One of the great parental rites-of-passage is when your
eldest child receives their first college acceptance letter. If it happens to
be the school that he or she so wants to attend, then it’s a moment of genuine
celebration, tinged with the bittersweet knowledge that the adult leave-taking
is beginning.
But when, like my son Max, your child is autistic, and that
first “you’re in” letter lands on the doormat… well, full disclosure, I found
myself sobbing uncontrollably. Because early on in Max’s odyssey along the
autism spectrum I was categorically told that the hope of him ever having a
so-called “normal life” — let alone eventually going off to college — was
beyond the realm of possibility.
Ask any parent of a child with a disability and you will
usually get an earful about the all-encompassing uncertainties that accompany
having a son or daughter with “special needs” (to use that politically correct
catch-all phrase). These parents are acutely aware of the fact that — in its
brutal, happenstantial way — life can suddenly deal you some very bad cards.
Only retrospectively — many years down this track — do you also begin to
realize that how you, the parent, grapple with this determines so much of your
child’s future.
To read more on this story, click here: My Son with Autismis Going to College Cue the Happy Tears
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