Issues related to approaching adulthood

[Storygirl]

When you have an older teen with special needs, who is maturing at a slower rate than peers, what does parenting look?

I'm throwing out a general question, so that we can talk about whatever issues might be of concern for anyone. We're facing some challenging situations, now that DS is 17, and we can see (as we expected all along) that he is going to need ongoing parenting beyond what is typical. I'd say that DS is about as mature as a 14 year old, though he will become a legal adult in the spring.

Anyone else want to discuss this?

[Tessamae]

I don’t know that I have any wisdom, but I share your concern.  My son is 13 and it is hard to see him being ready to launch in 5 years.  On the other hand, he has come so far in the last couple of years.  I have to believe that we will get there someday.  I definitely think he has the capability.  I try to keep reminding myself that we aren’t in a race.  He will be ready when he is ready.

[Storygirl]

I agree that sometimes maturity comes at a slower rate. However, we are bang up against some issues that are specific to being almost 18. A few examples:

* Issues related to delayed driving

* Interest in girls, but the one foray into dating (which lasted one week) involved unexpected and dramatic events

* Needing supervision with online and smart phone behaviors, even though will soon be a legal adult

* Difficulty with finding work, but resistant to some opportunities for job training

* Will be legally responsible for his own IEP when he's 18 (during his junior year)

And so on. I'm interested in how others handle parenting their children who are still young in maturity level and need parental help, but are legally adults. I know that some parents pursue guardianship of their young adults, but I doubt we will. And I'm less interested in discussing the legality of things (though if others want to, it can be included in this thread), and more interested in how the relationship between the child and the parents works.

Do you still oversee your child's social media after 18, for example, if they tend to have poor judgment with it?

Do you drive them to hang out with friends that you would not approve of, because, they should be able to choose their own social life, or would you still say no to assisting them, if you disapprove?

If they will live with you after high school but not attend college, will you have guidelines about whether they have to work or pay rent?

I'm throwing out ideas here to spur responses. I'd love to hear some general thoughts from others, and I'm not just looking to dissect the specific examples I gave. I mean.... I don't want this to be a thread about my issues with my son, which is why my examples are vague; I'd like it to be an open discussion about how we parent our teens as they become adults, and how we navigate the differences when there are special needs challenges.

 

[Rosie_0801]

My daughter is 14 now and has been doing a budgeting challenge each school holidays for the past two years, where I give her a certain amount of money and she must shop and cook for herself. At first she started with way too much money, because she needed to buy staples like cooking oil. She learned very quickly how to eat reasonably healthily on a minimal amount, so had plenty of money left over. I've tweaked the rules as she went on and her skills grew, to encourage her to learn the patterns of how much things cost, to eat a wider variety when she has the money for it and to improve her cooking skills. I've also fined her when she's gotten slack and wasted food, but not in a punitive way because this is about learning, not punishing someone to independence.

Her current rules are:
Protein for breakfast or her brain won't work.
No crap food! (My brother and I watched in horror one night as she sat down to home made pasta with diced raw carrot and cucumber.)
Eat 30 plant foods during the week, but can't count food I share with her. (Sometimes we swap a bit.)

She's still got a long way to go with learning prices and how to make food tasty with relatively little extra effort, but I am 100% sure she could fend for herself, in this way, providing she had access to a modest amount of money and a supermarket within walking distance. (She is intending to move away from home to be a poor apprentice in a city with high rent!) The only time she's utterly flunked the challenge was when we were road tripping one time, but it was entirely unachievable within the set rules, and that was the point. One must have a certain income to afford impromptu road trips, lol.

[Storygirl]

Thanks, Rosie! I wish I could "like" your post.

[Rosie_0801]

We also do a lot of work on boundaries. In this life, most problems come from one or both parties having poor boundaries.

[PeterPan]

I'm behind you on this, but I think maybe work backward from your worst case scenarios. That way you're pleasantly surprised if they don't happen.