First, Neal...really well written and a story that really resonated with me. I am sure there are a number of folks on this site who can relate in one way or another to the challenges faced by that family and what they did to overcome them.
It certainly did for me. I have three children. All of them attended a small private school. For context, my first two children both won Gold Medals on the National Latin Exam, one went on to be a Rhodes Finalist/Phi Beta Kappa and the other went on to win a NSF National Scholars grant. Both earned graduate degrees at two of the top five public universities in the country.
At around the age of 13-14, my third child received a formal diagnosis of autism/high functioning Asperger's. He ended up graduating from the small private school ranked 34th in a class of 35.
It is a pretty commonly shared thought of the parents of a child on the spectrum that you live two lives. Your own and the one you are managing all day/every day. The small school my children attended--while excellent for most students---struggled to support and at times to even understand what to do about a child on the spectrum. Missed assignments/confusion ruled the day. Untold meetings with teachers/principals to try to explain how they needed to get information to him were endless and ultimately futile in the end. He was at the bottom of the class basically because he couldn't keep up with the assignments.
But just like Ms. Wakefield (for context, my wife divorced me/left town and I was left in primary guardian position), I was determined that he would graduate from the school and then go to college. Which he did. With the help of several great people, extensive tutoring to reach a good enough score on the ACT--which he achieved---he graduated from college with a 3.0. Two of the reasons being that 1) the private school was much harder than the state college and 2) the state college is required by law to provide accommodations that allowed him to keep up with assignments and allowed adequate time to take tests.
The thing that struck me in the Wakefield story is Brandi's immediate reaction that not only was he not going to be "institutionalized" but that he was going to go to college and get all he could out of life. When constantly faced with teachers who didn't seem to get it or understand it, everyday I would tell my son that he was smart and he was going to get it done and we were never going to quit trying. Almost everyday I talked to him that way---after yelling at him for a while also...
During the final meeting with our autism specialist--after all the testing had been done and we were being told what to expect/what were the limitations and possibilities---the expert said he could achieve things but in a different way maybe and would need some help. But one thing she did point out was that about 50% of folks with Asperger's never are able to drive. The meeting ended and we walked out to the car to drive home. We get in, fasten our seat belts and I then turn and look at him and said..."you are going to learn how to drive. I don't want to be driving you around when you are 23 years old and you certainly will not want me driving you around when you are 23 years old." He said..."ok". But probably not real sure how that was going to happen. Well, we started practicing a little while after that....he took four years to do it, but now he drives himself all over the place locally. And I learned at some point that studies have shown that those that figure out the driving thing have much better outcomes than those that don't. Which makes sense.
Again, great stuff Neal and congratulations to the Wakefields. As I said earlier, like I am sure many others on here know, what they have done is no easy task but the rewards are great.
It certainly did for me. I have three children. All of them attended a small private school. For context, my first two children both won Gold Medals on the National Latin Exam, one went on to be a Rhodes Finalist/Phi Beta Kappa and the other went on to win a NSF National Scholars grant. Both earned graduate degrees at two of the top five public universities in the country.
At around the age of 13-14, my third child received a formal diagnosis of autism/high functioning Asperger's. He ended up graduating from the small private school ranked 34th in a class of 35.
It is a pretty commonly shared thought of the parents of a child on the spectrum that you live two lives. Your own and the one you are managing all day/every day. The small school my children attended--while excellent for most students---struggled to support and at times to even understand what to do about a child on the spectrum. Missed assignments/confusion ruled the day. Untold meetings with teachers/principals to try to explain how they needed to get information to him were endless and ultimately futile in the end. He was at the bottom of the class basically because he couldn't keep up with the assignments.
But just like Ms. Wakefield (for context, my wife divorced me/left town and I was left in primary guardian position), I was determined that he would graduate from the school and then go to college. Which he did. With the help of several great people, extensive tutoring to reach a good enough score on the ACT--which he achieved---he graduated from college with a 3.0. Two of the reasons being that 1) the private school was much harder than the state college and 2) the state college is required by law to provide accommodations that allowed him to keep up with assignments and allowed adequate time to take tests.
The thing that struck me in the Wakefield story is Brandi's immediate reaction that not only was he not going to be "institutionalized" but that he was going to go to college and get all he could out of life. When constantly faced with teachers who didn't seem to get it or understand it, everyday I would tell my son that he was smart and he was going to get it done and we were never going to quit trying. Almost everyday I talked to him that way---after yelling at him for a while also...
During the final meeting with our autism specialist--after all the testing had been done and we were being told what to expect/what were the limitations and possibilities---the expert said he could achieve things but in a different way maybe and would need some help. But one thing she did point out was that about 50% of folks with Asperger's never are able to drive. The meeting ended and we walked out to the car to drive home. We get in, fasten our seat belts and I then turn and look at him and said..."you are going to learn how to drive. I don't want to be driving you around when you are 23 years old and you certainly will not want me driving you around when you are 23 years old." He said..."ok". But probably not real sure how that was going to happen. Well, we started practicing a little while after that....he took four years to do it, but now he drives himself all over the place locally. And I learned at some point that studies have shown that those that figure out the driving thing have much better outcomes than those that don't. Which makes sense.
Again, great stuff Neal and congratulations to the Wakefields. As I said earlier, like I am sure many others on here know, what they have done is no easy task but the rewards are great.
