This guest post is by Thomas “Cole” Felton, a young man who was diagnosed with autism at 12 and plans to attend the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. Cole 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.
When I was a kid, I never really fit in like other kids. I would have extreme emotional outbursts at stores I didn’t want to go to or when I failed to be great at sports or just whenever things didn’t meet my expectations. When someone changed the plans for the day, that was REALLY bad. I was also never very good at being social and I am still not. I can be selfish in conversation and overly aggressive in my attempts to get people’s attention. Unfortunately, I loved being social, and still do, which is unique for those with autism.
The older I got, the more difficult my social situations got. I always wanted to be a baseball player. I had success with it early on and that emboldened my dream. By middle school, the game was getting harder. I wasn’t having success, and every strikeout or error made me feel worse about myself than the last. School was also very rough for me, and many teachers had no idea what to do with me. Teachers would often just let me hide and “meltdown” under my desk, and never tell my parents what was happening. Seventh grade was a critical point. I was always very good at math, but my math teacher that year had a very specific way of teaching that did not work for me. She refused to change her way even a little bit, and the school backed her up. I had many meltdowns in math, that inevitably spilled over to other classes. I did not want to be there and would often do whatever I could to get out of school. My main strategy was faking being sick and my parents caught on to this quickly, but the school would not do anything. They made my parents take me home. I began my downward spiral of serious attempts at self-harm. I didn’t want to be me. My parents really struggled with the weight of it all.
The summer after 7th grade, I spent some time in the hospital where I was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. I hated it. I hated being “officially” different. I hated thinking I would never “get better”. My parents and I started now understood some of the things that were hard for me or made me different were because of autism. It did not make me feel any better at first. I still was bad at social situations. I would still hyperfocus on things that weren’t helpful or important. What did help about the diagnosis was that my parents understood there was a cause for some of my behaviors and that there were experts that could help us. Yes, I do mean us, not just me. We found many counselors, therapists, doctors, and medications that supported me and changed everything. I still struggle a lot with living with autism, but I don’t want to be me way less often.
I went to a different school in the 8th grade with a program that supported kids on the spectrum like me. While things massively improved, I still had significant trouble. However, now there was a wider group of people interested in helping me, not just pushing me off to be someone else’s “problem”.
High school started off great, I found another support group of students and teachers and I was really starting to mature. However, COVID became the reality and forced more changes, and change has always been difficult for me. I was online for the end of my freshman and my entire sophomore year. The lack of social interaction drastically affected my mental health. Managing time and schedules in an online education environment was extremely difficult for me. My autism combined with my ADHD allowed me to get distracted easily. My mom had to work overtime to help me stay on top of my schoolwork. There were some very tense and difficult times that year. With a lot of support from my mom, I got through the year. Looking back, I am surprised I made it.
As a junior, we were back in person and that really helped me. More structure and more social interaction were important. I joined my school’s speech and debate team. I have never been afraid of public speaking, or being in front of an audience, but I never thought about doing this competitively. I met some good friends who accepted me. However, I wasn’t meeting my preconceived expectations for success. I have always thought I should be perfect at everything I do. My mom and my coach suggested I write a speech about autism and my experiences. This turned out to be a great decision that saw me gain confidence in myself. I won a few tournaments this year and now I am a speech and debate high school national qualifier based on that speech!
Senior year has been full of ups and downs. I was accepted to college and I am going to be majoring in something I feel is perfect for me, sports management and communications. I could never play sports at an elite level, and that hurt me a lot, but I know a lot about sports and like to talk about them. With a little “hyper-focus”, I can work towards an alternate version of my dream to be a professional baseball player, and that’s okay with me now. I can be a part of the sports world this way, the way I want to do it now.
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.
