My dude moves forward, I just get scared...

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My d00d graduated from elementary today and is headed off to middle school in the fall.

I watched him today, I was proud and terrified. He was unusually difficult to read, tuned out through the ceremony (just as I would have been, only more intensely)...

He is so damned smart, and sweet, and all the things you want for your children... but he still has trouble connecting, his amazing classmates LOVE him and he struggles to remember their names.

Middle school was 77.625% more miserable for me than elementary, and my ASD is a lot less pronounced than his.

Next year he gets to change classes 5 times a day and navigate hallways with hundreds of kids colliding with him.
Next year he gets new classmates that are all jacked up on hormones and have better things to do than make him feel safe.
Next year he gets a dozen new teachers and facilitators who have to learn his language, if they decide it is worth it.
Next year he gets hundreds of new faces to master, and as the kids he does know come back to school across that magical puberty line, their old faces will be different and foreign.

Next year...

He'll get through it. He's a damned brilliant warrior. My favorite person and future boss. Handsome, friendly, polite, respectful... He'll be fine.

I just wish I could make it easier.

That's sounds like your a great dad.
It's awesome you have confidence in your brilliant warrior.

My high school years were terrible, but I have two main regrets.

1. That I didn't go to a different school. It was only after I graduated that my parents and I learned that I had a whole bunch of different options including a school specializing in educating children with autism. Instead I got stuck with a high school that had no idea what to do with me. Even being home schooled would have been better.

2. Having not gone to a different school I should have at least tried to join a club, played a sport, or something. I was never in to that sort of thing, but in retrospect even if my fellow students didn't appreciate my social skills they might have appreciated my work. Working together tends to bring people closer.

What you don't mention is that next year organizational skills are going to take on a prominent role, but the good news is THAT is something YOU can help him with, assuming he is willing. I took on the role of my son's executive assistant through his middle school years because he just didn't have that level of executive function yet. We devised our own system for storing all his work that worked for him (no binder, he couldn't operate binders well, just fat colored stuff-in folios), and I made sure I tracked and followed all his assignments. We sorted and cleaned out his folios so that everything would be where it needed to be during the school day. The number of times he could STILL manage not to turn something in despite doing the work right in front of the teacher was astonishing!

Modern middle school seems to grade anything and everything, which means a constant stream of items that must be TURNED IN to avoid devastating zeros.

I suggest being pro-active and meeting the teachers BEFORE the first assignments are due.

Both are good points and I cannot agree more.

Here is what I wrote on another thread: http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=365553

... Autism, by the square-root law, happened right after the invention of bows and arrows, just like color blindness, just like bipolar disorder. All these genetic conditions were introduced around the same time. These neuro-variants entered human race with a purpose. They are all part of normal, and are intended by Mother Nature.

... The problem of modern society is we have forgotten how we lived and interacted with these neuro-variant people. Compulsory mass education in the form of schools... that thing... is the problem. Somehow it got into our heads that everyone must be raised the same way. Public schools are the main reason why autism is viewed negatively. Why don't people take a look at how Elon Musk raises his children? http://fortune.com/2018/06/26/elon-musk-ad-astra-school/...

The thing is, autism existed before public schools. So, if anything needs to be changed, it's not that autistic students need to change, but it is our public schools the ones that need to change.

- - -

I grew up in two different countries. The switch happened around when I was 12 years old. I have always been the same person. My life in Asia was miserable, I was a mediocre student. I was made to believe I had problems. After I moved to the Western world, all of a sudden I came to realized something I never experienced before: freedom of thought. I was free to be creative. I was even popular. I blossomed. I later got a PhD in theoretical physics from a top school. Today, my life is good, by all measures. The funny thing is, I have been the same person all along. I later realized, heck, I have been always the smartest kid, even in the old country. But, I was raised there to believe I was a failure.

Life is so much more than schools. See, I started with electronic circuits when I was 9 years old. I built my own transmitter and operated my own underground radio station. That was how I became who I am. So, unlike other Aisan parents, I pay zero attention to my children's school grades. (Despite that they do well. Those times when my children scored low, I just laugh it off.) The only thing I pay attention to, is my children's creativity. Schools will come and go. Creativity stays with you a lifetime. The one thing I keep telling my children's new teachers every year is: I am not a "tiger parent," I don't care about my children's academics. I tell the teachers: I only care about my children's creativity. I tell teachers: creativity cannot be taught, it can only be destroyed. So, they know I am not asking them to make my children smart, they know I am issuing a warning. It's not that my children should follow their teachers. It's the other way around. In practice it's always 50-50. Some teachers are better than others. But, overall, so far, most teachers have been very cooperative. Some would go out of their way to cooperate with me, because they sincerely believe they can make a difference out there.

We Homo Sapiens are the culmination of Mother Nature's 4-billion-year work, yet many parents/teachers/psychologists choose to believe that somehow Mother Nature is dumb and that autistic children are defective. Nope, our society should look at itself in the mirror, and see that, after all, the problem is on the other side. Mother Nature is not dumb. Ha ha.

You said a lot of good stuff, but that quote stood out to me. I will remember that when I'm raising my future son.