If Aspie Child isn't ready for college post high school?

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Rule #1: don't make it worse by pushing. Don't shame him, don't talk about how slow he is and how everyone is moving on, don't discipline him, don't scold him, and if he's a minor, don't kick him out on the street, because you get an allowance for him and that's just wrong to kick him out and keep it for yourself. College isn't for everyone. Show him you have an open mind. Show him you'll still love him just as much even if he's a bum on the street. Tell him that him succeeding in stuff only makes you happier, it doesn't jsut take you out of a depression about him and make you happy. That way he'll feel like it's actually worth it, like he's not doing work just to keep you happy or quiet or whatever, but he's actually doing something that's going to make his life positive, not just neutral. Then he'll probably calm down and start doing his homework better.


My mother admitted she took stuf like people going to college after HS for granted, thinking everyone in the Western world did it but druggies, or something.

I do have to say, my daughter just got her AA at a community college and it was a good route for her. She was intellectually light years ahead of her classmates in school for years and years, but there's a huge difference in intellectual ability and the capacity to handle college. Two entirely different skills sets.

Anyway, we eased her out of high school and into community college, taking "fun" classes (art, mostly) until she got the hang of the new place - about a year. Then she started in on the more serious work. Since community college really is very much like high school on steroids, it was a good step for us. An additional bonus, in California the community college tuition is $20 per credit hour. We are a single-parent household, so not only did we not have to pay anything (the college gave her a Board of Governor's Grant that covered all tuition and fees), but they gave her a part-time workstudy job so that she could earn her transportation and book costs while living at home. She held three different jobs on campus, learning and gaining confidence in each one. That was the best thing she got out of college (aside from doing the Adapted PE classes and learning how to work around her health issues). She learned the basics of office work, and the school was used to dealing with workers who were completely inexperienced so they were really supportive and understanding. The confidence and sense of competence she gained is absolutely priceless.

She's now working full time for a while, both to save up money to finish her BA or BS without having to borrow, and until she knows for sure what she wants to study (and, thus, which schools to look at). We were actually hoping to find her a half-time or 3/4 time job so the stress wouldn't be so much, but the first placement they had for her was full time at a good salary, so she took it. Thankfully, because she can type like a demon and has a resume showing her previous work history, she'll always find these types of jobs. No benefits, but eventually maybe a permanent position with health insurance. Very nice, and she's doing well there. It'll be something else to add to the resume.

If the kid had gone off to a four year school, she'd have made it maybe three or four weeks, then had to leave. That would have both really honked up her financial aid and admission to other schools, and done such a negative trip to her self-confidence that I don't know how we'd have remediated it all.

There's lots of ways to get to a destination. Sometimes you have to take the long-way around. Sometimes incremental steps, little ones, can be the best way to go. Good luck to your son.

Your post reminded me of the massive mistake it was my going to university straight from sixth form college at 18/19 years old.

I wasn't able to handle/manage the independence, the drink, the money, the freedom. I had no idea how to structure anything, because I had not been given a chance of doing it since early childhood. I had learned to do what I was told, but to minimise my efforts as far as possible. Unsurprisingly the four years of university were a total waste of my parent's and the government's money, aswell of my health and my time.

In the second year I got vacation work, for a month at easter, and two months in the summer, for a financial company in life assurance/savings plans , and... I loved it. I was a whizz at finding lost files, cheques, letters of complaint, our redress evidence, last minute claims, and of filing backlogs of papers . They loved me. I went in at 8 in the morning and stayed till after 6 in the evening.

I wanted to tidy up that place. They wanted me to come back/stay on. And I wanted to leave uni where I was getting pissed stoned and laid, and throwing away money and time, but my parents said, " no way" the same way that they had said no way to my wanting to go to art college after sixth form.

University is not necessarily a good idea at 18/19. I would have loved that job, ... then. Now I would hate it. It's too late. And University is where I'd love to be now. Learning, studying. And wanted to be from age 27, but I no longer had any right to funding cos I'd had my "go" at uni, and so had to fund myself when I decided to do a Masters in Womens Studies, and it was too much for me; the course and the job; I crashed after less than a term.

Thank you. These are good things to keep in mind, as I wallow in self recrimination and self pity, feeling that I must have done something wrong, or that there was something I could have done better. That feeling is almost impossible to bear. I need to learn to love my son for what he is, not what he is or isn't or what may or may not be. I am having a difficult time with this because of pre conceived ideas......that today everyone must finish a fine, four year school or something is the matter with the parents; that we could have done more, done better, done different, or that things could have been that weren't. Yes, I am having a difficult time with self recrimination and I can tell you, I have had an unrealistic idea of what was going to be and I need to deal with the reality of the situation, not what I thought could have been. I am so ashamed of myself, sometimes, I truly am.

Please don't be. You thought you knew reality, and the reality you got wasn't what you'd been told for years and years it would be. That can be tough. Kicking yourself for not feeling about your child the way you think you should feel won't help you and it definitely won't help him. Sometimes the only thing you can really do is just let it go - feel what you feel - if that includes ashamed, so be it - and then move on. If you try to smother your feelings, you'll never work through them. They can fester, to an unbelievable extent, if you don't attend to them. They never "just go away" no matter what you'd like.

There's something interesting that I've noted about a lot of Aspies. We're tremendously observant. We may not be looking straight at you with our eyes, but we're taking it all in just the same. If your child is surrounded with your emotions, and you keep them in the negative realm for too long, the kid will start to internalize your feelings. He's got enough going on, really, on his own to deal with. So work through what you feel, then go on from there. Don't look back. Don't look at what "should" have been, and try to just live for today. Tomorrow may not be there.

I hear you. I went to community college a bit at 18, then dropped out and went to work. I had no business being in even a community college at 18 - I was clueless, barely functional, miserable, and it literally almost killed me. But I was pressured into it by my situation - I had to get out of the house and out of that town before either or both killed me. So I went. I was able to go back to school when I was 30 and pursue a degree seriously only because I had not used up my financial aid and units (the state here will not fund your being in college past a certain number of credit hours regardless of who pays your "tuition" bill - which is only a small cost of your actually sitting in the classroom) ten years earlier. I have met quite a few people who really regret doing the factory line thing - going straight from high school into a four - year college program. They get their piece of paper and then find out it means nothing in the work world and they really don't care about what they studied, and have figured it out years later and wish they could go back and do it over again. But there's no "do-over" clause, usually. Tough thing to have to deal with.

Thanks Nan. Only a parent who has a child like so, can understand what we parents go through and the difficulties it can bring.

I wasn't always great about doing homework back in school. I was constantly turning in assignments late and stuff like that. I was starting to get better by the time I left, but I was still fairly crummy about it.

College kind of hits you in the face with it. The very first college class I took, the professor comes out and says it, there are 10 homeworks in this class, and you need to turn in every single one. Every assignment missing was one automatic grade deduction (A->B, B->C, etc) and late assignments were also pretty harsh.

However, I did actually take it seriously and did turn in everything (and ended up with my first A in college). Why? Partly because of the more serious consequences. Partly because I was getting gradually more mature. Partly because it was laid out so cleanly, as 10 discrete assignments, that I was able to keep track of everything much better, in contrast to high school where you might have assignments due every day and therefore dozens or even hundreds of different assignments.

Still to this day I am bad about not turning in homeworks on time, and I admit to not turning in an assignment occasionally, but for the most part I'm much better and the negative impact on my grades is much less.

So who knows. College could turn out to work great or it could be an enormous mess. It's up to him to manage it successfully.

I agree with Nan and KimJ, vocational training would probably be best for your son. Not everyone needs to, or wants to go to college. Heck, if I had a good background in tiling bathrooms I'd probably make more money than with my German and Anthropology degrees from a liberal arts college.

I did well in high school but, at 17, I don't think I would have been ready to go to a university straight out of high school. I obtained my AA in English from the junior college and entered the University as a junior transfer. (I actually had almost enough credits to qualify as a senior transfer student). However, even though I worked hard and got good grades, my obsession with my studies didn't exactly make me very popular. I was also far more traditional and conservative than the typical university student. I don't regret sticking to my beliefs, but I am embarrassed at some of the immature behavior I exhibited.

I was NOT ready. I started college at 19, after leaving high school at 16. Three years of the real world got me ready and kept me working on that degree until I graduated. Maybe a break would be a good thing for him?