Читать книгу Launching Your Autistic Youth to Successful Adulthood - Katharina Manassis - Страница 22

Sara’s mother: Computer programming sounds like a good course of study for you. Here’s the top three colleges in our area offering it. Let’s work together on the applications.

Melinda’s mother: Computer programming would tie in with your interest in video games, but wouldn’t actually focus on game design so you’d have to specialize in that later; on the other hand, if you narrow things down to game design right away, you might miss out on another area that could be interesting. What do you think?

Sara’s mother initially sounds very helpful and focused on the task at hand. There is certainly a desire to scaffold the task by working with Sara, and narrowing down the choice of colleges may be helpful. There is only one potential difficulty: she hasn’t checked if Sara actually wants to pursue this goal! Without Sara’s agreement, there is likely to be resistance to this plan.

Melinda’s mother sounds ambivalent about post-secondary plans, but this less definitive approach is designed to invite Melinda to contribute. Options are given along with their pros and cons, suggesting that Melinda’s mother is not firmly wedded to any particular one. This approach reduces the chances of mother–daughter conflict and encourages discussion. The only option which is not on the table is “taking a year off” with no structured plan for that year. This is deliberate, as we know that a lack of structure often results in regression for youth on the autism spectrum (Scholenberg, Sameroff and Cicchetti 2004).