“Mom I really messed up…”

This has been a week of highs and lows—if you parent autism, you understand.

TJ returned to college on Monday, driving himself to campus for the first time. He was super excited to get to take his car. And although I’ll admit to being a little nervous—no more than with my other kids, though—I knew it was time.

He called in a panic about 9:00 that evening. “Mom—I really messed up. Turns out I was supposed to write a research paper over the Thanksgiving break and I forgot.”

“Okay. Well, what’s your topic? How much can you get done before your class

tomorrow?” At that point, his older sister motioned for the phone, so I handed it over. She walked him through the steps he needed to follow, then put on her “firm-but-loving-and-yes- you’re-going-to-do-this” voice that makes her good at her therapy job: “Look, Bud—you’re just going to have to suck it up and stay up tonight until you get it finished.” The “high” is in what didn’t happen. He didn’t panic. He didn’t have a meltdown. He didn’t come running home. Instead, he put something passable together overnight, then talked to his professor. He asked for another day so that he could improve his work, and the professor agreed. He drove himself home after class yesterday to work on it with his sister, the recent college-grad who can create pristine APA-style reference pages in her sleep (well, almost.) All good, right?

Part of autism parenting is waiting for the other shoe to fall—no matter how perfect the day or how sweet the victory, we know the tide will turn. The only questions are “when” and “how hard.” IYKYK.

Today, they turned. Hard. Too much to write tonight, but I promise to fill you in as soon as I can get my head around it.