Hi everyone,
Just wondering if there is an existing in-person support group (in the DC/Montgomery County, MD area) for parents of young adults with learning disabilities.
Or, would anyone like to work with me to help create one? Or have ideas about resources for helping our daughter?
She is 25, graduated (just barely) from college 1.5 years ago, has her own apt with a roommate (tenuous situation), just lost her first post-college job, and has very poor job-seeking skills, due to erratic and inconsistent planning, organizational, and anticipating-the-future skills. She can succeed in situtations that are pretty much totally structured for her.
In spite of many years of special ed and other resources, has huge troubles setting up her own structures, and seems to be using fewer and fewer of the strategies she’s been taught. I think she has many of the characteristics of someone with executive function disorder, tho she’s never been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD (Diagnoses have been language and math processing disorders).
Recently racked up huge doctor bills because she never registered for a PCP with her employer-provided health insurance. For several years, we have provided her access to someone (whom she likes) who is a certified financial planner, and who has helped with budgeting, etc, but our daughter won’t use her regularly.
She perceives herself as very competent, comes across at first as very poised and confident, and has always chosen friends (though she has few) who are far less competent than she is.
We would like to find some sort of job-seeking/life-organization coach or counselor - that doesn’t cost a forture. Or maybe a support group of some kind for her. Or for us? Any ideas about these things out there?
Thanks so much.
An exhuasted parent in her 60s who’s scared of the future…Julia
Hmmm…. it honestly sounds like her big conflict is resisting recognizing that she needs structure and help. Does she recognize the need? Is this one of those situations where she just might… to anybody **but** a parent? How is she paying off the huge doctor bills? Did she/ does she learn from experience?
As somebody wiht organziational issues of my own, I don’t learn to be *organized* from experience… but I have learned to find help and structure for those situations.