other children. Being the baby in our family he is blessed with having a big circle of people who will listen to him with interest when he wants to talk, I think that helps in making him feel happy and valued even though making friends isn’t easy for him. He does play with kids at school, gets picked for teams, at our school they’re very good about teaching kindness and inclusion, so his transition to mainstream has been very smooth. As far as career tracks, we’re hoping to steer him toward things where he can use that big brain and work independently, game design, accounting, statistics, actuarial studies, some types of engineering. We’ll see how that works out, it’s a long road ahead.
@2kidsinky Congratulations on your daughter’s decision! I like the addition of mental health counseling services. I intend to do a “reach out” prior to my D heading off to school as she had some significant depression last year (now gone) and still has anxiety from time to time. I also like your addition of getting help - I taught that to my daughter early on as I never asked for help growing up and it, on occasion, set me back.
@STEM2017 I did send the video to my soulmate and he didn’t find it that funny which seriously surprises me since he does not have a romantic bone in his body! I think maybe he was just turned off by the guy’s stage makeup lol. I thought it was hysterical.
@curiositycat333 I don’t think there is a good answer! I noticed most colleges are utilizing the math and reading scores and not really looking at the essays except to confirm writing sample… I’m not sure that even changed from prior year.
@socalmom007 I actually prefer that they have removed the label Aspergers. For people classified that way before the change, though, they retain that classification. I found Aspergers minimized the disability in many people’s minds. “Everyone “knows” quirky. engineers or CS are Aspies. They just don’t have the label.” The idea that Aspergers is just quirkiness or social awkwardness is pervasive. I think classifying it as autism spectrum disorder allows for easier discussion of disabling issues.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek I see what you are saying. I think people are often confused by it, they expect him to be non verbal or head banging or something with that diagnosis. It’s true though, high functioning still comes with executive function deficits, it’s not just quirky. My son had a writing assignment recently where he had to pretend to be a character from a story his class was reading and write a letter home as that character. He literally couldn’t do that, he just couldn’t “be” someone else and anticipate what they would say. His teacher gave him examples other students had written as a guide the get started and he just ended up plagiarizing a sentence from here and a sentence from there, he just couldn’t grasp the concept on a very basic level. I anticipate more things like that cropping up at every level, he just isn’t neurotypical, and that’s ok.
** QOTD: ** Sorry if this has been discussed, but if you were to put together a sort of “doc in a box” (oh grow up!) kit for you DC’s dorm room, what would it include? I was thinking…
-Acetaminophen
-Ibuprofen
-Some antiseptic and band aids
-Thermometer
-Alcohol swabs
-Cold and/or cough medicine like Day-Quil
-Throat lozenges
-Ice pack
Basically, things that they will be too under the weather to run out to Walgreens to get themselves.
Input from health care pros encouraged!
@twoforone99 on regards to housing off campus after freshman year, I don’t know which schools you are interested i in, but I have found that information sometime is listed on college’s websites under “Student Life” or something similar. I know that for Bama where my older daughter attends, there are dedicated shuttles and buses making round trips for campus students throughout the day from the surrounding large apartment complexes. There are lots of students who ride bikes to class when walking is too far. If you look up the bus schedules , maybe that would reveal some info?
@STEM2017 —and Walgreen’s may not be anywhere nearby. My son’s school has a convenience store in the student union (or whatever it is called these days), but a true drug store is probably two miles away.
I also sent tissues and sunscreen. Didn’t send ice pack, alcohol swabs or thermometer, but I don’t own a thermometer at home. Everything else you listed was used, especially Advil/Tylenol, cough syrup and cough drops. The dorm rooms can be really dry, so send extra cough drops. If he never gets sick, great, but if not, he will have them.
Amazon Pantry is a handy service for sending this type of item–and snacks! It’s kind of like a care package w/o having to go to the post office.
A box of small school supplies is also helpful: stapler, hole punch, index cards, thank you notes and stamps that will never be used, etc.
If there is space under his bed after you move him in, buy cases of water or whatever he likes to drink. The dining dollars add up quickly for that sort of purchase.
@STEM2017 that sounds like a good start. As my daughter is a dancer I would also include things like ace bandages and icy hot patches.
@STEM2017 --great list!
I have put together several packages like this for grads and my list includes all of the above plus:
-Gatorade, soup and crackers and pack or two of jello (and instructions that these are for emergency only–nothing is worse than that first time you get hit with a stomach virus away from home and you are so sick you can’t leave your room!)
-written instructions on how to deal with some common illnesses (I know they can google, but written instructions on a card can be helpful)
-tweezers
Hmmm…I’m sure I’ll think of some more. I tend to be a bit of a medication hoarder so for my own kid I’ll throw in some extra Zofran I have laying around.
@STEM2017 we also included Ziczm, allergy meds, a small scissors for cutting about anything, guaze pads, and medical tape. There is not a parmacy easy to get to for D15 and she didn’t have a car freshman year.
Hi all! I’m a lurker on this thread because I’m interested in seeing the results for your kiddos. I’ve got a D15 (so went through this already) and a D18, so we’re up again next year. You have an impressive group of kids!
I just wanted to hop on and (while not sickness related), suggest that you also send your kids with a gallon ziploc bag of rice for phone mishaps. That has come in handy for D15!
@nw2this, DH might be going with her, more due to our logistics issue that week than anything else. We haven’t decided on that yet.