This guest post is by Casey James (CJ) Nadeau, a young man who was diagnosed with autism and who attends Front Range Community College. CJ is applying for the Spring 2023 Making a Difference Autism Scholarship via the nonprofit KFM Making a Difference started by me, Kerry Magro. I was nonverbal till 2.5 and diagnosed with autism at 4, and you can read more about my organization here. Autistics on Autism: Stories You Need to Hear About What Helped Them While Growing Up and Pursuing Their Dreams, our nonprofit’s new book, was released on March 29, 2022, on Amazon here for our community to enjoy featuring the stories of 100 autistic adults.
At eight years old I was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. I could easily mistake myself for a bad kid when I was younger. I would often disrespect authority figures and throw massive meltdowns about insignificant things. This lack of emotional regulation would follow me into my middle school years, and though I was getting better, the environment of middle school made it hard for me to realize any progress. This began to change when I moved to a school designed to help kids on the Autism spectrum called Temple Grandin School. Now I can proudly state that I have mastered my emotions and can now go forward.
I had a rough time in the public school system. Throughout my time at elementary school, I would often have emotional outbursts and meltdowns. These would be caused by a variety of factors from homework to activities. In one case, I left the school grounds because we had to play this weird game in PE that I didn’t want to do. The result of all of these was that I would often go home early and would miss out on certain classes. As a direct result of these meltdowns, I would be seen as the weird kid and would often be avoided by most other kids. These emotional meltdowns also made it hard to teach me, and I would usually not pay attention in class and resort to doodling and writing in my notebooks. The teachers would also have the perception that I was a bad kid who didn’t do the schoolwork or readings and would go crazy over minor things. This attitude thus gave me the perception that the teachers didn’t really care about me, and so I didn’t care about them or their class. The exception to this was my 5th-grade teacher Mr. Blazer who managed to understand me and thus, I actually learned in his class. Over time I started to get better with my emotional regulation and I was excited for middle school. That excitement vanished very fast.
Middle school was just plain horrible for me. I had more teachers than I did before, but I felt as if none of them actually cared about teaching, so once again, I felt like I was not paying attention in class. This attitude to the teachers and other authority figures continued to decline to the point where I actively disliked them on a personal level and would occasionally insult certain teachers. This attitude led to me getting in trouble more often and having to leave school. On top of this, I began to get bullied quite heavily, and it made me actively shy away from interacting with others. As a way to try and escape my surroundings, I would often use the iPad that the school gave us to play games and watch videos during class. There were students and teachers that I did like. I developed a small group of friends I could hang out with outside of school. There were also a few teachers that I really liked and genuinely enjoyed their classes. Among them were my math teacher, multimedia teacher, and school counselor, whose teachings I enjoyed. However, I still actively hated middle school to the point where I would regularly fake being sick so I did not have to go to school. I generally had the feeling that no one really understood or even liked me, so I just retracted away from others and did not do anything in class as I felt there was no point and it did not matter. Thankfully, this changed towards the end of 8th grade when my parents transferred me from public school to a private one called Temple Grandin School in Boulder.
Temple Grandin School (TGS) was just what I needed. It was specifically made for kids on the autism spectrum, and they were significantly better than the public school. The first thing that set this school apart for me was the class sizes. In public school, I would often be in classes of over 30 students, but at TGS, my largest class had 8 people. This naturally helped me learn better as the teachers could be more personal and give one on one advice. Speaking of the teachers, they were also great. In my four years at TGS I did not have a single bad teacher. They all were very skilled at keeping me engaged, and though I still did “goof off” on occasion, I was still happy and learning. The class body was also significantly better than the previous schools I attended. They were all friendly, and I don’t recall any students I actively hated, and now some of them I would consider good friends. TGS was also incredibly lenient with accommodations. If you need it you could put on personal music or take your test in a separate room with more time. Students were also permitted to take breaks where they could go outside with one of the teachers and take a break for a short bit.
Thanks to Temple Grandin School, I made significant progress in my emotional regulation. Now it is to the point where the massive meltdowns are now a thing of the past, and I can effectively control my emotions. I no longer get upset to the point where I completely shut down for the day. Now that I have tackled this challenge, I can now move forward into the world confident that I will have a good life ahead.
Follow my journey on Facebook, my Facebook Fan Page, Tiktok, Youtube & Instagram.
My name is Kerry Magro, a professional speaker and best-selling author who is also on the autism spectrum. I started the nonprofit KFM Making a Difference in 2011 to help students with autism receive scholarship aid to pursue post-secondary education. Help support me so I can continue to help students with autism go to college by making a tax-deductible donation to our nonprofit here.
Autistics on Autism: Stories You Need to Hear About What Helped Them While Growing Up and Pursuing Their Dreams was released on March 29, 2022 on Amazon here for our community to enjoy featuring the stories of 100 autistic adults. 100% of the proceeds from this book will go back to our nonprofit to support initiatives like our autism scholarship program. In addition, this autistic adult’s essay you just read will be featured in a future volume of this book as we plan on making this into a series of books on autistic adults.
