This guest post is by Gaven Shaw, a young man who was diagnosed with Asperger’s at 11 years old and plans to pursue an engineering degree. Gaven 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.
I started my journey in a center called the Elizabeth Layton Center. It is in Ottawa, Kansas. The first person on my journey was Ms. Bre. She worked with me 3 days a week. She taught me how to walk through WalMart without having a meltdown when things became overwhelming. I went from screaming in a shopping cart to being able to walk up and down aisles without any problems. She taught me to try and read between the lines, even though we all know everything is black and white. When we moved to Florida I was so scared to leave the person who was with me from the time I was 3 until I was 8. My mom made sure that we moved to a town that had a good autism program. Almost everything we did involved making the decisions based on my needs as I was getting older. I was always in therapy and always working on “normal every day life.” Whatever “normal” means. We were only in Florida for a year and then moved to a small town that had no idea I was “on the spectrum” I started 5th grade at my new school. I will never forget when my teacher yelled at me to get back in my seat! She had not read my IEP and had no idea how far I had came since the beginning of it all. I just couldn’t sit for long and needed to stand up in the back of the class or walk into the hall. The class room was loud and no one understood why I was getting upset. I tried so hard to take all the steps to calm myself but that was not happening. That’s when my hero came into my life. She is my school mom Ms. Salamone. She teamed up with my mom and at that point I was headed for success in school. When entering the 7th grade I decided I wanted to play football. My mom thought it would be a good idea and way to learn authority, work together with peers, and learn that not everything is going to be my way. *Backstory* I had one of those charts that told you what you were doing at every point in the day and I was getting annoyed having to use it, so I decided at the beginning of my 7th grade year I was over that stupid chart. Football helped me deal with situations at one time I would not have been able to handle. Ms. Salamone made sure that my school work stayed on task and broke long assignments down for me. When teachers assign those huge long assignments and say, “ok this is due next week” I would literally throw it in the floor and give up straight away. Knowing that was not acceptable, Ms. Salamone would break things down piece by piece and I would not get so overwhelmed. My junior year Ms. Salamone signed me up through a program with MU that helped kids learn how to work in the workforce. I learned how to read upc codes and help customers. After figuring out that I was very successful working with people, I started to volunteer at the Royals and Chiefs stadium with my football team to earn money for out team. It has been a long path over these several years. Trying to get family and friends to understand my quirks and no filter. I have never been invited for a sleep over and I am ok with that because I just need my space. My family, especially my mom has been the greatest advocate for not only me, but for other kids we have met along this journey. We were told that I was not going to be able to go to a regular school due to being non-verbal for several years and not being able to control my outburst. With hard work and dedication, I proved them wrong. I will be going to college in the fall and I have had A’s and B’s during all my HS years. People love talking to me because I always make them laugh and tend to put them in a good mood or just change the conversation all together. When people told me I couldn’t do something I worked even harder just to prove them wrong. #winning
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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.
