Autism Dad, Vol. 3: Life Skills & Life Lessons, Preparing Our Special-Needs Child For Adulthood: Autism Dad, #3

By Rob Errera

Teenagers with autism need life skills and job training. Autism Dad 3: Life Skills & Life Lessons: Preparing Our Special-Needs Child For Adulthood is a personal memoir told with humor and grace that looks at the unique challenges facing special-needs children transitioning into young adulthood. This collection of essays not only details a father's take on raising a special-needs child, but tells the story of a family shaped by the everyday challenges and rewards of raising a child with autism.

Essays include…

• What Causes Autism And Can It Be Prevented?

• Teething Pain Is Only The Beginning

• Autism And The Art Of Toilet Seats

• Help Wanted: Employers With Open Hearts And Minds

• Celebrity Autism Insults Real People Struggling With ASD

• Precocious Pre-Teen And Racy TV Ads Yield Parental Torment

• Language: English
• Publisher: GiantDogBooks
• Release date: Sep 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781949043075

Rob Errera

Rob Errera is a writer, editor, musician, and literary critic. His fiction, non-fiction, and essays have earned numerous awards. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids, and a bunch of rescued dogs and cats. He blogs at roberrera.com, tweets @haikubob, and his work is available in both print and digital editions at all major online booksellers.

Book preview

Welcome to Autism Dad 3

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Welcome to Life Lessons & Life Skills: Autism Dad, Vol. 3—Preparing Our Special-Needs Child For Adulthood!

When I wrote Autism Dad, Vol. 1: Adventures In Raising An Autistic Son, I was seven years into the autism game, and still finding my footing as a parent.

The first volume of Autism Dad is about my wife and I trying to rescue our toddler son from the cold clutches of autism.

We failed.

Autism Dad, Vol. 2: Tween Edition—Autism, Adolescence and Fatherhood is about not letting autism defeat us—our family and our marriage. The essays in Autism Dad, Vol. 2  tell a story of survival and acceptance. We couldn’t save our son from autism, but we could love him for who he was.

Living with autism is about adapting to changes (some of them rather sudden) and picking your battles. You can’t live a normal life. You can’t. The best you can do is set boundaries on the weirdness. Living with a person with autism means those boundaries often get bumped, moved, and challenged.

I wrote Autism Dad, Vol. 2 because so many life-changing events had occurred in our family since the publication of Autism Dad, Vol. 1. My wife had a massive stroke, I sank into a major depression, and our son continued to struggle academically, socially, and behaviorally. We emerged stronger from our experiences in Autism Dad, Vol. 2, but it’s a harrowing read rather than a happy one.

Since the publication of Autism Dad, Vol. 2, puberty struck with a vengeance, and our quiet son became a moody—sometimes aggressive—teenager. He’s gotten big and strong, and the physical challenges of raising him have gotten more difficult, especially as my wife and I get older. It’s been more than a decade since I chased a toddler around. Now I’m an old(er) man chasing around a young man. I don’t stand a chance. My son frequently leaves me in the dust if we’re riding bikes or walking the dog. Fortunately, his energy comes in short bursts, so I can still catch up for now. This won’t last much longer.

As Rocco and I approach milestone birthdays—my Big 5-0 and his Sweet Sixteen—we both face career decisions. Rocco is in high school, where life skills become the primary focus of special-needs education. If Rocco wants to get a job when he’s 21, he needs to start training and apprenticing now.

Mergers, downsizing, and a general decline in print media dried up my career working for newspapers and magazines, and left me virtually unemployable. What else can I do but turn my family into characters in a book series?

That may be the most shocking thing I’ve discovered from writing the Autism Dad books and sharing my family’s personal journey—people connect with honesty, even if it’s unflinching and unpleasant. There’s beauty in truth, even when it’s ugly. Hopefully you’ll find something in my Autism Dad series that’s helpful, comforting, or humorous.

Life Lessons & Life Skills: Autism Dad, Vol. 3 looks at the beautiful and the ugly and finds they’re almost always one-in-the-same. Ugly begets beauty. Look at life the same way long enough and everything can look beautiful. It’s all a matter of perspective. It’s an honor—and more than a little scary—sharing my family’s ugly beauty with you in Autism Dad, Vol. 3.

It’s time for my son and I to think like entrepreneurs—autismpreneurs—making our own path to sustainability and success.

Do you like music?

Scary stories?

Want to buy a guitar?

I hope so...but we’ll get to that later. First, let’s look at parenting in general. Back in 1999, I didn’t want to be anyone’s dad. Ever. Becoming Autism Dad has been a long, strange, transformative trip!

Rob Errera

March 2018

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Proud Parents Await Millennium's Birth

February 1999

The approach of the new millennium has prompted an outbreak of Breeding Fever.

A recent study shows that more and more young couples are competing for the honor of having the first millennium baby, born at midnight, January 1, 2000. These couples are currently checking their ovulation cycles and making reproductive plans. The ideal time to conceive a millennium baby is late March/early April of this year.

My advice to young couples planning to have children is: don’t do it! There are enough people on the planet already, and plenty of unloved children who need Mommies and Daddies, if you're feeling paternal. Everyone, please, stop breeding!

Of course, my advice will fall on deaf ears, and the new babies will keep on coming. Most babies are born out of vanity rather than love, ("Oh honey, I hope our baby has your eyes and my nose"). Yes, your child will have physical features similar to you and your spouse (at least, you hope so).

But your child will also inherit other traits from Mommy and Daddy, like neurotic behaviors and bad table manners. With apologies to all expectant parents, no matter how good of a parent you think you'll be, chances are you'll screw up, and your child will grow up to be another flawed adult who will keep the cycle going. You won't give birth to the next Albert Einstein or the next Jeffrey Dahmer—you'll give birth to the next average Jane or Joe, only they'll look a little like you, and for the first ten years of their life they'll look up to you and think you have all the answers, until they realize you're as clueless about life as they are. I commend young couples for wanting to bring a new, glorious life into the world, but frankly, the gene pool does not need your contribution.

Most couples breed out of vanity, but Millennium Fever Couples take it to a whole new level. They think if their child is the first newborn of the new millennium, it will imbue their child with special, maybe magical powers. They think their New Years baby will be revered, and, as the child's parents, they’ll be put on a pedestal, too. They're not thinking of the lifetime of commitment or the emotional or financial obligations that come with child rearing. They're thinking only of the 15 minutes of fame when Good Morning America and Dateline NBC come calling to run a feature story on their bouncing baby. Vanity, thy name is Mommy and Daddy.

The Y2K bug not only affects computers, but human machines as well. It threatens to send them into an irrational state where nonsense and short-sightedness are the only options. It'll give April Fool's Day special significance this year as young couples try to conceive the coveted millennium baby. Not all will succeed...but most will have fun trying.

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Oh yeah, I was a bit of an ass back then. Maybe more than a bit—and maybe not was. But I’d seen what marriage and kids did to my friends. Suddenly they stopped hanging out, stopped partying, quit going to ball games, concerts, and bars. They became boring, and nothing seemed more terrifying to me. A dull, quiet Daddy life seemed a type of living death. I was going to be a rock star! I was going to be a bestselling author!

I was a 32-year-old man-baby, and definitely more than a bit of an ass. I fell in love with Laura, and love changed the way I looked at things. It made me want to be and act like a man.

I adjusted my attitude, and a few years later I made a public mea cuppa—babies were cool! I’m glad I figured this out before I became a father!

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Shedding The Shackles Of Baby Prejudice

November 2002

It’s an honor and a privilege to write a newspaper column. But there are some downsides. For instance, sometimes you say things in print you later regret. Everybody’s personal opinions change over time—but when you’re a columnist, everything you ever wrote exists forever on microfiche someplace.