Advice from the Future

Jam is currently almost 5 years old.

Recently, I had a fortuitous opportunity to talk to a kid with very similar diagnoses and personality traits as Jam. Except this kid is 20 years old. It felt like talking to Jam 15 years in the future.

First off, he was surprisingly articulate, self-aware and forthcoming for someone his age. I talk to a fair number of young adults who are nervous or less than excited to be talking to an adult. So this was encouraging! I wish, though, that I had been better prepared. I don't do anything well 'on the fly' and would have liked to come up with a list of questions or something to make the most of this opportunity. But I'll take what I can get and without complaint!

We spent most of our time talking about his schooling experience, a topic near and dear to my panicking heart as Jam approaches school age. And it happens that this kid attended the same private elementary school I've been wanting Jam to go to. And he'd had many of the same early interventions Jam has had and many of the classroom accommodations I expect Jam to be given.

And what he had to say about classroom accommodations was this: they had been helpful, but at a point, he decided that he wanted to have friends. And he felt in order to make those friends, he needed to get rid of the classroom accommodations. That they were setting him apart. That they were stigmatizing. He knew that he would have to work harder without accommodations but that the motivating factor to work harder was that chance to have friends. His advice to me was that if Jam ever asked to stop using accommodations in the class, to let him.

One thing I wanted to talk to him more about was his history of depression and anxiety and drug use (some prescribed and some not) which he was very candid about. These are issues I'm particularly concerned about for kids with dyspraxia, SPD and learning disorders. These issues are, in part, what inspire me daily to lay a good foundation for Jam now in the hopes he chooses to not go down that path.

But the good news is that this kid has fought through all of that and has really come into his own. We ran out of time to talk more about drugs and all that scary stuff because we were too busy talking about the exciting, coming-of-age adventure that he worked hard to put together and was about to embark on. Like, literally- he was on a flight out of town within hours of our conversation.

I'm very lucky and grateful to have had the chance to talk with this kid. He told me useful things and provided an interesting perspective on some issues I hadn't previously considered. And I wish him the best of luck in his new venture though, really, I don't think he'll need it. He seems to be doing great all on his own.