18-year-old won't discuss his future

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I have an 18-year-old son who was diagnosed with asperger's and ADHD. I have been trying to talk to him about his future with no success. Every time I try to talk to him about it, he shuts down and either changes the subject or walks away. It seems as though he wants me to plan his future for him.

I have been trying to get him to talk to the guidance counselor about taking his college entrance exam and arranging college visits and he keeps putting it off. I really don't know what to do. He doesn't have a license so he's very dependent on me to go places.

By the way, has anyone else had issues with teaching their teenager to drive? My son got his drivers permit on his first try but rarely drives and isn't very good at it. I am beginning to think he will never get his license which makes talking about his future all the more difficult.

Maybe he is being avoidant because he is experiencing negative feelings about some aspect(/s) of planning his future (e.g. changes, uncertainty, difficulty with the actual planning), and is struggling to cope with the feelings (or does not have coping tools for practical difficulties related to discussing his future or planning for it)....he might just be stuck. I wouldn't assume that it means he wants you to plan his future for him.



Have you asked him if he even wants to/feels ready to go to college straight out of high school? Maybe his procrastination is a form of passive resistance because he doesn't want to go to college or feels unprepared. Maybe he needs time to think about what he wants to do and/or might prefer working for a while instead.

Or maybe he just has no idea how to have the conversation about college entrance exams and/or no idea how to arrange college visits, and no idea how to find out/ask.

It seems like he is afraid to go out of his comfort zone.
Maybe he needs a life coach or someone other than parents to get him to do things out of his comfort zone, like driving more to get better at driving and planning for college, if he wants to go to college.
Maybe you should plan a few things of his future related to college, if he has problems doing that himself.
It could be the start that he needs, if you got the list of entrance test dates or made a list of colleges that you think are good for him, he can always change the list when he is willing to think about these things himself.

We have impaired Executive Function. We're virtually incapable of planning for the future.

With autism, you take one obstacle at a time, because every individual situation is so overwhelming, if we thought about the next one and the one after that we'd become incapacitated with anxiety (and often do). Add ADHD to that and sometimes focusing our attention on something that we don't find personally fascinating is quite literally impossible. I know when you don't experience these handicaps, it may be hard to understand them, but he doesn't experience the world in the same way that you do.

I describe inattentive ADHD as similar to that sensation you feel when you try to push the "like" poles of two magnets together - you can't see the barrier field that prevents them from touching, but your fingers sense the resistance. Sometimes trying to focus on something that doesn't compel me feels like that. My attention simply glides around it, no matter how hard I try to get a grip on the subject. The harder I strain, the more stubbornly my concentration is repelled.

Sometimes clinicians spend too much time describing the behaviors associated with AS and not enough explaining what's actually happening inside the autistic person's head.

Autism means too many sensory receptors in the brain - all sensory phenomena - light, sound, touch, taste, social interaction - are all many times more INTENSE, all day, every day. That doesn't mean sounds are louder to us, it means the data stream entering our brains' processor is too information-dense, which puts a constant strain on the entire nervous system. As you might imagine, it's very distracting and makes it hard to concentrate on anything that seems uninteresting or unimportant. OTOH, when we find something we can really get caught up in, it has the opposite effect - if we hyper-focus on something, it becomes a form of self-hypnosis that helps us shut out all that crushing sensory noise. Unfortunately, we cannot control what works and what doesn't - it varies depending on the individual and their personality.

This is why its generally a good idea for Aspergians to seek careers that are in some way aligned with their personal Obsessive Special Interests. School is doable, with some assistance, but long-range detail planning is likely to be a problem. It may be simpler to make a few over-arcing general goals and then proceed step-by-step, without getting too bogged down in details.

...Throw him out and make him homeless ! That's what happened to me .

Be careful with that, a lot of us aren't incapable of it we just struggle with it.

Now it is true that we often do cope with these one struggle at a time. But plenty of us are capable of planning for our futures. The key though is finding the tools that can make those plans work. Which is not easy.

Maybe ask him if he wants to work for a year before heading to college.

It could just be that your son just doesn't really know what he wants. Perhaps you are pushing too hard on this.

Agreed. I am in the same situation, but can also intimately relate to a lot of what my son is going through. We have set a staggered framework for him. He has the summer to focus on driving, and then finding a job in the fall. As long as he's progressing, we aren't pressuring for more right now. I do want him to attend college, but he needs more time, maturity and direction to focus first. He is highly intelligent, and I hope taking a step into adult life will give him the broader experience and insight he needs.

Good luck to you! If we start recognizing their decisions and raising expectations suitable for the young adults they are, I'm sure they will rise to the challenge. Balancing that with the additional structure and guidance when needed is our challenge.

i think he is probably experiencing an incredible amount of anxiety. Anxiety is a common co-morbid of autism, and thuis is one of the scariest times of life for an aspie because societal and home expectations are so high and depending on the developmental gap between chronological and actual developmental age, he might think it is impossible to be successful.

Driving is a very hard thing for many aspies. I hate driving. It is full of things you have to do simultaneously involving concentration and motor control and the risks are high if you cannot manage them, because you could kill yourself and/or others or less seriously damage expensive machinery/property of yourself or others. I hope self-driving cars are standard when it is my son's time to learn.

When we get to this point of the cusp of adulthood, I will honestly probably have to scaffold the heck out of most aspects, and do it in pieces like has been stated here. If i don't have to, that will be great, but right now based on the gap I see, I am expecting this.

Maybe he doesn't want to go to college. Maybe he doesn't want to drive. Your post makes me think that this is what you want and you are are bothered because he is not complying.
Neither college nor driving are mandatory. I would suggest that you try to find out what direction he is being pulled in. Perhaps volunteering or a job. And he should invest in a bus pass or contribute to gas.

When I was your son’s age, I used to think about my future a lot. I would worry obsessively about it. Just like I would worry obsessively about a lot of things.

Believe it or not, I used to start worrying (about my future) when I was much younger (than 18). My brilliant plan (when I was in elementary school) was to ask each year for a “1x1 sq foot” in my parent’s back yard (as a birthday present). So, that by the time I was 18, I would have enough space to live in a tent in my parent’s back yard.

But talk about it? For what purpose? Because I had no idea what to do. As the psychologist who diagnosed wrote, I was “paralyzed by ‘decision indecision’”.

Without a doubt, I would have loved to have someone else (who really understood me) plan my future. In fact, the decisions I made between ages 18-40 were mostly made based upon following “suggestions” from others. Because I had no idea how to move forward on my own.

By the way, when I was 19, I remember reading the short story, “Bartleby the Scrivener”. I really identified with his response to every request, "I would prefer not to."

First of all, your son is ahead of mine when it comes to driving: we can't get our son interested in even taking the permit test. It is not uncommon among my son's group of friends to postpone it, and then postpone it again. None of them have a license.

Second, there is no way that your son has not thought about the future. As a senior in high school, he is surrounded by talk of it. But, obviously, something is preventing him from engaging in conversation with you about it. He may feel overwhelmed or like none of the available options fit, completely confused and uninterested or ???

You have to remember that ASD is a developmental delay, and while your son may be 18 in years, he probably is not 18 in developmental readiness for the kinds of decisions he has to make. Imagine if you had to ask a 12 year old these questions and engage with conversation about it; it would not be particularly productive.

I suggest you come up with a list of options for him, based on what you know of him, and allow the last option to be, "your better suggestion." If he has a defined list of semi-attractive choices, he may find it easier to make a decision. One that needs to be clear to him is that staying home and doing nothing will not be a viable option. Even volunteer work is a viable option. If he truly feels that he can't work or go to school after graduation, then he will need to get himself into the SSI process (hopefully, that is not the case).

The pressure of the transition has been, to say the least, overwhelming for my son, despite the fact that he had some idea of what he wanted to do and has successfully completed the college admissions process. It is tough for all seniors; the pressure is intense, and more seems to be at stake than when we were their age. Don't push, but see if you can find a way to support. I can't even begin to tell you how burned out my son is at this point in his life; its like he's been running running running towards a finish line only to find out there are another ten miles to go. It is definitely something to be sensitive to.

my son is 20 and does not have his license. He has Aspergers.. Everyone here has said the same things i was going to say so i won't repeat them.

just do not expect him to act like other 18 year olds, because he isn't.

Agreed with everyone else. The 18-year-old is stressed out about what to do after he leaves mom and dad. And it happens with a LOT of people. Even I am stressed out about going to college...due to having hardly any savings money. I've signed up for ONE scholarship...$500. Will that get me through a year of COMMUNITY college? No! I'll need at least $5000-10000 a year in financial aid to get through my 4 years needed to be a teacher (BA Education major, which I really want to do).
I don't drive yet because we only have 1 almost-broke-down car and even if I did do driving school and pass, I still wouldn't have a car to drive in for groceries, gas, etc.
Try and find entrance test dates; try and find a licensed life coach; maybe even someone from a college he wants to go to could help him out. Good luck to you!

I didn't have a future at that age. I was just too consumed in computers. Maybe he doesn't have one, maybe he's scared that talking about the future means being independent and he's scared of this. It's a change for him, and change doesn't go well with us. The thought of living alone, having to take care of everything himself. Some aspies struggle with independence.

I'm 30, and every time I break up from any relationship I have to move home. I can't live alone. I tried it, I lasted 2 weeks and had to leave. I also have a huge fear of eating alone, incase I choke and die alone. It's a real fear, one that has never been cured. Sounds silly I know, but hey.

Ask him if he has any fears concerning his future.

This is one of the posts that I have a serious problem with.

"It seems as though he wants me to plan his future for him."

Did he say that? No? Hey, everyone, we have a mind reader over here!

What did he say when you asked him these questions?

Oh, wait, let me guess: you didn't.

"I really don't know what to do."

That's an easy one. Ask him what he wants you to do. If it's reasonable (and I don't mean according whatever you would consider to be "reasonable" but what's actually reasonable), then do that.

Why is this so hard for people to grasp? A lot of the posts here read like posts from parents who come here to ask how they should handle situations with their children (especially verbal teenagers) rather than asking those children how they would like things handled. They know themselves better than anyone here would.