Last weekend, we drove up to my son’s college for Parents’ Weekend. We made the long drive up to Vermont to check on Ian and to soak in two days of rah-rah neurodiversity presentations. It’s beyond lovely to be in a place where we feel like we belong.

They put on a nice spread for parents. My oldest child attended New Jersey’s flagship public college, which had no budget for a fancy Parents’ Weekend with presentations or events. They handed out free hot dogs on a football field. Ian’s college had a nice reception where parents mingled with staff.

Ian has been “in the system” for disability services since he was two and didn’t meet his milestones for speech. Later, he was diagnosed with autism at age five, when he ignored the neurologist’s questions and instead read the small print on the side of a water bottle. In total, I endured 19 years of IEP meetings until we finally left the public school system when he was 22 years old. This weekend was an antidote to two decades of discouraging evaluations, marginalization, and pessimism.

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