Independence

Post Reply New Topic

Hey everybody! My name is Cassidy! I have AS. I'm 20 years old. About to turn 21 this month. I live in Mississippi (in the U.S.) and there's no resources for adults on the autism spectrum in my area. I live with my parents. I also live in a small town so its hard to find anything. I have trouble with housekeeping and taking care of myself. My parents are afraid to let me live on my own or in a college dorm because of that. Plus, I don't drive so that's another reason. I was in a car accident a while back that was really bad and almost got me killed now my parents won't let me try driving ever again. The thought of me driving again scares them. There's no public transportation in my area so its hard to go anywhere without someone taking me. I stay at home most of the time. I want to be more independent but my parents say I'm not ready to live on my own. What should I do?

Learn & practice everything you need to in order to live on your own. Eventually you'll get good enough at being responsible for yourself that your parents will take note and feel more comfortable letting you do your own thing a bit more.

As far as your parents go, as long as they do not have any kind of court order that allows them to make decisions for you, you can technically do whatever you want whether they like it or not. However, if they provide you with a lot of support (any kind of support) it is probably not a good idea to ignore their wishes and opinions.

What kinds of things can you not do independently right now, that you would like to be able to do -- or that you would need to be able to do to live independently?

Maybe you could work on one independent-living-type responsibility at a time -- make it a goal to try to learn how to do it? That way you can practice and demonstrate to your parents that you're capable.

Maybe you could talk to your parents about what it would look like if they allowed you to learn to live independently by actually living independently, with them still supporting you with the things you cannot currently do for yourself or cannot do without help. Lots of people (me included) who have trouble with independent-living things live in their own apartments or houses and still need support with some things.

Whether or not living in your own place with support from your parents (temporary or long-term) would be a good and realistic thing for you would depend on the types of independent-living problems you have and also on how difficult it would be for your parents to support you if you lived somewhere else; It may be easier for them to support you if you live at home, or impossible to support you if you don't (e.g. because of time: do they have time to help you clean your house -- whether by actually cleaning with you or just supervising and/or prompting -- while also still having to clean their own house).

In terms of the driving thing, is riding a bike an option?

In terms of independent living skills I have problems with would be cleaning, cooking, doing bills,etc. A bike is out of the question because I can't balance. I was thinking about a trike, but its still dangerous. You can't ride bikes or trikes on major freeways or highways. That would be a crazy thing to do. Lol.

It depends on what independent living skills you still have trouble with and what you can do now. If you move to a university dorm, you may not necessarily need to do all of them, for example instead of cooking, I normally buy ready-made meals which I can microwave. It will usually be better though if you first familiarise yourself with the independent living skills that you still need to learn before jumping into the deep end. You don't want to have to find out that all of sudden, you have to do certain things while living in a dorm but don't know how to do them because you've never done it before. Also, for me it's easier now to live in a dorm since I'm now a post-graduate student and don't have to worry about interacting much with other students in the same dormitory. If you are in your first or second year of college or university, it's a bit different because, at least here in South Africa, there are initiations and all sorts of things that you end up doing with other students in the dorm house. I also lived with my parents when I was still an undergraduate at university but as someone on the autistic spectrum, I don't think that I would of liked it much if I had stayed in a dorm instead.

You can start learning independent skills at home to prepare for living by yourself like in college later.
It is good that you want to become independent, and you should tell this to your parents, that you want to learn the skills now.
The only problem would be if your parents are the type who think you can't learn these skills and they don't bother to teach you.

Is it a problem of not knowing how to do things? (Example: You have never made a grilled cheese sandwich and have no idea how it's done.)

If so, then maybe ask your parents to teach you specific things you would like to learn. You could also ask to be given jobs to do when your parents are cooking, or to be given chores or extra household responsibilities to learn in smaller bits.

If your parents can't/don't want to teach you or you dont learn well from their teaching style, maybe you could look for books, articles, or videos on youtube about "how to [whatever you want to learn how to do]."

Is it that you have the knowledge of how to do things but can't remember the steps involved, or can't put the steps into the right sequence? (Example: You know all the ingredients and cooking tools you need to make a grilled cheese sandwich, but every time you try to make one you forget something -- maybe you forget the cheese, forget to grease the frying pan, forget to turn on the stove, forget to flip the sandwich over while it's cooking, or forget that you're making a grilled cheese sandwich until the kitchen is filled with smoke and the fire alarm is going off. )

Making visual or written step by step instructions for tasks and putting them on the wall near where the task is done, in a binder, or on your phone or tablet might help with remembering and sequencing steps. And setttng alarms for things that are time-sensitive like turning off a stove.

For cooking, you could make and eat things that are simpler or don't require any cooking, or only need to be heated in a toaster or microwave.

Is it that you can't remember to do things at all?

Routines might help with this. And/or training yourself to be constantly looking at a calender and/or planner. Doing the same things in the same order, at the same time of day, on the same day every week. Or visual cues -- placing things that will remind you do something in a specific location where you are likely to notice them (perhaps because they are in your way). Or setting alarms/reminders on a phone/tablet.

Is it that you have sensory issues or motor coordination problems that make some tasks problematic? (Examples: Will have meltdowns from the sound of the vacuum cleaner or cannot safely use a knife in food preparation.)

Working to improve motor skills as much as possible and modifying the task is all I can think of for this (e.g. wear earplugs while vacuuming or use a carpet sweeper -- or sweep with a broom if you have hard floors; get one of those manual food processors that chops food in a container via you pressing a button on the top of it repeatedly, or only make food that doesn't require use of a knife).