Still the attitude grew darker. Avner gravitated to violent video games. In fact he had migrated away from the social games that he played with friends at school. He was turning morose and there wasn’t a ready explanation, except adolescents. Everything that we thought we saw could be explained by teenage hormones or frustration with school work.
Since he enrolled in the GED program through Leon County Schools, we assumed that his successful completion of the program and subsequent college enrollment would have triggered some kind of notice to the school system that he was done. Finished. Complete. Resolved. Ended. Concluded. The chapter has been closed.
In hindsight, early 2016 started the steep decline in the quality of all of our lives. As parents, Barbara and I failed to recognize the symptoms of Avner’s decline as a medical problem. The changes and challenges came so fast that we pivoted from crisis to crisis. It feels as if we were the frogs in the slowly warming pot, about to boil to death without realizing the clearly present danger.
Avner had missed the opportunity to register for high school classes. We had been adamant about connecting with the high school for a hand-off meeting from middle school, to cover his IEP. Avner was entering high school a year younger than most high schoolers, and had some academic hurdles due to his ADHD and Autism diagnoses. There was this other thing with his behavior, but we expected life to improve