Hi everyone, We wanted to share a little update about our SKOOL community. After giving this space some time, we’ve decided to close the SKOOL community for now. We’ve really enjoyed sharing here with all of you, but we’ve found that most of our social media community is staying connected with us on the platforms they already use rather than moving over to SKOOL. We’re hoping to continue building our community in the places where more people are already following Ben and engaging with us. If you’d still like to see this kind of content, you can look for Ben’s Facebook Supporter Hub, where we’ll continue sharing more personal posts, parent reflections, autism discussions, and behind-the-scenes content similar to what we’ve shared here. You can also continue following Ben on Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram for his regular videos, music, autism advocacy, and updates. We’ll be taking care of canceling all active memberships on our end so there are no future charges. We’ll also review any recent renewals and issue refunds where appropriate. We are so thankful to everyone who joined us here and gave this community a try. Your support really does mean a lot to both of us. This SKOOL community will be closing, but we hope you’ll continue to stay connected with us in one of our other spaces. Thank you for being here with us. Ben & Mom

Today gave me one of those parenting lessons that I think a lot of us experience as our autistic children get older. Ben had a follow-up neurology appointment today. He is medically stable and doing well, but because his doctors are still evaluating some neurological concerns, he isn’t able to renew his learner’s permit or practice driving right now. He was disappointed. He had only been practicing in parking lots, and we were nowhere near independent driving yet, but even that small amount of practice meant something to him. It made him feel like he was moving toward another adult goal. What struck me today was how quickly the parenting lesson changed. For a while, I was thinking about how to teach Ben to drive safely. Now I’m thinking about how to teach him to get places safely if driving ends up not being part of his future. How do we teach someone to safely use Uber? How do we teach public transportation? How do we teach them who to trust, what to do if a ride doesn’t feel right, how to ask for help, and what backup plan to have if something goes wrong? As parents, I think we sometimes hold a picture in our minds of what independence will look like. And even when we know our child has never followed a typical path, it can still be hard when that picture changes. Driving makes me nervous for Ben for its own reasons. Things like response time, awareness of surroundings, reacting quickly, and understanding what other drivers are doing are all skills we have to think carefully about. But the alternatives can make me nervous too. The thought of him someday relying on drivers, transportation systems, or people outside of our family can bring up a completely different kind of fear. Today reminded me that I can’t stay in that fear. If the goal changes, then the teaching has to change with it. Maybe the next step isn’t teaching Ben how to drive. Maybe it’s teaching him how to request a ride, check the license plate, share his location, know where he is going, contact us if something changes, and practice these skills with support until they become familiar.

Sometimes support looks like stopping right in the middle of everything. This picture is of Ben when he was about 13 or 14. Grocery stores could still be very overwhelming for him—the bright lights, crowded aisles, people moving close by, carts, noise, and so much sensory information happening at once. We had been to this store many times before, but that’s one of the things autism taught me: even when you think you know what to expect, you don’t always know how your child’s nervous system is going to experience that environment on that particular day. In this moment, Ben just needed a hug. So we stopped. Right there in the middle of the store. There was a time when I probably would have worried about people watching or wondering what they thought. Eventually, I stopped caring about that. If Ben needed support, then supporting him mattered more than looking “normal” to everyone around us. Sometimes the answer is to leave. We’ve done that plenty of times too. But sometimes the answer is simply to stop, give them a minute, offer pressure or a hug if that is regulating for them, and let their body settle before deciding what comes next. And that doesn’t necessarily end when they become teenagers or young adults. They may still need you to recognize, “This is too much right now.” One of the biggest things I learned was that being prepared doesn’t always mean preventing the hard moment. Sometimes being prepared means being willing to respond differently when the hard moment comes. Support first. Worry about everything else later. What helps your child or young adult when an environment suddenly becomes too much? Do they look for a hug, pressure, movement, quiet, leaving the space—or something else?

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When Ben was younger, he did a lot of self-talk, especially around things he had memorized or was very interested in. In this video Ben was 11 years old and had gained a lot of speech, but was still self talking in the mix of using functional language. In this clip, he is talking about the OrGreenic pan commercial. Instead of stopping the self-talk, I tried to join him in it and turn it into more of a back-and-forth conversation. You’ll notice that after only a sentence or two, Ben tries to end the conversation by saying goodbye to me. I keep it going a little longer. There are also moments when I ask him a question and his response isn’t really a direct answer — it’s a script he remembers from the commercial. Instead of correcting him or asking the question over and over, I simply model the sentence that would fit the conversation. For Ben, joining his self-talk became one more way we could meet him where his language already was and gently help him practice more conversational language. What does your child like to self-talk about? Have you ever tried joining their self-talk and using it as a way to encourage more interaction and conversation?