12 Steps

A 12-Step Program for High School Registration With an Autistic Kid:

1. Attend what you think will be a friendly and simple meeting with the high school resource teacher, the high school counselor, the middle school teacher, and your kid.
Try not to look/sound stupid when the teachers ask what kind of goals you want set for your kid. Try not to be frustrated when they explain the "program" to you, and it doesn't fit what your kid needs. Try not to laugh when your kid wants to know if the program involves Tootsie Pops.

2. Hide frustration when your kid can't be officially registered at this meeting, because nobody told you to bring his immunization card with you.

3. Pretend like you understand why the stack of registration forms you just spent 30 minutes filling out can't just be kept at the school until you can send in the immunization record. Pretend like it makes sense that you have to take them all with you, and keep track of them. Pretend like there is a chance they will actually get returned to the school and not lost, stuck to something else, or fingerpainted on.

4. Procrastinate for several weeks before getting in to the doctor's office for the immunization record.

5. Make a second trip to the school with the immunization record and (miracle of all miracles) the rest of the registration packet, only to be told that your kid needs just one more immunization before he can be admitted to the school.

6. Annoy the nurse at the doctors office by making her triple check the kid's immunization schedule to make SURE he is caught up on everything. Annoy your kid by requesting every possible shot for every possible disease just to be sure they don't miss anything.

7. When you take the registration packet and updated immunization schedule back to the school, be sure to leave a few vital papers lying on the counter at home, so that you can make yet another trip to the school the next day before your kid can be officially registered.

8. Be very polite to the school secretary when she tells you that now that your kid is in the system, you can come back in two days to sign a bunch more papers and pick up his schedule for the next year, which will then give you the date that you get to come back AGAIN to pay fees and get locker assignments and pictures. Be very polite and she will never guess that you are thinking about bombs with nails in them.

9. When the day finally comes to pick up the ACTUAL SCHEDULE, your kid will want to go on a tour of the school and find all his classes. Make sure you are accompanied this day by your four year old, who is wearing mismatched flip-flops that keep falling off.

10. Annoy the school photographer by actually expecting him to retake the crappy picture he just took of your kid, and for which you just paid $20.00.

11. Schedule a root canal the same day as picture and locker sign-up day. That way, when the lines for pictures are too long, you get to leave before locker sign ups, in order to make it to your root canal on time, thereby ensuring yet another trip to the school the next day. Post root canal.

12. In spite of all this headache, have an amazing time exploring the school with this amazing kid, who is nervously excited for his first day of high school, and who is growing up too darn fast.

He's the bravest kid I know.