My 7th grader is having such a hard time in school with all the junk going on...... I just wonder, will it get easier with time?

It really depends on the amount of time, and what "junk" it is that is going on. Things like 'open classrooms' in which the kids just mill around, pick their own seats, talk at will, are normally curses for aspies. Structured classes are generally much easier to live with, so it really depends, doesn't it?

School got easier for Max as he advanced. Well, let me rephrase that, schoolwork got more difficult but the social aspects and the experience got much better for him with each grade up.

My own theory is that newborns cry because they don't know how to be babies, two-year-olds are terrible because they don't know how to be children, and twelve-year-olds are worse because they don't know how to be adults.

In each case they do eventually learn.

A sage observation if I ever heard one, John.

It is awful being an Aspie kid - no choices, always on someone else's schedule, no real chance to escape, forced to live at the whims of others.

But that seems more of a function of being young than school per se.

If by "school" one includes college, than I would say that life is made better by "school" - particularly when one is allowed to choose a program of interest. What's to fight against or complain about when the choice and decision were your own?

I became a different person once I was allowed an environment with a structure of my own choosing. It's not that it wasn't rigorous - it was moreso if anything - but because I chose it I was invested in it rather than fighting against it.

7th grade is a difficult time for most kids. As John pointed out, the kids are trying to figure out how to become adults, but they're not quite ready for it, and they're trying to figure out just where they fit in. Throw on top of that the changing hormones and it can get really ugly. Kids can be very mean at this age. My NT daughter, in 8th grade, is dealing with these issues too and I'm not looking forward to it for my son next year! I imagine junior high will be even more difficult for him. He has the additional issues to deal with, such as anxiety and being different.

On a positive note, I hear that things get a little better in high school. Most kids have a better idea of where they fit in and are a bit more tolerant of each other. My AS husband says that by high school he had found a couple of other nerds or geeks (his words) to hang out with which made it all a bit more tolerable. I hope they're right!

It's the hormones that make them unwilling to be children any more.

I found high school much worse than middle school, perhaps because I skipped the first year of high school, and was therefore two years younger than most of my classmates. I was just so hopelessly behind them in every way except academics, it was pitiful.

Perhaps by the time I figured out the basics of how to be a teenager, I had already got such a reputation at the school as a jerk that nothing would have helped. At college, I had a fresh start, and while I was no doubt still a nerd, I was just about able to function. Also by then, the other students had lost the desire to be obviously vicious, and the more subtle forms of rejection were less painful.

My high school experience was probably a bit different than what most parents would consider typical. I recognized that from 8am - 2:10 pm they owned me (9-12:45 on Fridays) - and the rest of my time belonged to me.

I refused absolutely all extracurricular activities offered by the school and spent most of my free time working at various jobs or hanging out at the corner music store - with adults who acted as my mentors in all things musical. When I could no longer afford to pay for lessons, they continued to teach me and I was often included in their after-hours jam sessions when the store closed at 8PM. I would repay their kindnesses by doing little things like restringing guitars, or running down the block to buy their liquor and cigarettes. (This was the 70's, and a very large city, so 13/14 year olds could indeed buy Jack Daniels and Marlboros with hardly a second look - and a quick explanation of who they were for would suffice to complete the transaction.)

I knew a few kids at my high school who were my longtime classmates in grammar school, and met a couple more from my neighbourhood, but for the most part I had no desire to fit in or participate in that NT world. I really couldn't understand it because I felt they were wasting a lot of time.

Maybe they felt the same way about me.

But if it wasn't about work or music, I wasn't interested.

Like many Aspies, I excelled academically, but hardly through hard work. A good memory, paying attention while I was chained to my schooldesks, and a knack for deducing what a particular stupid teacher would expect as an answer for the indecipherable questions he placed on his tests was enough.

Did your husband feel like he wanted to fit in? Did he have any special interests he pursued maniacally at that time?

Because I really gave little thought to what the other kids in school were doing. In fact, when my 8th grade class took a weekend trip to Disneyland, I was the only kid who said "No, Thank You - I've already been there."

I am still curious about how/why so many parents value "fitting in." It's nice to be accepted sometimes, but unless peer groups are far more self-selecting, it seems rather a futile and/or fruitless exercise at something I don't quite grasp.

If I went to a restaurant and was seated with 6 random people, I would find the conversation a bit awkward. But sit me with 6 audio engineers, as happened to me recently, and the conversation flies so fast - and not just about audio gear but also music, musicians, other hobbies, time management - a million subjects - effortlessly. I expect the same to be the case in NY tomorrow.

Maybe Aspies have our own world, and the structure of typical grade schools/ high schools make it hard to see. I don't suspect that anyone on this board would be able to dive into this weekend's conversations at the Audio Engineering Society conference except for perhaps Bart, who has a bit of an interest, and John, who might find some of the math used in the highly complex algorithms and digital acoustical modeling, somewhat interesting.

And they are, of course, Aspies.

So who "wouldn't fit in" at an AES convention? NTs. And I'll tell you what happens to NTs at AES or NARAS conferences - We are polite to them, respect the fact that they are there, and try to answer their questions. We don't mock them or form cliques or try to exclude them. For the most part they realize for themselves that they are in a bit of a foreign world when phrases like "AES 42 protocol" or "29.97 drop frame" start raining out of the sky at lightning speed.

Maybe that's how we feel when, in school, NTs start talking about who will be invited to what party or what someone will be wearing, or who has the coolest i-pod.

No I don't think he had any desire to fit in with the cool kids or popular kids. His interest was (and still is) in computers and electronics. So, when he found a few other guys who had the same interests, he fit in with them. This is what I meant when I said that by high school most kids have found where they fit in. In other words, they've figured out what interests are important to them and have (hopefully) found a few others who share those interests. For example, there's the artists, the musicians, the theater group, and, yes, the jocks, etc.

As a parent, I don't want my kids to try to fit in with the cool kids or the popular kids. I want them to find their niche where they are comfortable, a group that they naturally fit in with - kids who have similar interests and accept them for who they are. If that "group" is only one or two other people, that's fine. If my son had no desire to be around the other kids and had other outlets for his interests, that would be fine too.

As for parents valuing "fitting in", I'm sure there are some parents out there who want their kids to be the most popular but I think it's more common that they just don't want their kids to be hurt or picked on by the other kids. It's just a protection instinct. Would I recommend buying expensive clothes, i-pods, or fancy cell phones just so their kids can fit in? No, but I do understand the instinct that's behind it.