For parents of high school seniors, graduation season is a season of pride and anxiety. Pride over what the young graduate has accomplished and will accomplish. Anxiety over the challenges ahead.
Anxiety worsens when the graduate has a disability—especially an IDD (intellectual and/or developmental disability). Eighteen years back, you may have heard misinformed predictions that your baby would never talk, read, fall in love, earn a degree, or find a job. Now, long after personal experience disproved much of that, old apprehensions may return in new forms:
- What will happen now that my child is a legal adult, and I’m not allowed to decide what’s in their best interest?
- How will my child learn anything new, without the framework of individualized education?
- Will any employer ever give my child a chance?
- Will I still have to support my child long after I’m retired, and maybe can’t even take care of myself?
The Art of Transition
It’s worth noting that overdependence isn’t simply a matter of “disabled” vs. “typical.” Many a nondisabled young adult has returned home with a four-year degree and promptly fallen back into high-school behavior: leaving all housework to the parents, repeatedly promising to look for work “tomorrow,” and apparently shelving all personal initiative.
This isn’t laziness so much as the power of habit. New life seasons are challenging for any brain to process, and it takes effort to implement new routines in old-familiar settings (or completely unfamiliar ones). To help your children navigate the transition from supervised minor to legally independent adult:
- Let them do things for themselves: making their own lunches, doing their own shopping. And if they choose digital shopping and you prefer in-person, remember that there’s more than one “right” way.
- Encourage them to choose their own hobbies and long-term goals, even when those aren’t what you’d have chosen.
- Let your children dream “big, hairy, audacious” dreams and take risks. Never try to “protect” them from trying and failing: that just stunts their growth.
(And if your child has years to go before graduation? Practice the above habits anyway. The earlier you start, the easier it will be for them—and you—to learn.)
What Every Young Adult Should Know
Many more ideas are available through our Youth2Adult websites. (Currently we have two “state” sites—for Texas and Virginia—but much content is universally applicable.)
Youth2Adult (Y2A) is an interactive tool for guiding youth with special needs into adult independence. There are seven topic areas. (Note: some of the following links lead to non-Y2A sites, because their Y2A addresses are tagged as “link to outside article.”)
1. Sample Y2A Content: Education
- Colleges that Cater to Students with Special Needs
- Conducting a College Search (infographic link)
- IDD College Programs in Texas
2. Sample Y2A Content: Employment
3. Sample Y2A Content: Social and Recreational
- Adaptive Driving for People with Disabilities (video, 90 minutes [exact playtime 1:31:10])
- Summer Camps for Children and Young Adults with Disabilities
4. Sample Y2A Content: Financial Management
- Budgeting for Teens: Making the Most of Your Money
- Outsmarting Digital Scammers: 5 Things Everyone Should Know
5. Sample Y2A Content: Independent Living
6. Sample Y2A Content: Medical
- 10 Tips for a Successful Medical Transition
- 12 Things I Wish I’d Known Before Going to College with a Disability or Chronic Illness
7. Sample Y2A Content: Legal and Advocacy
- Choosing a Medicaid Waiver Provider
- The Right to Make Choices: A Supported Decision Making Toolkit for People with Disabilities and Their Supporters
Share the Y2A site links with your new graduate. Discuss the content together.
And if you can’t find your preferred topic or answer? Drop us a note in the comments or through our Contact page. New content ideas are always welcome!