Grown Aspies

[saraha]

I would love it (and be very encouraged by it) if some who have adult Aspies or Very High Functioning kids/siblings/friends could tell me a little about how/what they are doing now that they are grown up.  My aspies are 12 and 14 and right now I am having trouble seeing what the future looks like.

 

Thanks in advance for sharing.

[8filltheheart]

If you search this forum with my user name, you will find posts about my ds who is now 22. A brief answer is that he is happy working for Goodwill, but lives at home and is completely dependent on us.

[JennW in SoCal]

When my Aspie was in middle school, I too despaired of him ever growing into a functional adult. With patience and a sense of humor, we persevered.  I found every opportunity I could to let him pursue his interests through volunteer work.  I tweaked his homeschooling to fit him, letting go of the standard high school curriculum, designing instead courses around his interests, working on some weak spots but letting him use his strengths to his advantage.  His high school transcript included basic home ec courses, as I taught him how to cook and balance a checkbook.  He attended and graduated from an unusual university, on the other side of the country, where he could specialize in his chosen field. He is now gainfully employed in the career of his dreams, living on his own with his cat.  

 

Another young adult Aspie I know wound up graduating from a college prep high school and is a very successful student at a prestigious New England liberal arts college.  Yet another is graduating at the top of his class at a technical school in his field of interest, with good job prospects lining up. 

 

The middle school years can be brutal even with neuro-typical kids.  Aspies always seem to do everything with a little extra intensity, so the puberty years are especially rough.  By the age of 15 or 16 you'll start seeing a wonderful young adult start to bloom.  Hang in there!!

[Lecka]

I can update on my cousin. 

 

He has just gotten co-diagnosed with bipolar disorder.  It is good to know.  He is in a day program, job training for people who have a mental health diagnosis.  The people there are extremely nice. 

 

Otherwise he is doing rough right now, I am sorry to say.  He is spending a lot of time with my parents.  My aunt and uncle moved to my hometown to be near my parents and my sister, my older sister is going to be the trustee for a special needs trust set up for him. 

 

He is my age, 35.  He went to college and did fairly okay in dorms, but that has turned out easier for him than living on his own.  There is more to take care of.  He has had some steady jobs, never full-time, but steady.  It is a very hard job market lately, though.  He lost his last job when they had to cut people. 

 

I look at blogs sometimes -- a lot of people are doing very well.  There is a woman who works at Intel who writes a blog -- I will post it when I remember her name. 

[Heathermomster]

My old employer's youngest DS graduated from high school and owns/runs a karate school with his elder sibling.

[Tiramisu]

I'm kind of jumping in hesitantly, but I think I know a couple of people who probably have/had Aspergers but are undiagnosed, or even if they have an official diagnosis, I would probably not have been informed.

 

The first is my uncle who is no longer living. He would be in his sixties now. He had a masters degree, but had a hard time holding a job for very long because he was rude but didn't realize it. He had careers in fields where his behaviors couldn't be ignored (business and public service). He had little understanding of other people, their feelings, and what was appropriate, despite his high intelligence. His only active friendship was with an old college roommate who seemed interesting character himself, but not having friends or an intimate relationship didn't seem to bother him. He was extremely dependent on his parents and visited them everyday even though he lived alone. My family was not the sort that would have ever looked into figuring out what was wrong. Had he received the right therapy, I think his life may have been different. He still very much had interests and things he enjoyed but he would do them alone.

 

The next adult I know who I suspect has Aspergers is nearing fifty. His social relationships were few and always with other unusual people. He finally married late in life and before his marriage he only would have relationships with women outside of his culture/language who were perhaps more forgiving of his difference. His career is going well and he is a PhD and is in a field that appreciates or puts up more with different kinds of personalities. His family also would never pursue an evaluation or therapy but they promoted a lifestyle in which he could thrive which was less dependent on social interaction and more geared to nature-oriented, independent activities.

[saraha]

Thank you all for posting,  There is quite a continuum in just these responses.

 

  What kind of things do you think they struggle with the most?  How can I prepare him to work at a job?  Or work with people?  Know when to take someone seriously or when to roll his eyes and walk away?

 

  Right now my son has decided ;-) that he knows what he is going to eat when he is going to be on his own.  He is going to bake a box muffin mix 2 days a week and have muffins and an apple everyday for breakfast.  On Sundays he will go to McD's and get two sausage sandwiches.  He will eat pasta or pizza for lunch, and tacos, homemade hamburgers, or frozen fish with tartar sauce and green beans for dinner.  He will eat special stuff when he comes to my house for special occasions.  Oh, and he will buy ice cream and pumpkin pies for dessert.  He assures me he will eat plenty of apples, oranges and strawberries.  Other than feeding himself, I just don't know how he is going to do it.  I think if he could get our help with getting him set up with bill paying and checking on that, he will be okay, it is just the unexpected stuff I don't know how he is going to deal with.  I think he will be able to live in his own apartment, but I  don't think he will be independent in  the way that he is capable of taking care of whatever needs done.  I have a feeling there will be a lot of calls asking for help.  Which is fine, until we are gone.  Hopefully he will be happy living in a condo where they have maintenance to take care of everything.  I also don't know what he is going to do to make a living.  He has a good heart and wants to please people, but not enough to just do the job the way they want it done, he always knows a better way, and completely lacks common sense.  If he would be happy standing in front of a button all day pushing it, that would be the best for him, but dealing with people is something that scares me.  He gets his feelings hurt very easily when he realizes that people are aggravated with him or if he has made a big mistake, or if people won't listen to him.  He doesn't get angry though, not too much anyway, he just internalizes it and says he is stupid.  He knows he is smart, and he knows he is different, and being different really bothers him sometimes.  I wish I knew a way to find something he would enjoy that he could do without having to work with people, both to protect him, and to ensure success at a job.  He wants to be a novelist, but knows he will have to do something else until he makes it "big", he just doesn't know what he wants to do. 

 

My husband works with a lot of engineers and he swears a few are on the spectrum.  It has made him a sensitive employee to those guys, but he also sees a lot of guys getting mad at them, and treating them differently than they do the guys that act more normal.  I don't want that to happen to my son.  People telling him when to stay late or that he has to cover this shift or do that, I could see people taking advantage of him because he would do it just because they told him to.

 

Why do they have to grow up?

[Lecka]

Just from what you have written -- your son sounds like he has got a lot going for him.

 

Money management is a big problem for my cousin.  He has never been good at math.  He does not really understand that if you start with a certain amount of money, and spend it, you can run out of money.  He is able to allocate money for about a week of food/sundries.  If he has more money, he will spend too much the first week and run out. 

 

That does not even get into paying bills ---- mostly just food. 

 

For cleaning -- he has lists of what he needs to clean, he is fine to follow the list.  But if something comes up that is not on the list, he might not realize "oh I should deal with this." 

 

He does not go more than a week without someone checking in on him.  He is fine for a week, but he needs help with basic adult things, taking care of basic things, about that often, as things come up that he does not take care of. 

 

I have seen a book about life skills for Aspergers -- "How to Teach Life Skills to Kids with Autism or Aspergers" and it seems like it is too advanced for him. 

 

Also my aunt and uncle have had it recommended recently -- for him to develop problem-solving skills, he should be left alone to some extent to problem solve things that come up in daily life.  Even if he asked for help -- that would be a step.  But he gets panicky I think.  Or, he really doesn't notice.  I don't know -- I think some advice they get is high for him.  But -- he is also used to people helping him out.  But ----- he would love to do things more independently, too. 

 

My son has autism, and we have things where we "wait for him to initiate."  Like -- we create situations where there is a little problem (like -- no spoon to eat his oatmeal, only one sock when he is getting dressed) and wait to see if he will ask.  He does it sometimes, and I am clued in on it.  But my cousin never had the benefit of anything like this when he was a child.  He was not diagnosed until he was 20 or so, and only diagnosed with bipolar in the last year.  I think they used to not be willing to have them be co-morbid?  But it is just a hard skill for autism, it just is.

 

I can also say -- my little son was diagnosed in the severe range on the ADOS, and he did have a serious language delay.  My cousin never had a language delay, his language has always been very good.  But I remember him when he was my son's age, and I think just from how they are, there are things where my son is not as affected as my cousin.  Some things are a lot easier for my son, he is not a worrier, and he is able to adjust to new situations very easily.  Those just happen to be things easier for him.  But those are things that have been very hard for my cousin his whole life. 

 

So -- I think it sounds like your son has a lot going for him.  I have an impression like my cousin is more affected than a lot of people who have his same diagnosis, and some of his weak areas hit him hard.  He also has a lot of motor coordination problems, so he can't drive, and a lot of physical jobs are not possible for him.  My son's motor skills are pretty decent. 

 

So it can just vary so much!   

[8filltheheart]

, There is quite a continuum in just these responses.

 

What kind of things do you think they struggle with the most?

 

, I also don't know what he is going to do to make a living. He has a good heart and wants to please people, but not enough to just do the job the way they want it done, he always knows a better way, and completely lacks common sense. If he would be happy standing in front of a button all day pushing it, that would be the best for him, but dealing with people is something that scares me. He gets his feelings hurt very easily when he realizes that people are aggravated with him or if he has made a big mistake, or if people won't listen to him. He doesn't get angry though, not too much anyway, he just internalizes it and says he is stupid. He knows he is smart, and he knows he is different, and being different really bothers him sometimes. I wish I knew a way to find something he would enjoy that he could do without having to work with people, both to protect him, and to ensure success at a job.

There is a continuum. No one can tell you where your ds will land. I post ds's reality on the forum bc far too often I feel like the responses are roses and candy. I wish I had been smacked upside the head and thought about the fact that maybe everything wouldn't end up completely normal.

 

My ds struggles bc he can't make leaps in what needs to be done. He is very intelligent, but individual initiative, when it does occur, is more like confrontation (too strong of a word, but jist of it) about how there are better ways to do things. Your description that I left sounds very familiar. My ds reserves his anger for us and never loses it with other people. Mostly right now he is angry bc he knows he is different and hugely resents it that his older siblings (and now a younger one) are doing what he wants to do.

 

I have no answers, though. We are still trying to figure it all out.

[almondbutterandjelly]

I have two Aspie brothers.  The older one is a college graduate and works in the computer field making tons of money.  He is probably only slightly on the spectrum, and he is very independent and a go-getter.  The area of relationships has been more of a struggle for him, but ulitmately worked out well, with his second wife.

 

The younger Aspie brother lives at home at age 29, but he is a college graduate and works in the computer field.  We, as a family, gave him lots of homework help and tutoring to get him through, but it all worked out.  I don't think he will ever move out of my parent's house, but we did send him away to college where he did fine living in an apartment.  He does not date at all, nor seem particularly interested.  He spends a lot of time in his room and prefers that.  

 

It's a journey!  :)  

[Alicia64]

This post of mine came out all wrong.

[maize]

Our neighbors have a son who has either aspergers or high functioning autism, I don't remember the specific diagnosis. I know his parents expect he will always live with them or his brother. He has a job, I'm not sure what, and two guinea pigs. He has a very set routine but seems to do well within it. He doesn't talk much, though he was interested when we got chickens and talked to me a little about them. He won't break his routine to go with his parents when they take a vacation, he stays home but seems content. He is maybe mid to late twenties in age?

[saraha]

Thank you everybody.

[KSinNS]

A friend-who is now late 30s. Recently diagnosed. Works as a lawyer, and does very well after some bumps getting started. Has an active life in sports. Struggles with depression and has not married and has had a difficult time with relationships. But has great friends, and is a great friend, and is one of the kindest, most generous people I know. Absolutely without guile or malice. 

[musicianmom]

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