Fear not! He has you as a parent and you care about him and will figure out what to do.
I’m going to quickly I hope tell you my story to give you a glimpse down the road at what COULD happen in one scenario. It’s both scary and hopeful, loaded with anxiety and also awash with calm.
I have a child that some of my loving relatives have decided is Aspy, while professionals have not. But that connection I think may give me some insight into the struggle you as a parent are going through.
What I wish that I’d done: Homeschooled him so that he could focus on what his passions are and always feel accepted as the bright, creative, wonderful child that he is. A real gift to the world.
What I did: Worked full time, got him tested for LDs, and kept him in IEP classes in supportive public schools. No matter what I did, it was a disaster. Mainly because if he didn’t want or agree to do something, it just wouldn’t get done and life was really hard for him and for everyone involved. Again: super supportive schools. Some teachers "got
" him and others were clueless and frustrated. Child stopped working on assignments in HS from sheer frustration of having to do that stuff for X number of years, plus boredom. He got more and more depressed during high school no matter what we did. The last two years of high school, he got so depressed that I was begging him to drop out and we’d take it from there. After age 16 dropping out is a genuine option. He could always get his GED. No amount of high school alienation and pain was worth that diploma.
Despite our begging him to drop out, he continued, a daily dogged awful slog, but the cost was huge. He was touch and go depressed for 6 months after graduating and we are now beginning to see glimmers of life and striding forward.
The lesson that I learned was that high school really doesn’t matter. Once you drop the idea of the Importance of High School, as a parent, you can calm down and take his life-coaching in a different direction. My husband kept saying: It’s just high school! At first that made me panic, but then I realized: Wait! It is just high school. The goal is to get through somehow and get out the other side. Who cares how that happens? Then it gets easier. The rest of the world is more forgiving in that there are more paths provided, more room for your child’s cool creativity and interests. He will find that path. High school = 1 path. Life = infinite number of paths. There is a good, solid, hopeful and helpful path for him out there. Really.
Also, it’s worth remembering that he’s aspy but he’s also a teen and he has teen stuff to go through. Teen brains are different things from yours and mine. The frontal lobe will fully integrate at about age 25. That’s the lobe of self-control. Impulsiveness goes way down at that age, for a reason. For my child, waiting and allowing him to grow and change seems to be working. We are relaxed at home, purposefully setting aside the structure of school that he was forced to endure for virtually his whole life, and which he did endure with such courage. For the first time in 12 years, he’s being allowed to pursue his personal interests. (We also ask him to do cleaning and work out once a day, that sort of thing, and will start him into volunteer work and/or paying work soon.)
There is a path for late-starting college students. If my child goes back to school, and I think he will, he is on that track. There are so many people, especially boys, who are late starters of college that several schools have entrance options for nontraditional students. Nontrad: It’s a thing. Use it to your advantage. The cool thing about nontrad is that SAT stops mattering, HS GPA stops mattering. What matters is their work experience and grades from community college. The longer you stay out of high school the more your com col experience and work experience matter to colleges.
But the most important thing, IMO is that he feels your love and support, which I’m sure that he does. he will be fine, he will find his life path, because he has you there to coach him.
And looking back I would not have changed it.