I (Brooke) am writing today’s blog post with a special guest post by our friend Alan in Long Island. We’ve had some big ups and downs since we last posted. James successfully took two three hour placement tests at Northern Virginia Community College. He had to take these  in order to be a “dual enrolled” homeschooler there this fall. The benefit of taking a class at NOVA this year is that it gives him an opportunity to be around other students, continue to build tolerance for a classroom setting and begin “wading” into post secondary education waters as he hopes to attend a four year university someday.

It seemed like a simple goal back in the spring to take an introduction to Psychology class! Well, we’re learning. The first difficulty reared up 4 days before class was to start. James was so nervous about keeping it together in an unknown classroom that his behaviors tanked and we had to scramble his teaching team and all the schedules we had planned for the fall. There was great relief after the first class or two when he realized it wasn’t so scary, the teacher was nice, the other students accepting and he could handle the work.

But a short time later he went back to his demanding Literature and Composition class and we began to see the stress of having to keep his body and emotions under control three days a week in a classroom. Throw in a first college exam and a bad’s night sleep and you have a recipe for disaster, or at least the feeling like you are riding a roller coaster. Because when you get a 96 on your first exam and you do keep it together in class that feels really good too.

In the midst of this James received a wonderful letter from his friend Alan in Long Island. Alan is a friend and client of James’ sister Jane and like so many people with autism he has a very deep and intuitive sense about people and events going on all around him. He didn’t have any first hand information about James but God must have placed him on Alan’s heart because this is what he wrote: