Just wanted to thank you for what you do. I'm in an eerily similar space right now with my high school senior who is also mid-level. Friends wonder why I haven't gone back to work. It's because figuring out my daughter's next step (and dealing with all the bureaucracy and paperwork and investigating every organization and funding source) is my full-time job. Thanks for helping me to not feel so alone! I appreciate you.
Yep this is where I am. I do a lot of driving & scheduling & searching & feeling guilty when he has nothing to do but I need/want to work. I am grateful for the programs he does have, and still ... it’s a challenge.
My situation is similar, so I really related to this. Both of my sons are autistic, but one struggles a lot with mental health. He's probably PDA, but of course that's not a recognized diagnosis in the U.S. He has a high I.Q. but his odd behaviors and inability to write (undiagnosed dysgraphia, I'm sure) annoyed his teachers and they criticized and punished him. By the time he was diagnosed at age 10, so much damage had been done.
He actually got his diagnosis when I took him in for depression! I had brought him to child psychiatrists before, but they said he was fine and I needed to be more strict (eye roll). He left high school at 17 and took the GED, but he's almost nonfunctional due to anxiety. He's 24 now and through hours and hours of hard work over the years, he finally has an affordable apartment. He is brilliant, but cannot drive. We've been referred to many job coaches and programs, but working in retail would drive him crazy. Hoping that his mental health will improve and he can eventually work. His abilities with technology are amazing, but I'm still driving him to doctor appointments that I had to book for him. There is so little understanding of the difficulties we have with our mid-level kids. Thanks for writing about it - we need to spread awareness.
Hello I have three kids who are like yours but my whole family is high functioning predigious savants. I have a podcast that covers our different intelligence. I don't think it is that we are wrong. I think it is that we have been lied to. We actually have two kinds of intelligence. One that is sensing and at the body level and one that is cognitive and at the cognitive level. On my podcast I talk about which one is which and how we integrate them to work as one.
Here is the where we fall down. We are not stupid, we are different. We have all sorts of data and patterns at the sensing level but our society limits any and all cultivation of it because we are the gifted who thrive in our natural state. Society needs to oppress us so we don't invite everyone back to indigenous life because it is much healthier and better for the world.
250k years we existed as our current form of humans. Only 60k has been in society. 30k of that has been under patriarchy and it is under patriarchy that sensing intelligence has been oppressed. I work in sensing intelligence in tech. I understand it because it is how half of my intelligence works. It this part that drives my prodigious savant Giftedness knowing. But I didn't even know it was there until I left working for others and started worked for myself.
Our systems don't help our children they hurt them. I have a 14 yo (in college) tearing her hair out because she knows the way the way they are making learn and regurgitate is so stupid. I let my son pursue a whole nother career before he finally went back to college at 21. Because I knew he would drop out otherwise. It has to be on his terms. Our kids are brilliant in a unique way. We just need to left them find their way.
Don't beat yourself up. The system does that plenty already.
Just wanted to thank you for what you do. I'm in an eerily similar space right now with my high school senior who is also mid-level. Friends wonder why I haven't gone back to work. It's because figuring out my daughter's next step (and dealing with all the bureaucracy and paperwork and investigating every organization and funding source) is my full-time job. Thanks for helping me to not feel so alone! I appreciate you.
Yep this is where I am. I do a lot of driving & scheduling & searching & feeling guilty when he has nothing to do but I need/want to work. I am grateful for the programs he does have, and still ... it’s a challenge.
My situation is similar, so I really related to this. Both of my sons are autistic, but one struggles a lot with mental health. He's probably PDA, but of course that's not a recognized diagnosis in the U.S. He has a high I.Q. but his odd behaviors and inability to write (undiagnosed dysgraphia, I'm sure) annoyed his teachers and they criticized and punished him. By the time he was diagnosed at age 10, so much damage had been done.
He actually got his diagnosis when I took him in for depression! I had brought him to child psychiatrists before, but they said he was fine and I needed to be more strict (eye roll). He left high school at 17 and took the GED, but he's almost nonfunctional due to anxiety. He's 24 now and through hours and hours of hard work over the years, he finally has an affordable apartment. He is brilliant, but cannot drive. We've been referred to many job coaches and programs, but working in retail would drive him crazy. Hoping that his mental health will improve and he can eventually work. His abilities with technology are amazing, but I'm still driving him to doctor appointments that I had to book for him. There is so little understanding of the difficulties we have with our mid-level kids. Thanks for writing about it - we need to spread awareness.
Hello I have three kids who are like yours but my whole family is high functioning predigious savants. I have a podcast that covers our different intelligence. I don't think it is that we are wrong. I think it is that we have been lied to. We actually have two kinds of intelligence. One that is sensing and at the body level and one that is cognitive and at the cognitive level. On my podcast I talk about which one is which and how we integrate them to work as one.
Here is the where we fall down. We are not stupid, we are different. We have all sorts of data and patterns at the sensing level but our society limits any and all cultivation of it because we are the gifted who thrive in our natural state. Society needs to oppress us so we don't invite everyone back to indigenous life because it is much healthier and better for the world.
250k years we existed as our current form of humans. Only 60k has been in society. 30k of that has been under patriarchy and it is under patriarchy that sensing intelligence has been oppressed. I work in sensing intelligence in tech. I understand it because it is how half of my intelligence works. It this part that drives my prodigious savant Giftedness knowing. But I didn't even know it was there until I left working for others and started worked for myself.
Our systems don't help our children they hurt them. I have a 14 yo (in college) tearing her hair out because she knows the way the way they are making learn and regurgitate is so stupid. I let my son pursue a whole nother career before he finally went back to college at 21. Because I knew he would drop out otherwise. It has to be on his terms. Our kids are brilliant in a unique way. We just need to left them find their way.
Don't beat yourself up. The system does that plenty already.