Hi, thanks for joining me for another issue of It’s Like This. In the previous issue, I was remembering one of the first autism conferences I attended and some advice I was given as a new parent. That reminded me of a more recent interaction – when I was sitting in the other seat.

When my son was 10 or 11 years old, I stopped going to most of the autism trainings that I’d been so gung ho about in those first few years. This was due to a combination of financial needs (those conferences can get expensive) and a growing fatalism that there was nothing new being offered.

At that time, school was particularly frustrating and home therapies seemed to be stalling. I had watched many of my son’s special needs classmates make progress in integrated settings while our child moved in the opposite direction toward needing more individualized and isolated instruction. And as family, we were taking on a whole new area of study – the behavioral health system – as my son’s pre-adolescence brought with it some new and not-so-fun challenges.

But by the time my son was in high school, I came back to those conferences. I could skip the tracks meant to help the newly diagnosed “catch up” with their peers, but I needed the sessions that could teach me about adolescence and transition to adulthood and well, what now?

I was just beginning to recognize that we were in this for the long haul. ...

Please go to https://itslikethis.substack.com/p/realitycheck2 for the full transcript.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit itslikethis.substack.com