The Great Unknown

What happens to special ed kids after high school?

When my older son was a junior in high school, we started preparing him for college. Nearly 90 percent of the students at his school goes to a four-year college, so there was a huge formal and informal support system to guide us through the SATs, applications, and all that. I didn’t need too much help, but if I did have a question, his guidance counselor could find an answer.

Jonah is now a senior at Rutgers finishing off the last of his requirements for a major in political science. He had some rough moments and missed opportunities due to the pandemic, but he’s back on track. When he’s done, he’ll get a job, move into an apartment with friends, and eventually get married. He’s on the middle class moving train. Of course, I worry about him from time to time. He still needs some guidance and will certainly face obstacles and hardships of some sorts in the future, because that’s how life works, but his future is mapped out, and it’s all good.

My younger son, Ian, has high functioning autism, which means that he has average to superior cognitive abilities, but poor social skills. He also struggles with reading comprehension. Ian can’t go directly to college, like his older brother, because he might interrupt a programming class to inform his professor of a grammar error, he couldn’t handle the chaos of a dorm, and he would be very overwhelmed.

Back when Ian was a senior in high school, my husband and I came up with a plan for Ian: he would attend our public school’s 18-21 transition program to work on social skills and get real-world job internships. In the evening, he could take classes at the local community college. It sounded like a good plan, but this year has turned out to be way more complicated that we could have ever envisioned.

Other parents in my cohort are now enjoying the freedoms of empty nestdom. They are traveling, starting new careers, relocating to Florida. They are basking in the glory of their children’s successes, after 18+ years of parenting drudgery.

Me? Not so much. I currently spend 50 hours per week — sometimes more — trying to put Ian on a good path. It’s a full time job, filling out mountains of government paperwork to get him qualified for disability support, chasing administrators at the community college, trying to force the local public school to support the needs of a smart kid.

I’ve learned a lot this year. Some challenges were entirely new, like figuring out the social security forms. Other challenges were a little easier, because I have some unusual skills. I’m a former college professor, so I have been able to “hack” the community college to work for him.

After my son graduated from high school last year, he, my husband, and I (it’s truly a joint effort) have worked REALLY hard to transition from high school to the world of adulthood, a scary and exciting place with no road signs. I’m writing this newsletter to share all the lessons that I’ve learned about moving my son with high functioning autism from high school to adulthood.

Nobody prepares you for what’s waiting after high school, if you’re a parent of a special needs kid. But I’ll tell all.

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The Great Leap is a weekly newsletter. Every Wednesday, I tell stories and give tips about the transition from high school to adulthood. It’s aimed at parents with children with high functioning autism, but I hope that it will be interesting to disabled people, parents of young people with other disabilities, consultants, nice people, education-junkies, and allies. Topics will include:

• Why you should not let your child graduate from children

• What’s an 18-21 year transition program?

• What life skills should you promote at home?

• The bursars office, syllabus, office hours and other key terms that your student needs to know

• Teach your student to write an email to a professor

• What is the office of specialized services and what can they do for you?