Ian semi-graduated from high school last May. He finished all the academic requirements for graduation. By his last year, he was only in one special education class, though an aide accompanied him to all his classes – a mix of academic and technical electives – to help him understand verbal directions and to make sure that Ian was appropriate. Ian was on the highest honor roll, though I suspect that many of those A’s weren’t entirely deserved. That said, he had checked all the boxes to graduate from high school. However, I didn’t let him officially graduate.
Schools are required to educate students with IEPs until 21. Do all students with IEPs get this extra few years of free public school or is this mandate aimed at students with intellectual disabilities and larger issues? It’s sort of a grey area. Our district didn’t want to educate Ian for another two years and forced us to get a fancy report to show that despite Ian’s intellectual abilities, he did not have the ability to get a job or to attend college classes due to poor social skills and functional living abilities. Ian wasn’t ready to move on. I knew it. And now I had a report that made the district support him for another couple of years.
In the past six month, I’ve toured programs or interviewed administrators at dozens of Transition Programs, both public and private. I’ve learned a lot from these conversations, on top of Ian’s daily experiences at the local Transition Program, also known as an 18-21 program. Some of those programs focus on job internships and vocational skills. Others prepare students for life on a college campus. Life skills are a big part of all those programs.
What are life skills? It’s everything a person needs to function independently in a community: take busses, read maps, shop for food, plan menus, cook meals, make social plans on weekends, pay bills, organize a day, utilize community services, make beds, vacuum rugs, do laundry, and so on. Now, a person can be really smart, but still not know how to do all those things. They might need strategies for do all those things in an organized way.
Now, nobody taught me how to plan a menu or make a pot of chili. My mother didn’t teach me how to do laundry before I went to college; she just sent me off with a box of detergent and some quarters. I just figured it out.
Some kids can’t figure out things on their own, particularly autistic kids, like Ian. They need strategies. They need to be taught organization systems for doing those tasks, or they will live in filth and not pay their bills and eat crackers.
Jonah’s life skills are pretty much on par with other 22-year old dudes, which are fairly low level. Other life skills got weaker during covid, and he developed bad habits (watching Zoom lectures, while reclined in bed), so we decided that while he is mostly functional, he needs a tune up. He could function in all areas of his life better if he was more structured, clean, and efficient. So, Steve and I are now running a life skills boot camp for both boys, including Jonah, who is home with remote college.
Because I’m home full time — sometimes working, sometimes dealing with family crises — I do everything from making ridiculous meals to keeping the living room free from clutter. We have a cleaning lady who comes here every other week to clean the shower and degrease the stove. Monica, my adorable Polish cleaning lady, and I are enabling everyone’s helplessness. That must stop.
As part of the new regime, I’ll cook Monday through Thursday, but the dudes need to take care of the other days. We’re starting off really easy, like frozen food in the air fryer and burgers in a pan. We’re going to eat crap food for a while, but I’ll get over it. Ian has to learn how to do laundry. Jonah needs to learn to do all his chores on Saturdays, and not drag them out all week. Ian needs a drivers license, even if he never actually drives, because of the epilepsy. Jonah has to create a weekly calendar, instead of just winging it. They both need to schedule exercise on the weekly calendar. And so on.
Are they happy about all this? Hell no. They both want to be independent, but have all the boring stuff in life just magically done on its own. (I suppose we all want that.) I’m not super happy about having to run this boot camp. It’s more work for me to teach them how to cook, than to just do it myself. But the baby birds need to get kicked out the nest soon, and they’re not ready to fly.
PICTURE: Steve making Christmas Dinner, when I was sick with Covid. Jonah needs to put down his cellphone and help.
Apt. 11d 
“I’m not super happy about having to run this boot camp.”
I remember thinking how lovely it would be if someone else would teach my kids those things. Seems like a maid service should build that as a side business: 5 lessons for your kid on how to clean a house or an apartment. I feel like home ec class taught me some of those skills back in the day.
My mom sent me off to college with index cards with instructions for “meal planning” on the weekends (when I was off meal plan); an entry I still remember an entry that said “hot dogs: hot dogs, hot dog buns”. So, indeed, I understand that a person can be smart and still need organization.
Good luck with boot camp.
How do you think the kids would do if you just left the house for the weekend? In my house, that’s a solution, because they do figure out how to eat, clean the dishes, clean the counters, do their laundry, just not to my rules (which are persnickety and based sometimes on my experience in labs where contamination could be serious).
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bj said, “I remember thinking how lovely it would be if someone else would teach my kids those things.”
I sent my teens to as many cooking camps as I could starting around 10. Most wonderfully, the instructor had them clean up the kitchen and wash dishes at the end…Our youngest hasn’t been able to do any cooking camps yet, but as soon as I can send her, I will.
I taught the big kids how to do heavy cleaning during the early pandemic and paid them a bit. We have our cleaning help back now, but the kids learned!
“How do you think the kids would do if you just left the house for the weekend? In my house, that’s a solution, because they do figure out how to eat, clean the dishes, clean the counters, do their laundry, just not to my rules.”
One of my teens often has a tough time with lunch. Kid says it’s not worth it, nothing sounds good, kid is not hungry now, kid is too weak to make lunch, kid can just skip and wait until dinner to eat, etc., but kid clearly needs lunch. I know this is true because when kid’s dad is around to grill a sandwich for kid, kid eats and then perks up…Kid does OK with breakfast and dinner, though. We’re pretty concerned with how that kid will manage independent adulthood, as I fear that that kid would let blood sugar get low to the point that kid would just run out of energy and not be able to recharge. The other teen packs massive lunches.
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I also have a kid like that one, “Kid says it’s not worth it, nothing sounds good, kid is not hungry now, kid is too weak to make lunch, . . . .”
Mine has problems with breakfast, too.
I’d be worried about this, but he seems to do well with cafeterias, so we are counting on the food service at college.
Other kid likes to eat enough that she will make meals, which is good, because she does not like cafeterias.
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I’m listening to “Your Turn: How to Be an Adult” borrowed from the library now. I enjoyed “How to raise an adult”, listening to eat while driving. I thought the original emphasized the big stuff about raising a adult, raising a child who knows who they are and what they want and at least something of the path to get there (rather than doing laundry, which I think isn’t hard to learn).
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Both by Julie Lythcott-Haims, who also has a podcast.
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Teaching *how* to do laundry isn’t hard.
Teaching *when* to do laundry: how to schedule this into your week; how to predict your wardrobe limits (i.e. not run out of underpants); how to determine frequency (underpants after wearing, sheets once a week (or immediately if you’ve dropped food, etc on them), sweater – when you drip food down the front) and how to organize access to facilities (cash for laundromat, pre-purchase laundry powder, schedule enough time, etc.) – is the challenge & one of the life-skills that teens often struggle with.
To do with prediction of consequences – which is the brain faculty which goes off-line first during adolescence, and comes back last.
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Oh. And observationally, (and, yes, generalizing) girls pick up these ‘life’ skills quicker than boys.
Nothing to do with capability. But girls are more likely to observe (usually) Mum doing this, and internalize a pattern (laundry once a week, on Saturday morning).
That doesn’t mean that they’ll *do* it while living at home– and have someone to pick up after them.
But they’ve already got a ‘how to schedule laundry’ file tucked away in their heads – ready to be opened when they need it. They may vary it (Tuesday evening works better) – but aren’t likely to forget to do laundry at all, and run out of clean underwear.
Have a lovely story about intergenerational habit transfer.
Young woman was prepping a roast dinner to go in the oven, and cut off the end of the roast, and tucked it alongside the main part in the dish. Friend asked why she did that. Does it spread the heat, or make it roast more evenly, or give you more crispy edges?
“I don’t know. I’ve just always done it. My Mum did it that way. Let’s ask Mum.”
Family dinner, so she calls out to Mum.
Mum says, “Well, your grandma always did it that way – let’s give her a call.”
So, they give Grandma a call – and she laughs. “Are you still doing that? My roasting dish was too small for the full roast, so I had to cut off the end to make it fit”
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Ann wrote, “Teaching *when* to do laundry: how to schedule this into your week; how to predict your wardrobe limits (i.e. not run out of underpants); how to determine frequency (underpants after wearing, sheets once a week (or immediately if you’ve dropped food, etc on them), sweater – when you drip food down the front) and how to organize access to facilities (cash for laundromat, pre-purchase laundry powder, schedule enough time, etc.) – is the challenge & one of the life-skills that teens often struggle with.”
Yes.
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I feel very seen by this post, Laura! And by the comment above about how teaching the routines of laundry is hard. I’m rather exhausted by the parenting work of trying to coach my recent HS graduate who is still discerning a direction and recovering from crisis….that push and pull can feel very very hard sometimes. We’ve settled, finally, on the expectation that she make a crockpot meal once a week and tacos once a week (this provides structure within which she can innovate, and it’s all pretty simple). And in order to maintain access to the family car, she needs to clean the car she uses once a week, and clean her bathroom/bedroom weekly (includes mop/vaccuum/tidy). There has been a ton of drama about all that but it’s slowly fading. It feels lonely, sometimes, as a parent, when the general vibe of other people’s social media posts is often “here’s my kid off navigating the world” and I’m at home worrying about all this. But she’s slowly making progress, and I’m slowly making progress figuring out how to let go in some ways too. There’s not enough space (at least in my world) for talking about the parenting of kids who aren’t headed straight to college (fancy gap year experiences don’t count). It’s hard.
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Here are my teens’ current chores:
–11th grader packs school lunches, does trash and recycling, changes own sheets, and keeps room reasonable.
–College sophomore feeds cat, does litter, does own laundry, changes own sheets, and keeps room reasonable.
When we have to cook dinner at home, each is responsible for unloading or loading dishes once, and they may also be called upon to be responsible for their younger sister. Some of these chores (trash and date night babysitting). The kids also need to help us prep the evening before the cleaners come so that the floors are all cleared to be vacuumed.
There are some ancillary tasks that we are still working on. For example, the college student has been responsible with feeding and doing litter scooping for new kitty…but she’s been leaving spilled litter all over our patio. So, once it dries out, she needs to clean it up. I’m hoping the “clumping” litter does not bond too hard with the cement…
During the school year, the teens are genuinely very busy with school work, but they have more time to help out during breaks (which is coincidentally when we need more help with cooking and dishes).
And flipping this a bit, my main “chore” responsibilities are grocery shopping, laundry and kid driving. Despite being an SAHM, I don’t do a ton of cooking or cleaning. It’s really not bad having 4 big people splitting house chores, especially with the backup of the cafeteria for dinners and cleaning help twice a month.
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Oh, yeah, and I need to ask the college kid to periodically clean up the cat litter that has gotten tracked out of the box. She’s very scrupulous about washing the cat bowl, though.
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The funny thing about my mother was her conviction that what her generation called “automatic” washing machines didn’t get clothes sufficiently clean. This seemed to be a thing among her WW2 generation (she was born in 1927 but had her daughters at 39 and 40). She preferred her wringer washer and had some complex system of soaking and washing and rinsing I never really got. So my sister and I rarely did laundry till we went to college where she resigned herself to the fact that our clothes would only be washed in an “automatic.”
My sister and I thought she was crazy for doing all that manual labor. I will say our whites were very bright though.
Also for those who go away to college, it’s a good transition to managing laundry because the stakes are low. When you live in jeans and and hoodies you can get away with not doing laundry on the regular. I have a few memories of chafing in jeans with no underwear.
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Wow, a wringer. I think my mom did retain a bit of liking for “sun dried clothes” (which were seen as fresher, and potentially, disinfected). I don’t think she ever missed the beating clothes on rocks, though that does give cloth a wonderful softness. Wow, “stone-washed jeans” are still a thing.
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We all do it differently. My kids were cooking twice a month in early teens (with rules like you can’t make the the same thing every time and it has to be something you’d willingly serve your friends) as well as doing laundry and so on.
We also started budgeting education as soon as they started getting allowances – 10% to charity, 10% to long term savings, the rest to spend. As they got older and got bigger allowances they had to budget for more things like clothes etc. So the transition to paying bills wasn’t bad.
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Tulip said, “We also started budgeting education as soon as they started getting allowances – 10% to charity, 10% to long term savings, the rest to spend. As they got older and got bigger allowances they had to budget for more things like clothes etc. So the transition to paying bills wasn’t bad.”
Our kids’ school does a big, expensive senior trip to Rome, so we started a forced savings plan with both when they were in 7th or 8th grade. Our oldest was supposed to go to Rome in March 2020 and she (very fortunately) got an almost complete refund, so she has about $4k in the bank now. Not bad for 19! (Let’s not talk about the inflation, though…) Our 11th grader is saving for his 2023 Rome trip and he’s about 2/3 of the way there. We pay for certain chores, term grades ($7 for 100+ and $5 for 95-99), high enough SAT scores and high enough AP scores ($20 each), plus they sometimes get birthday or Christmas money from grandparents. We also have an arrangement where the Bank of Mom and Dad pays out 3% a year on their deposits with us. (Sadly, this has no current counterpart in the real world.)
Once they get real jobs, I need to set them up with charity and make some sort of savings arrangement. I used to handle their charity savings in cash, but it got too complicated.
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“He could function in all areas of his life better if he was more structured, clean, and efficient. ”
I do wonder when we stop being able to have a real expectation that we’ll be able to help our kids “function in all areas of [their] lives better”. (when, presuming, they are doing “ok” without further support; it’s different if a child will not do “ok” and will need lifelong support if they don’t learn the skills).
I had a moment, after ineffectively making suggestions on how to deal with an application, at a deadline, in which the expectation (“just of a letter of intent”) turned out to be wrong (also required a detailed recommendation letter filled out by a mentor). My kid is doing OK, though, and doesn’t want me to help them do better, and, in our case,
I’ve also recognized that what might work for me doesn’t work for them. Trivially, crafting, my own kind of crafting is a stress relieving activity for me. And I don’t care if I anyone other than me sees or appreciates my results/crafts/art. Doesn’t work for my kid and it’s going to continue to not work, no matter how much I default into suggesting it (I’m getting better, but it has taken me many years).
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