Age of Independence

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My husband was telling me last night about a documentary that profiles some AS adults and the issues they face. Much of this related to independence. The inability to keep an apartment due to stim noises disturbing neighbors; to remember to lock doors; to keep one's mouth shut at the appropriate time in a workplace setting, so as not to be fired. All little things, but little things that can have deep ramifications to living independently.

That got me thinking about what we expect for our children. In some threads parents have discussed how their job is make sure their children can be independent by age 18, and while that is true, as a legal concept, I've always assumed that my AS son will need support from us far longer than that. He learns every independence related concept behind the curve; he won't be ready when other kids are, although we'll have to do our best in case he chooses independence regardless of our positions on it.

So while we'll be doing our best to have him ready for independence at 18, we're certainly not going to be pushing him out the door at that age. I'm assuming 25 will be more like it (although it still will be gentle). Maybe away college; maybe not, but lots of support through the first few years after graduation, as well. The goal being not only to set him out on his own two feet, but to make sure those feet are as solid as possible, so that he'll live the life he is capable of living, not just one he ends up living.

My husband is now seriously worried if our son will ever stand on his own safely. I'm not. Not really, anyway. I'm teaching him to use support for certain things; to find and use resources. There are things he will never be good at, but I see alternatives for those, and I'm helping him see them as well.

But, still, we are in for a longer road that 18 years of parenting. I do believe that.

Opinions?

Hi,
Whilst my AS son J is still only 10, I worry about this issue to. I guess some of my worries are also based on the behaviours of my oldest son (19 yrs yesterday). My oldest son likes to think he can do it all and will tell others he can (as far as we know he is NT with a few AS traits and some learning difficulties), behind closed doors my oldest is so dependant on me its exhausting. I have tried pushing him to try things on his own and to take more responsibility for different things, but it usually ends up with him either really angry or really depressed (so delaying the process anyway) Don't get me wrong some things he is fantastic at, but the amount of work I have to put in to actually get him to where his is goes way beyond the norm.

So I do worry, because to most people looking in C (my oldest) is the model teen with no obvious probs, but J (as you would understand) his difficulties can be really obvious.

My nephew was telling me a story about a friend of his who is sharing a house with two other guys, one of his room mates is extremely difficult to get along with. My nephews friend never knows what mood this roomate will be in when he gets home. Apparently he can be extremely interesting and just keep to himself, but other times he will fly off the handle. Normally he would have moved out a lot sooner, however he has tried a little harder because this guy has AS so he is trying to make allwances. It worries me that J will find himself in the same postion, but he may not end up with a room mate as considerate. he may end up with someone that will retaliate (cant spell sorry)

I agree. I was several years behind the curve - intellectually stellar at a young age, but that's not nearly the same thing as being able to function alone in society. I think that by age 25 I was probably where others are at 18 or 19 - but I was going it totally on my own, my parents were not really capable of providing the appropriate guidance and there wasn't anyone else to do it. My daughter, at 18, would not have been functional away from home - we did discuss her going off to a university across the country and I was willing to help her get there but had serious doubts that she'd make it one semester. She just couldn't put her ducks in a row and get the things done that have to be done - paperwork, registrations, social navigation, homework on time, etc., at that time. She's getting there, though (she'll be 22 this week), and is now capable of holding down a full-time job. At 18? Good lord no, she couldn't hold a job completely on her own - I got her a paid internship and it was several hours a day of tears and "I can't do it, I just can't do it" before she'd eventually be out the door with a "just give it one more day" from me, day after day after day. It was much harder than anything we had to deal with during her school years (elementary/high school). (And people wonder why my hair is white now, when it wasn't five years ago!)

My goal? Get her to be totally self-sufficient before I die. I'd love to say she'll be there by 25 - and it looks like she will be, but the goal is "before I die." There will always be things for her to learn - hell, I'm still learning things daily! As long as she understands how to go about getting and keeping a job, a place to live, and caring for herself (eating and medical care), she's a highly intelligent young woman and will manage. She may not enjoy it always and it won't always be easy, but she'll manage. I am confident of that now. I was not confident of that 4 years ago.

Something that happened with me and that I'm seeing with my daughter that may be generally applicable - competence seems to be geometrically progressive. One little step leads to two, which lead to four, which lead to 16.... The more tasks one masters, the easier it is to master new ones. A lot of it is only realized in hindsight, but the older and more competent both of us have gotten, the more able we were able to function to a greater extent than I would have expected. We were able to generalize out a little and adapt skills from one set of experiences to another - part of it is self-confidence, part of it is knowing what worked the last time. It may have taken a bit longer to get to that point, but it did arrive. The one bit of advice I can give to any parent of an Aspie is to make sure your kid has as many opportunities to find out what works and what doesn't work, and to do things as much as they can on their own, while they still have you as a safety net.

Last edited by Nan on 06 Jan 2009, 8:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

My difficulties in living on my own were not related to simple things like locking the doors and getting rent paid. My difficulties were that my mental health suffered greatly in the time I first lived alone. As much as I don't like living with other people (well, I don't mind my husband and son now) having other people around kept me significantly more sane.

As for my own son, he will be free to live with us as long as he needs to. My hope is that he will find a good roommate or significant other he can live with fairly early in life, though.

Every kid is different. I would have been gone at 16 if it had been legal (I moved out at 18), while my 26 year old NT sister is still being helped by my parents.

Well, you really have to question how high-functioning those adults in the special were. "Stim noises"? I know quite a few AS adults, and I've never heard them make noises when they stim (most of them DON'T stim in a noticeable way). Whenever I hear about people with AS making noise, it's ALWAYS young children. So, if you get the most severe of adults with AS, is it really indicative of how your kids are going to be? If anything, treating them as if they WON'T become independant is a sure fire way to insure that they never do.

I imagine my son will live at home for quite a while. I want to see him get a college education, but the prospect of that feels daunting as he has a different learning style (he's very bright though).

I will expect him to have a job, clean up after himself, and remember to pay his own bills. The more he has to think on his own, the more he will act on his own. Ultimately, he will have to be prepared to live on his own in some day. I'm not living forever and he's an only child (only grandchild). I want him to get married and have kids, so he won't be alone. That means, he has to have a job, etc....

Stim noises was probably a poor choice of wording in my attempt to short cut, "his relentless need to pace disturbed his downstairs neighbors." My son is a pacer, that one struck home. Although, of course, there is no reason he can't be sure to rent the lower unit

I don't intend to treat my son as if he won't become independent, but I do think it's important that I allow for it. Some parents here have posted much about making sure kids are ready for independence at age 18. And it's a goal. But what if a parent is thinking of it as an absolute? To me, that shortchanges the child, and what he might need beyond the one arbitrary age. Parents need to understand that there may be real and important reasons they can't just cut off support based on the age of their AS child, and also need to remember to pace things based on the needs of the unique child in front of them.

My AS/PDD son is only nine and a half, so am only beginning to worry about this, but I have already begun to see that I may not be "free" of mothering in 9 years.

His problems probably will be a mixture of practical; shopping, cooking, keeping himself clean, organising his time, looking after his keys, etc, and "social", interacting with other people.

My own problems as Aspergers teen/adolescent were different. I did occasionally completely mess up on the practical side, eg: getting onto a train for the North rather than one for London, aged 16, because I was putting on makeup, forbidden by my parents, in the station toilets when they announced the destination, ( and had to change trains so that arrived too late for a meeting ), turning up at time officially stated to submit my final year study request, to find that everybody else had already been and gone before dawn and got all the best/interesting options, ( somehow they all knew through the grapevine that the stated time would not be good enough ), and similar things.

But generally I kept up appearances very efficiently/convincingly. Which is why I didn't understand why my parents did not see me as independent, didn't trust me to look after myself.

On the other hand, ( unbeknown to my parents until many years afterwards ), I got pregnant twice in my first two years at uni, caught herpes within a year of graduating, became seriously dependent on alcohol for all socialising, ( which lasted for many years ), became a frequent dope smoker, took up cigarette smoking the day I graduated and no longer had any structure imposed on me, ate nothing but take-outs for years, and bought new clothes rather than going to the laundry, and ran up a sizeable bank overdraft that I never paid off but which I "lost" when I had my breakdown.

When I was 17 I wanted to go to Art College, but the Student Grant system would have meant my going to one locally and living at home, which may well have been the main reason why my parents refused my request and insisted on university, because they were fed up with me by then. The day I turned 18 my father said he washed his hands of me. And yet anyone would have been hardpressed to find any reason for this. I did almost nothing I wasn't supposed to etc. It was my attitude which they could not take. Among other things my father had difficulty dealing with someone who disagreed with his "pronouncements"/monologues. ( he is prob on the spectrum too).

When I was 20 I had a brilliant summer job, went in at 8 each morning and left at 6 each evening, for almost three months, and was offered a job with the company at the end of the hols because my work, organising and clearing an enormous backlog of badly processed cases ( created after a govt budget had changed Savings Plan exemption law ), had been so appreciated; things like finding missing cheques for huge sums, completely clearing piles of files which had been collecting on people's desks, etc, and I wanted to. I wanted to leave uni where all I did was get pissed, stoned and laid. But it would have meant living at home to begin with, and no degree. My parents refused to consider it.

I don't think I had any idea of what it meant to look after myself until my 29 th year. And that was only the beginning.

But I've seen a lot of others, not always on or even near the spectrum, ( many more young men than women though ), with immense difficulty handling daily life, keeping clean, eating healthily, organising appts, etc. As if it is almost a modern disease.
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Last edited by ouinon on 06 Jan 2009, 2:18 pm, edited 7 times in total.

Bingo. That is exactly what happened to me. I was not expected to be able to become independent based on my label, so of course I have not yet achieved independence. Everything would have turned out much better for me if I was treated like an adult after I turned 18 and allowed to make decisions for myself, but instead I was still treated as a minor child who needed his "mommy" making his decisions for him. Nobody cared about my actual capabilities, or how I felt about the way I was being treated, or even the legal rights I was supposed to have as an adult.

This is why I am opposed to labeling people instead of treating them as individuals and giving them opportunities based on their strengths and abilities. You certainly won't have much ability to be independent if you're seen as nothing but a label, instead of a person who is capable like everyone else. The unfortunate fact is that a label is the modern-day equivalent of the Scarlet Letter, and anyone with a label is automatically assumed to be incapable of achieving much of anything, even among "professionals" as well as most laypeople regardless of their actual ablities.

I do realize that there are some people who truly are not capable of functioning as adults due to their disabilities, but they are in the minority of those with disabilities. The problem is that the higher-functioning individuals get lumped together with them, which is a major disservice to everyone involved. Again, most people with disabilities are capable of living independently as long as they are giving the services and opportunities they need to achieve independence.

With ref. noise making; I used to play my favourite music tracks at top decibels over and over again because I loved them so much, and I simply couldn't imagine other people not enjoying them too. Seriously.

Even being thrown out of a houseshare once, by the landlady, because one of the other two women in the house was totally and utterly fed up of me and my noise and drinking parties, didn't teach me. I just thought that she was an uptight killjoy.

I learned after I had my breakdown and could no longer bear other people's noise.

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I had the opposite experience growing up - my father told me I'd better get into college or have a job when I was 18 because they were going to kick me out. At that time I thought he really meant it (I don't now) and it was a huge motivating factor. Made me build a script for how the next 6 years were going to go and then follow it at whatever cost. Luckily it was the right approach for me - obviously it wouldn't work for many.

It is a really difficult topic though. I have two cousins in their mid/late twenties with social disorders (the elder diagnosed AS) and I can't imagine them ever leaving home. The elder is much more affected than I - socially disabled and intellectually focused and brilliant. I asked my parents what they thought about my cousins and my father's conclusions were that my cousins were "coddled a lot" but that based on their disabilities that might be the only way to raise them "successfully".

so much depends on your child's level of functioning......kids on the lower end of the spectrum will need support far longer than someone on the higher end.
my hubby has AS. his family never thought he'd be able to be independent or married, for that matter......we've been happily married for 17 years now.

Not assuming anything about you with my previous comment. But there are several parents of AS adults in the Asperger organization in my province that seem to refuse to 'let go' of their children and they treat them as if they're tweens. My great aunt was also very much like that with my cousin, who has mild cerebral palsy. He's very socially stunted because his parents were very controlling of him, but his independant living skills have gotten much better since his mother died.

I think there are parents who, by their own nature, would find an excuse, any excuse, not to "let go" of their kids. The existence of a so called disability just makes that excuse easier for them to find.

Sad, isn't it?