gabrielsunshine wrote:
Thank you to everyone who gave a reply : )
whirlingmind ~ I am not sure it would be relevant, sadly. I am 34, and there are different expectations of what I should be able to do compared to someone who is seven...unfortunately I am a bit like a seven year old when it comes to taking care of myself : (
That's enough, though. A seven-year-old doesn't have very good adaptive skills at all, compared to the average adult. I have the adaptive skills of a twelve-year-old, or thereabouts, and most of that is my using my analytical skills to solve the problem of "How to get food into stomach" or "How to get money to utility company", rather than actually being intrinsically good at taking care of myself. I'm also on disability, but living independently with limited support; I have enough trouble with it that I can't really live without help long-term, but not so much that I need to actually have an aide with me all day. In terms of how well I do on my own, you'd expect about the same level of expertise from someone with a mild intellectual disability. That's enough to get Social security disability here in the US, though for me there's a good chance that I'll someday be at least partly self-supporting, because of the aforementioned analytical skills and the possibility of using them to become employed, and hire my own aide if that is still necessary.