Building Independence Before They Need It | Episode 35
Episode 35: From Autism Diagnosis to College Freshman
Building Independence Before They Need It
The archival conversations in this series were recorded while I was writing Raising Superman.
As Ricky II approached the end of high school and prepared for college and young adulthood, the interview process gave us space to have candid conversations about his experiences growing up on the autism spectrum and my experiences parenting a child on the autism spectrum.
Independence was never something I expected Ricky II to suddenly know how to do when he became an adult.
I taught it.
During his older school-age years, I began intentionally scaffolding the everyday skills he would eventually need to navigate the world without me.
The support was substantial at first.
Then, as he developed competence, I gradually removed it.
That is scaffolding.
The goal was to provide enough support for him to learn how to do these things independently.
And now we get to fill in the part of the story that we couldn’t know when this conversation was recorded.
Ricky II is in college.
He shops for himself.
He goes to Publix.
He uses Uber to get where he needs to go.
He navigates his community independently using the same skills we began intentionally building when he was around 12 years old. 12 independence, target and Uber.
What looked like learning how to shop or learning how to use Uber years ago was preparation for something much bigger:
Learning how to move through the world without me.
Today, he does.
Independence didn’t begin when I sent my child to college.
College gave him a place to use the independence we had already built.
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