Celebrating A Different Kind Of Coming Of Age

I’m not packing my son off for college this week…some families have different stories.

This week, most of my friends are packing up children for college. I check in with them, send them love and safe travels, tell them I’m here to meet for coffee when they get back from dropoff. I look ahead and imagine what I may feel in two years, when my younger child, now entering junior year, heads away from home.

I know that grief might come up for me this week, a flash of what my older son George, who is 19, might have looked like on campus. George, who has an intellectual disability, severe autism, and bipolar disorder, attends a residential school and comes home on weekends

Right now, we are working hard to get the services and support that George will need to live the most meaningful life for him, a life full of making art and music that he loves, a life in community and also as part of our family: his adult life. Most people, I’ve discovered, have never been close to a person with an intellectual disability and are not familiar with what happens when young people transition out of the school system. Before our parenting journey with George, I had no idea about how our society supports adults with intellectual and other disabilities.