Life with Aspergers

My eldest son now has a job and of course, I'm over the moon. No only does he have a job but it's also in his area of interest and there's a traineeship component. He's going to thrive there.  His employment is the culmination of years of planning and it all went so smoothly that I wanted to talk about it because I feel it's a model that others can follow. In part one of this two part post, I want to look at how you can use the last few years of school to get your teen prepared for a job. The Statistics Before I get into the "how to", I just wanted to take a look at the statistics for people with autism being unemployed, under-employed (in lower paying jobs than they should be) and not completing higher education. The Australian Bureau of statistics published some statistics from 2015 here and here   The results are grim and the story is similar worldwide. In fact, I'd venture to say that statistics and support in Australia are a little bett...

School is a very difficult proposition for kids on the spectrum and your first choice of school isn't always going to be the right one. Sometimes you'll need to change schools as personnel change, as bullies come and go or as the general "fit" between the school and your child ceases to work. In this post, I want to look at different school scenarios and try to give guidance on three issues; Private versus State-Funded Special versus Mainstream Homeschooling versus Institutionalised  Private versus State-Funded Schools Understanding Public and Private Schools While these two major types of schools appear all around the world,  they're called different things in different countries. In the UK, the word "public school" actually means "independent" (essentially what a "private school" in Australia and the United States means). They use the words "state-funded" to describe what we call public. As an aid to under...