BTW!! Update on gapping child! Gapping child just this past hour got an excellent position / paying internship at a very nice non-profit org in our city!
This is a child who, like others on this thread, wasn’t bathing properly, would barely leave his/her room and so on. Currently has been getting up at 5AM for the past several mornings in pursuit of a job and . . . . . got one today.
I firmly believe that this miraculous turn-around has been because of constant affirmations from parents that the decisions child was making were good (we may not have been comfortable with all of them as parents, but they were in the ballpark of basically okay). Also child was being challenged with what s/he could do at that time – not some random timeline that’s set out for Joe or Jill Average Child that s/he had to keep up with, but s/he was being challenged with what this child could handle at any given time. Child basically was able to meet those goals and gradually his/her outlook and confidence improved.
This organization that teaches professional skills also worked miracles. It was great to find some sort of organization outside of the house to help teach these soft skills. RIT and other colleges may offer this kind of support. I’m sure that some behavioral therapy groups may offer this sort of support. Maybe some faith-based orgs also offer soft-skills support. We happened to find a non-profit-org that works with and in our city to help youth.
Thank you all for your advice!! I can’t tell you how much I appreciate hearing from all of you. And also know I g that other people have been through this.
Just to clarify a few things - I completely agree with those of you who said that a school that has supportive ASD programs might be better for him than an Ivy, but he really wants to go to this Ivy, so we felt that we had to let him make his decision and hope it works out. He would never forgive us if we didn’t. Buying doesn’t get in, it’s great to hear suggestions about other schools like RIT and Case Western.
Also, I totally agree on the GAP year advice and have suggested it to him but he doesn’t want to.
Also, he is in therapy now as some people have suggested with and is working on some of these issues. By as many of you know, therapy can be a long process, so I appreciate all the other suggestions of things I can do, I was wondering if people had any experience with any other programs (maybe for the summer before freshman year) to help kids like this get ready for college.
The list of things he should be able to do for himself was very helpful. I think that’s something we can work on with him now before he goes to school.
@nativeNYer, I think you have gotten some useful advice. I think the list of things he needs to be able to do was excellent, although as I’ll explain below, I’m not sure my son had experience with all of them before he went to college.
My perspective: I grew up with a clearly Asperger’s dad – brilliant theoretical physicist who, like many of his colleagues, was not strong at connecting with other people or reading cues even though it was clear that he was a warm man. I had to learn social skills when I went to college. My son is also incredibly smart and not Asperger’s but severely dyslexic (reading and writing physically hurt him) and executive functioning was quite a problem. But, he got his people skills from his mother. He also had serious sleep apnea during HS. Given the sleep apnea and the disabilities and the EF, we did a lot of the life organizing around him. As such, he had no practice with some of the things on that list. He hadn’t really done budgeting and usually didn’t do his own wash. We always picked up the medicine for him though he took it on his own. … His rooms at home and in college were both pigsties, but I don’t think personal hygiene was an issue. We figured our job was to help him build the academic skills and he’d either add the life skills as he went or do like his dad and hire folks to do that (I hire an executive assistant who takes care of many aspects of my life, not just work, because I’m very good at big picture and concepts and not so good at details).
Things we did that might help you.
For the EF issues, we hired a coach who would work with him in HS on planning work (this had been started when he was in a middle school program at a private school that took six boys with LDs and high IQs and tried to teach them the skills they needed). She then worked with him remotely while he was in college. (She specializes in very bright kids with issues like Aspergers and LDs). The coach had access to his emails in college (it seems like everything was done via email) and checked in with him by phone.
He took a gap year (in part to apply to colleges and in part for the sleep apnea surgery). He thinks this really helped him.
We looked primarily at colleges that had no or non-onerous distribution requirements so that he could play to his strengths (and in particular avoid courses with 400 pages of reading a week). He believes that playing to his strengths was particularly important.
We picked a college (an elite LAC) over an Ivy because the Disabilities Services Office and the Dean of Freshman committed to helping him succeed and giving him appropriate accommodations (extra time on tests, readers for courses with a lot of reading, some assistive technology, and sometimes someone to dictate to). In grad school, all they gave him was extra time on tests (and assistive technology if he didn't have it).
He voluntarily checked in with me regularly to discuss what he was working on and his time allocation. Usually he just wanted my affirmation that he was doing the right thing.
We put a 4 or 5 hour driving radius on college applications, so we could scoop him up if there was a problem
Our daughter (ADHD and very bright) started at a university where there was a peer mentor program run by the DSO. An older student in the same department met with her weekly, helped her plan her time, gave her a sense of what to expect, and also told her what to study for on the tests (and may have given her his old tests). She particularly liked the test prep help but the EF help was meaningful.
The good news: EF really kicked in and by the end of college, he didn’t need the coach. He did incredibly well in school. He enjoyed it. He had a limited amount of energy and we didn’t push him to do things like internships, which we would have done without the disabilities. This probably would have hurt him if he’d tried to take a conventional path, but instead started up a company with several kids. After running it for 1.5 years, he applied for grad school and got into probably the best MBA and data science programs in the country given his interests and then co-founded a company a year before he graduated, and raised several million dollars from VCs. He and his company are getting accolades a year in. Perhaps more importantly, he and his partner took my suggestion and hired an executive assistant who knows she is supposed to help him with personal stuff as well as work stuff.
I don’t know if any of that is helpful but happy to answer other questions if you have them.
I am on the ASD/autism spectrum, have attended highly selective colleges, and have several traits in common with the OP’s son. I’d suggest trying to understand why he chooses the behaviors you listed, and trying to get him to understand why you believe they are problematic. I’d also suggest looking beyond reasons like it is what the average person does, and emphasizing what the advantages/disadvantages of that behavior are for your son.
For example, you mentioned showering. Is his problem with showering that it feels unpleasant, wetness, temperature delta, that it requires leaving room, that he doesn’t personally care and only does so for the benefit of others, or something else? is your problem with the lack of showering that you believe it is necessary to shower daily, that he smells bad, that he is sweating with athletic activity and not washing off, skin complexion issues, or something else? For most people, showering daily isn’t necessary or even desirable from a dermatological perspective. However, if he is sweating with athletic activity or getting to the point of having body odor issues, then that’s a different story,
@Data10 I’d love your advice on the showering issue. I want him to shower more because sometimes he smells. I’m not even asking for daily - every other day would be acceptable at this point! I think he doesn’t do it more often because he doesn’t really care about appearances and would rather be spending his time doing something else.
@Data10 Also, I just remembered that on the day he had a college interview for his first choice college, he came from from school and showered and shaved before the interview (without any prompting.) So he knows its important, but he still can’t bring himself to do it often unless it’s really important.
Are you sure its not his clothes that actually smell? I’ve worked with kids on the spectrum for years…and some prefer to wear the same clothes over and over. It’s hard to get them washed. Some fabrics also retain odor longer than others, even after being washed. The other thing…he might be showering just fine, but he might need to use a good antiperspirant deodorant.
All of these things contribute to a person smelling bad…and sometimes it’s not that they aren’t washing.
Trust me- it’s his body, not the clothing! I check in his bathroom and he showers about once a week.
@shawbridge: thank you for your post. Those were incredibly helpful suggestions. I’m wondering: did you discuss his EF issues with the colleges before you applied? Or did you just figure out which schools generally would be more supportive. Also, I think the EF coach is a great idea. If you think your son’s coach is still around, I’d love to get her contact info. If not, I live in NYC so I’m sure there are plenty of EF coaches here. It’s just always good to get a recommendation.
@nativeNYer my son has similar reasons for not doing well with hygiene. He just does care, but yes, when he has an interview or similiar he will make an effort. My H and I were hoping that he might want to eventually date, and then would start caring. My son showers every other day, but I cannot attest to him doing anything but letting the water flow. My bigger concern in my case is that the teeth brushing sucks. And he has had cavities so natural consequences have not worked.
@nativeNYer, in general, I believe that you are better off determining which schools are best for your son, not disclosing until he is admitted, and then disclosing negotiating with the schools at at that point. The admissions people are very different than the DSO. The DSO people may (or may not) be quite supportive and know how to make things work. But, the admissions folks may well ding your kid if they see a potential problem.
I did not disclose anything with my daughter. With my son, they knew about his dyslexia because we partially homeschooled him in HS at the school’s suggestion (they were not doing a good job of teaching him to write and, at the same time, the honors math curriculum was painfully slow for him) and the reason for the homeschooling was the dyslexia. We didn’t disclose EF issues in either case prior to admission.
I asked on CC and elsewhere about which elite schools were good for a dyslexic kid and which were not. The answers aren’t always consistent. In my son’s case, I thought the biggest variable was flexible curriculum. That way, he could add an art course if he had a heavier reading semester (he is actually reasonably artistic, though he has given that up to become a tech entrepreneur). I recommended he not go to my Ivy alma mater, which I loved (and he loved because he had attended at least two reunions) because of the distribution requirements. I could have been wrong, but it worked out generally very well. The Dean of Freshman became his advisor and sent my son back after he showed up with his proposed first semester schedule and said, “This schedule is too hard. I want you to learn how to succeed here. Come back with an easier schedule.” He did and got two A+s, one A and an A-. The Dean also advised him against taking courses with certain professors who would be relatively unaccommodating. Once he knew how to do the work, he graduated with a 3.95 GPA. I had graduated magna cum laude. He desperately wanted to graduate summa. This was dependent upon a senior thesis. He did a smashingly good job. It was the first summa his adviser had given in 18 years and at the defense, they told him that it was the easiest decision they had to make. My son missed a Y-Combinator interview for that thesis defense, but he was very pleased.
I will send you an interview with him shortly after graduation via PM. I will check with the coach as to whether she is still doing it. I suspect the answer is yes, though at the moment, I believe she is attending to difficult family issues.
@nativeNYer Say he does get into an Ivy and goes there and flames out. Are you full pay? Are you willing to “waste” the tuition? Will he be able to share with you how he is doing with grades before it is time to Withdraw?
If you had a situation where you are not full pay, and you agree that you can look at his online grade book / he will withdraw if he isn’t doing well at the W date , then it may be fine to go for it and it if it doesn’t work out no harm no foul.
But if you are paying $70K/year and he won’t share how he is going and won’t commit to withdrawing and ends up with a failing GPA that carries forward that may be a situation you want to consider.
Many parents have to decide if they can afford a particular college regardless of any other issues.
If you’re interested in an Ivy education for your child and you’re full pay, then you should consider the flexibility offered by Columbia GS (and maybe UPenn’s LPS). GS says that they want a gap in the child’s education but that gap can be quite small. I’ve known people who have gapped for as little as 6 months. GS allows the student to take fewer than 4 classes, for example, to start and stop as they need to. It’s much more flexible and it is the same education as with Columbia U’s Columbia College. Check UPenn as well for their requirements. GS and Penn LPS offer some FA but it’s much less than with their other undergraduate colleges.
NYU has Gallatin which allows a lot of flexibility too.