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.
In January of 2016, Avner began to change. He became secretive and withdrawn. He was very irritable. Suddenly, he went from struggling with English to struggling in most classes. We worried. We also assumed the cause was puberty.
April 20, 2020 I’m doing something different today. I’m writing as Avner takes his guitar class in the next room. I’m also writing about today, not the events that brought us to today. We are all sheltered in place. The self imposed isolation affects us all differently in interesting ways. We’re all a little less productive. I’m definitely feeling stir crazy and Barbara is feeling stressed for any number of
Avner faced a number of challenges in school. By the time that we finally secured his individualized education plan, more commonly known as an IEP, he was in third grade. Avner received a diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Asperger’s Syndrome, now classified under the larger umbrella of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). He was classified as twice exceptional, meaning that he also tests with a gifted IQ. Some