Susan Senator

Can someone like Nat go to college?

How do I figure this out? What does a child’s progress depend on? Does the level of optimism in a parent have a large effect on how far the child goes in development, in fulfilling his potential, his telos? I’m optimistic, right?

But what do I think deep down? No, that’s too hard. That’s too big a fight. You can’t have everything. You have to accept what is. How many conversations have I had with people lately where the phrase, “If it is meant to be…” and “All things happen for a reason.”  I don’t think people in general examine those statements they make; they are using those statements to explain something that happened that they don’t understand yet, or that maybe they don’t even like.

People in general need to have explanations for what they do and experience. Is a child with a disability born to you for a reason, to teach you (and him) about life?

Or is life random and unfair and it is what you make of it? Others believe that disability is random, that it happens. There is nothing to learn from it. But I think that most of us want to find meaning, our own meaning, from difficult occurrences, and so we reflect on what disability has taught us.

Getting back to optimism and pessimism, if you believe that things happen for a reason, that things unfold to their most meaningful point, are you at heart an optimist? Or is a person who fights what is happening to them the optimist? Is the parent who tries to cure, to wipe out the autism, an optimist, because he believes that this autism was a mistake, this was an accident, a tragedy, and we should do everything we can to fight it, because we will eventually succeed in flattening out the autism.  Or is this cure-it parent a pessimist, because they only see the negative in what happened to their child?

Is it more optimistic to be able to accept what is and do the best you can, believing that there is good in life and we just have to recognize it in its many forms?

I admit that I am not always optimistic. I can’t believe that all this time I had just dismissed the idea of college for Nat, just because I didn’t know that programs existed for him. Around here, there are some programs, but they seem to be built around verbal competence. So I gave up. I drew a line around Nat’s ability and decided his trajectory.

Recently I found out about CCCAID, Community College Consortium for Autism and Intellectual Disabilities, talked at length with their staff and colleagues, and took a look at their website. Their statement of purpose is as follows:

The Community College Consortium on Autism and Intellectual Disabilities (CCCAID) was formed in 2007 to facilitate advocacy and support for programs at Community Colleges to serve students with autism and intellectual disabilities. Issues for young people as they “age out” of school systems include education, housing, life skills, vocational pathways, personal safety and medical care. The Consortium provides assistance to Community Colleges for program development and implementation and information on the availability of resources for sustainability of programs.

I’m not sure yet if there are places out there that would actually take in a guy like Nat, but I am now thinking, “Hey, why not?” If public schools are required to educate Nat, and they train teachers to do this effectively, then can’t colleges have people on their faculty who can offer continuing education, adapted curricula, and also the real life skills Nat would need to survive in the world?  Remember, I’m talking about people with Nat’s degree of issues. I don’t know, but I do know that certain community colleges, like Taft in Bakersfield, have over ten years’ track record in training people with mild to moderate autism in this manner.

Nat is not “mild-to-moderate,” he is closer to “severe,” and I do wonder what might be out there for him. One woman I spoke to, who works for a community college in the midwest (I forgot where!) told me that as long as a student could let a staff person know that they didn’t feel safe, they could go to the program! “Safety is really the bottom line,” she said, “You have to know how to be safe, or if something doesn’t feel safe.” (something like that). When she said that, I thought, Hey, Nat is almost there, then!  And I had one of those old soul-lifting moments, hope wrenching my insides upward. Could he…? Breathless near-tears moment in the middle of our conversation.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m thrilled he can work at CVS and also volunteer in the community. But if I were to think about Nat’s fullest potential, especially given his recent post-graduate personal growth — shouldn’t I then be dreaming and plotting to get him into a college program, to continue his highest trajectory?  Could he…?

Why not?