Recently we joined a group called the College Autism Network (CAN). We are fortunate to have access to a network of higher education professionals who work with young adults with autism. Through this we gain insights into what the future of college life looks like for Beyond Akeela teens. One professional recently posed a question about the biggest challenges autistic young adults are facing in college environments these days. We gathered some interesting takeaways from the conversation.

All Students are Facing Hurdles

Many students, regardless of their neurological makeup, are facing a similar set of challenges in college. Most of the challenges shared in the thread were tied to student’s maintaining their mental health, being resilient in times of challenge, and feeling overwhelmed by their course loads.

Biggest challenge is Overcoming Setbacks

We noticed the most common trend college faculty shared was that students are having trouble recovering from setbacks they encounter in college. More students are showing an inability to continue or adapt when they face hurdles, which sometimes results in withdrawal from classes.

Effective Coping Strategies are Essential

Students finding the most success in college right now have a strong understanding of healthy coping strategies that work for them. This is why we talk with all Beyond Akeela teens about their coping strategies. They have to access these skills at Beyond Akeela, as everyone has moments of frustration or anxiety at camp. College life is no different.

Reliance of Phones/Screens

Several program directors noted that they are seeing more students relying on screens as their main coping skill. This has adverse effects on student sleep, personal care, and classwork completion. We’ve noticed a similar uptick in families concerned about their teen’s coping skills at Beyond Akeela without screen access. This is why we don’t allow screens at camp, so campers build a variety of coping skills.

Best Results for Those Accessing Support

Several faculty noted that autistic young adults are experiencing less regression than the neuro-majority because of the services they access in college. It is essential for college success to have the self-monitoring skills to understand when help is needed, and how to access it.

One of our goals at Beyond Akeela is to help teens develop a better understanding of the structure and areas of support they benefit from to be successful, and empower them to advocate for that support.

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Dear Beyond Akeela Families,

It’s the time of year when we gather with loved ones, be they friends or family, and reflect on what we’re thankful for. This year we can’t help but think of all the “coaches” in our lives that we interact with in different ways. Everyone, no matter their neurological makeup or path in life, benefits from coaching. Simon and Arlo are now taking swimming lessons. We’re grateful they have coaches who have the patience and will power to teach them some basic water safety skills (we certainly don’t!). In both of our professional lives, we have colleagues and mentors that we look to for coaching and guidance. They help us navigate our careers and build a better version of Beyond Akeela every year.

Yet it’s clear to us who the most important coaches in our lives are. The Beyond Akeela staff members we work with every summer are truly incredible. We talk with staff a lot about the concept of being coaches for the teens they work with. While they facilitate activities, conversations, and spontaneous moments of fun, they’re always wearing a coaches hat, identifying ways to mentor and coach the teens they work with.

We’re so proud and humbled to work with staff members who dedicate themselves to the mission of Beyond Akeela. They uproot their lives for two months to be amazing coaches. Staff come in with a variety of backgrounds and a common passion for youth development. They self-select into a living and learning community. They work around the clock, and smile through the ups and downs of camp life. It takes a special kind of person to be a great coach at Beyond Akeela and we’re so lucky to have worked with so many over the years.

Who are the coaches in your life? Is there something you’re working toward that a coach could help with? We encourage you to think about coaches you’ve had the fortune of working with, both past and present. Share your gratitude with them.

Warmly,
Kevin & Kristin

There are many benefits to sending your teen to an Asperger’s summer transition program that we could share with you, but it’s probably best that we let our families tell you why…

Building Social Skills at Camp

“Jane gained so much from her time at Beyond Akeela this past summer, and now that she is off at college, with accommodations in place, some tutoring, and an outside executive functioning coach, she seems to be doing so well! She is being social, making new friends and has joined at least two clubs. We couldn’t be prouder of her and we believe we have Beyond Akeela to thank for helping her learn how to socialize again.”

Preparing for College at Camp

“I do not think we realized until this past month when we watched Tim settle in relatively smoothly to college that we understood the impact Beyond Akeela had on him. He has referred to his transition program several times, saying things like, “They told us about this at Beyond Akeela…”. He has gotten through the bumps more smoothly at Eastern because of Beyond Akeela. We are thankful.”

Building Confidence for College Transition at Camp

“Jonathan gets back from engineering camp tomorrow. I credit Beyond Akeela for giving him the confidence he needed to participate in this program. Being prepared for the college living situation, knowing he can do it, was one hurdle we all didn’t have to worry about. He is enjoying the schedule, the socializing and the project, and phones/computers are allowed and necessary. He’s chosen to be involved with optional activities rather than stay in his room on a device.”

“Sarah is much more self confident and feels much more prepared for college. She got off the plane and said to us “ I am so ready for college!” She really enjoyed the other campers and felt like she found friends she “fit in” with.”

Building Life Skills at Camp

“Joyce is socially more engaged and excited to interact with friends now that she is back from Beyond Akeela. She is more willing to take feedback and is keeping up with some of the improved habits she adopted, such as managing her time and schedule more independently.”

Beyond Akeela’s Asperger’s summer college transition program has been creating transformative experiences for teens for over 10 years, and we look forward to changing more lives next year!

After each summer of camp, we take some time to reflect on the successes and challenges of the season. This is both an internal and external dialogue, as we seek out feedback from families and staff on their experience with Beyond Akeela. We can’t thank you enough for continuing to share your thoughts with us. I firmly believe that discussions with families, teens, and staff throughout the fall season make our program better, and we’re grateful for the opportunity to continue building our program. With that, we want to share what we’ve been reflecting on this fall and looking forward to next summer.

Highlights

• Engagement in Curriculum Sessions – This was our first year of going to an elective based system for curriculum sessions at camp, and we were so happy with the results. Campers showed more engagement in the conversations and discussions than we’ve seen in previous years. We’re excited to continue tweaking the sessions to align with the goals and objectives of our teen population.
• A Dedicated Staff – This team of staff members was one of the best we’ve had the pleasure of working with. Their commitment and dedication to camp was remarkable. Working in any camp setting is a challenging endeavor, and this group never wavered on that commitment. It was also the first year we developed a true leadership team, allowing us as directors to take a step back and allow others to lead the program. That was a great development for Beyond Akeela that we’re excited to keep in the community going forward!
• Boston Trip – Any time you bring a group of 50+ teens into a large metropolitan area for the first time, no matter how much you prepare there’s going to be a little fear of the unknown until you actually do it. We were SO impressed with how Beyond Akeela teens represented the community during both Boston trips. The groups made the most of their trips and capped off camp in amazing fashion!

What we’re working on

• Year-Round Engagement – We’re excited to be bringing on a new Assistant Director (stay tuned for the intro when we make the hire!), who will enhance our “off-season” communication and engagement with families. We are excited to stay more connected to everyone throughout the year, and help teens maintain the connections and progress they make over the summer. Thanks for sharing your thoughts in the Year-Round Programming Survey!
• Communicating Camper Progress – Beyond Akeela teens worked intentionally toward their goals last summer and showed great progress. We’re working on better systems to communicate that progress more effectively and timely to families, including overall observations at the end of the summer.
• Acts of Daily Living at Camp – We’re developing plans for easier ways for teens and staff at camp to track the acts of daily living campers engage in at camp, related to hygiene, laundry, and keeping a tidy room.

We hope you all have had some chances to reflect on your time with Beyond Akeela this past year as a family, and that you’ll use the experiences as a launching pad for this coming year!

Warmly,
Kevin & Kristin

We were thrilled to welcome Colin Brady, Director of Student Success at Mitchell College, back to the Akeela community. Colin was the presenter in Beyond Akeela’s most recent webinar: “Evaluating College Options for Neurodiverse Teens.” A full recording of the webinar can be found above.

In this webinar, Colin discussed with families how he breaks down the many different college programs available to students with learning disabilities. With such an overwhelming number of programs and various types of support for social and academic success, Colin’s presentation provided great tips for identifying key characteristics in programs to look for and consider. Below are a few highlights from Colin’s presentation:

Presentation Highlights

• Tiers of Support: There are so many schools and programs that offer support to neurodiverse students, but the level of support varies drastically. Colin breaks down types of schools into three tiers, based on the student population size and how ingrained the learning support program is into the culture of the school. One is not necessarily better than the others!
• Measured Progress: An important thing to consider when selecting a program is how the program measures and tracks the success of students. It varies widely across the landscape of programs, each with its own philosophy and progress reporting procedures. It’s important to consider a teen’s goals for college and how that matches with the philosophy and measurable outcomes promoted by a learning support program.
• Summer Programs: College is a big step for everyone, especially when it’s far away from home or someone’s first time away from home. Gaining some experience living away from home and experiencing college life through a summer program before going off to college can lead to better outcomes for success in college.

We hope you enjoy the presentation! Please feel free to reach out to us with any questions that you have!

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A couple recent events have sparked some thoughts I wanted to share with our community. Both surround the concept of self-awareness and owning one’s “-ness.” Some may recall the Owen Wilson movie “You, Me, and Dupree” in which Owen Wilson’s character preaches finding your “inner -ness.” While the movie makes light of the phrase, I think there’s something to it that is extremely important for college success. This is especially the case for neurodiverse young adults.

Understanding Your ‘Ness'”

I was talking with a guardian of a high school senior recently who is planning to attend college next year. The student was recently diagnosed with ASD Level 1, and the guardian was unsure of how to and whether to discuss that with the student. Especially for teens in high school, I always feel strongly that neurodiverse young adults should know as much as they can about their neurological makeup. This allows them to better understand how they learn and the kind of support they should consider accessing. The long-term self-awareness gained from that knowledge is empowering and essential for college success.

On a similar note, I just started reading Dr. Perry LaRoque’s Taking Flight: College for Students with Disabilities, Diverse Learners and Their Families. I highly recommend the book for any family considering postsecondary education for their neurodiverse young adult. The book leads with a conversation about owning one’s identity and self-reflecting on college readiness. Dr. LaRoque emphasizes the importance of understanding your strengths, passions, and areas you need support in as an essential component of college success. All of these are best understood when you have an understanding of and confidence in your identity. This is especially true because colleges are not specifically designed for diverse learners.

How to Build Self-Awareness

So, where to go from here? The more teens are afforded opportunities to make decisions for themselves, the better! Decision making empowers young adults and builds confidence in their ability to make good choices for themselves. This could be as simple as planning out their meals for a few nights a week, to more complex decision making through leading an IEP meeting. There are going to be mistakes made along the way and that’s okay! Mistakes are great opportunities for learning. The collection of successes and mistakes help neurodiverse young adults establish a stronger sense of self, which is essential for their college success.

All summers are memorable for their own reasons. They each bring a unique set of experiences and stories that are held sacred by the community members in those groups. For summer 2021, this especially holds true! Most everything about this past summer was new in some way shape or form, and it is absolutely one we are going to cherish memories from for a long time. We hope that the community of campers and staff are able to reflect back on the summer with fondness of the memories they created with one another. There is a lot we took away from the summer that we will keep near our hearts and minds as we move forward to 2022. Here are a few things that have climbed to the top of that list:

• Resilience: Remember that time during the first session when a microburst happened right over Pearly Pond, closing entrances to camp and knocking out power across campus? We do too! What we remember most though is how resilient the entire community was through such a disruptive event. Teens, when you face challenges this coming school year, remember how you navigated that and other challenges at camp successfully.
• Stepping Up: When given new responsibilities and freedoms, Beyond Akeela teens stepped up. Whether it was taking on a leadership role in a D&D campaign or community service group, or managing their laundry for the first time, Beyond Akeela teens took those on as growth opportunities. As a leadership team, we opened the door this summer for teens to take more responsibility and ownership over their experience, and they absolutely stepped up to the challenge!
• Community: You’ve probably noticed we use this word a lot. There’s intentionality to it. We were amazed this year that after we doubled the size of camp, there was still the same sense of community teens and staff love. That is all a credit to the teens from last summer. Everyone came from different walks of life, yet remained excited about getting to know a new group of friends. Each camper helped create a warm and welcoming environment for their peers, which is what makes Beyond Akeela so great! We hope teens will reflect back on what helped make this summer’s community so special and find ways to recreate it at home and school.
• Trying Something New: For virtually everyone at camp this summer, camper or staff, Beyond Akeela was a new experience for them. We also heard so many stories about teens trying new things at camp, whether it was new foods, performing in front of others, joining dance parties with people they met an hour before, and so many more. Taking these risks is what camp is all about, and where real personal development happens. What’s something new you’re going to try this year?

Everyone played a role in creating these points of reflection for us. While camp is only a three week experience together, there are so many moments that challenge everyone in the community to grow in ways that are unique to themselves. Like we have, we hope you’ll take some time to reflect on what camp meant to your family this year, and how the experience will create opportunities for growth in the current school year.

Warmly,
Kevin & Kristin

Beyond Akeela, as you know, is an intimate community summer program, designed by summer camp professionals who specialize in helping quirky kids to build social confidence as they transition to college and adulthood. But preparing campers for “the real world” isn’t just about helping them develop skills – we seek to inspire them to realize their limitless potential! We think today’s post about Elon Musk’s Asperger’s announcement is pretty darn inspiring.

When you hear the name “Elon Musk” you probably think of the high-end all electric Tesla automobile or Spacex rockets sending astronauts to the International Space station, or (more recently) his off-the-wall tweeting about cryptocurrencies like Dogecoin. There’s no doubt that this sometimes world’s richest man has his hands in a lot of pots – but did you know that he’s done and is doing it all despite having been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome? Neither did we… until recently!

While hosting Saturday Night Live back in May of this year, the billionaire tech entrepreneur unexpectedly revealed the fun fact about himself:

“I don’t always have a lot of intonation or variation in how I speak… which I’m told makes for great comedy,” he joked in his opening monologue. “I’m actually making history tonight as the first person with Asperger’s to host SNL.”

Some are quibbling over whether or not he’s really the first, but learning that someone on the spectrum is at the top of their game, of course, shouldn’t come as any surprise. We learned just last year that Chris Rock had been diagnosed with NVLD, and there are many people who believe that other tech leaders and world-renowned geniuses are among the ranks as well:

Musk, of course, is one of the world’s two richest people, and it’s probably no coincidence that he has Asperger’s and is a highly successful tech entrepreneur. Temple Grandin, who is famous for her autism and autism advocacy, believes that Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs had Asperger’s, and that the same is true of many of today’s tech icons, though she won’t name names while they are alive.

We’d like to think that all of our campers already know that their Aspergers, autism or NVLD shouldn’t hold them back in life – and in many ways, might benefit them – but we’re always thrilled to hear stories like this that help us further illustrate that fact. This of course doesn’t mean that everyone attending Beyond Akeela will go on to become an eccentric billionaire tech entrepreneur – but it does mean that there’s no reason they can’t!

Beyond Akeela truly believes that the sky is the limit for all of our campers and we our program can help them all realize their dreams. Please share this story with anyone you feel might be inspired by it and let us know if you’re interested in learning more about our college readiness Aspergers program.

Photo Credit:JD Lasica from Pleasanton, CA, US, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

We recently read this article with the intention of reflecting on our parenting style with our toddlers. (We have a lot to learn!). As many neurodiverse teens struggle with managing screen time, we wanted to share it with our community. The article focuses on the importance of developing “indistractable” teens, a critical 21st Century skill. While I’m not sure I agree with the choice of the term “indistractable,” some of the techniques and concepts the author explains resonate with how we like to do things at camp. We hope you find the article helpful in managing screen time for your family at home!

Stanford psychology expert: This is the No. 1 skill parents need to teach their kids—but most don’t
*Please forgive the clickbait-y title of the article!

Independent decision making

Independent decision making is a crucial life skill which applies to many facets of adulthood. Managing time, cooking meals, making and executing plans, for example, are all ways we implement independent decision making skills. This skill is developed over time and through practice. Allowing teens to be part of the decision making process for their screen time is a great way to practice this skill! Further, it is important to help them utilize systems and strategies to self-monitor their use. The author mentions the use of smart home technology, and there are other great timer tools to empower them with the responsibility of using.

Mistakes make perfect

We’ve all heard the phrase “practice makes perfect.” Practice is great, and we think mistakes that arise from practice are golden opportunities for growth! Once your teen has established a system for monitoring their screen time, let them trial it WITHOUT you. This is hard as a parent (we want our kids to be successful all the time!), but mistakes are an important part of the learning process. These lessons are better learned when teens create rules for themselves and take responsibility for them. This is a great way to let them learn from “natural consequences.” Natural consequences are directly related to an action taken by someone, as opposed to an arbitrary consequence that is unrelated to an action.

Self-determination

An underlying skill this article does not mention, but I believe is crucial to the author’s point, is self-determination. For teens to self-monitor their screen time, they must have some level of self-determination to do so. They must see the value in managing their screen time and be motivated to do so. Pending the age of your teen, we feel framing conversations around future goals is usually helpful in developing this self-determination. For college bound neurodiverse teens, this is a great opportunity to discuss how this practice translates to independently managing time in college. The conversations about self-determination and importance of monitoring screen time should be catered to the individual goals of your teen.

Do you have a neurodiverse teen preparing to transition into a post-secondary program or college? We’d love to chat and see how we can help!

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We talk with our families a lot about the concept of risk taking at camp, and why it is so important for neurodiverse teens. We were pleased to come across this article from the American Camp Association that helps outline the benefits of taking healthy risks. The Myth of Risk: Promoting Healthy Behavior by Challenging Teens. The article does a great job of outlining the positive outcomes teens get from engaging in healthy risks. We encourage any family considering sending their neurodiverse teen to a summer program to read this article.

What is a Healthy Risk?

Both professionally and socially, our lives are often filled with healthy risks. Reaching out to an old friend, going to a social gathering (before COVID!) with new people, or starting a new job, are all examples of healthy risks we take as adults. While they may not feel risky for many, they can feel like risks for neurodiverse teens.

At Beyond Akeela, healthy risks can take many different forms. For some teens coming to camp is a risk in-and-of itself. For others, it may be initiating a game during free time, going white water rafting, or sharing their thoughts in a group conversation about applying to college. Acknowledging a mistake and apologizing to rekindle a friendship is another risk teens take in camp settings. Camp is full of these opportunities and is set up to prepare teens for success when they take risks.

Why is it Important to Take Healthy Risks?

As teens develop, so does their penchant to engage in risks. They are exploring their independence and how they fit into society, and often take risks to that end. Encouraging healthy risks at this crucial developmental stage is helpful in preventing negative risk-taking behavior. When we support positive risk-taking and set teens up for success, they realize they are capable of more than they thought before.

Per the research in the article above, teens who engaged in positive risk-taking clearly had positive social-emotional outcomes. They felt happier, more optimistic, successful, and more responsible. At camp, we’ve seen all of these outcomes anecdotally. Neurodiverse campers develop more confidence, they are more likely to take another positive risk, and often show signs of being happier.

One of the final things the article mentions is the increased sense-of-self teens feel when they engage in healthy risks. We couldn’t agree more with this. This is what camp is all about! For some teens, especially those who have not been part of a community like Beyond Akeela before, taking risks at camp helps them recognize how valued they are by other campers. It helps them develop a strong sense of self-respect.

Do you have a neurodiverse teen preparing to transition into a post-secondary program or college? We’d love to chat and see how we can help!

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