Review: Developing College Skills in Students With Autism and Asperger's

By Sarita Freedman; 220 pages. From the Back Cover: "This book is essential reading for psychologists, special educators, educational therapists, high school teachers, career counselors, and other professionals supporting high school and college students on the autism spectrum. Parents of such students will also benefit from the ideas presented in this book.

Parents would absolutely benefit from concrete suggestions on how to prepare a teen approaching college age for that challenge. Unfortunately, this isn't really the book to do it. Freedman makes good observations about what skills are called for, but unless you're starting now to groom your young child for future possibilities, a lot of these opportunities are already lost.

So your child with autism or Asperger syndrome is, perhaps, in high school, doing so well that, against all early predictions made by naysaying educators, you are considering the possibility of college. You see a book called Developing College Skills in Students With Autism and Asperger's Syndrome, and you think, perfect! We've got a year or two to prepare, let's find out what skills we can start working on now to get ahead of the game.

Well, too late. Author Sarita Freedman, drawing on her observation of college students with ASDs who were sadly underprepared by their parents for the college experience, thinks you should have started back in early childhood. And I can see how a professional, viewing things from her perspective, might lay that out as the best-case scenario, and be politely disdainful of parents who don't fulfill those expectations. But from a parent's point of view ... hoo boy. I strongly suspect that during early childhood, there are far more pressing priorities for kids with autism and Asperger syndrome than getting ready for college. College, at that point, is at best a far-off dream. Professionals at that stage in our children's development are often anything but encouraging about college as a possibility. And they are as politely disdainful of parents who persist in setting that as a goal as Freedman is of those who don't.

If you can get past the fact that, unless you've picked up this book for your child in kindergarten, you've probably already let Freedman down, there are interesting and useful observations to be found. Tips are included for developing skills at later ages, too, though I'm a little leery of the idea that schools ought to be taking time out to teach life skills to college-bound students -- wouldn't that get in the way of teaching academic skills they will surely also need? You probably won't be surprised by the skill gaps identified here, but it's still worthwhile to consider how they might cause trouble in a college setting, and what you can do to help your young person even at this late age.

In fairness, Freedman's book is obviously intended mostly for professionals, with tangential interest to parents. What I'd really like to find -- as a mom with one student in college and one heading there, neither diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder but both displaying some traits in common with that diagnosis -- is something that gives parents really concrete, hands-on, step-by-step advice for preparing kids who no one thought would ever go to college for college. If you've found one, please fill out a review form about it, won't you?

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