A few weeks ago my daughter got a pamphlet in the mail for a summer camp at an Ivy League college. It was almost $5,400 for a 3-week camp. Good grief! If it costs that much for a camp how much would it cost to send her there??? The hubby and I helped my stepson through undergraduate and graduate school, so we have some idea how much it costs to send a kid to college. My daughter will be going into her junior year of high school in the Fall of 2012. She is in the process now of picking her classes. I have heard from more than one person that the junior year is the hardest year of high school. Decisions, decisions. She has been getting e-mails from colleges for months wanting her to sign up for tours. Wasn't it just yesterday I was changing her diapers?? I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal recently that listed the five most expensive colleges in the United States. The most expensive one was over $59,000 for one year. The first house my parents bought was less than that. She has been thinking of college for a few years now and has a certain university in mind. Thank goodness it's an in-state school!! We are lucky that where we live there are great schools in-state as well as a community college that offers a multitude of classes. The road to getting my degree was long. I went away to a school for one semester but was homesick and came back. I then tried the community college. After a few years of that I took time off. All in all, it took me 14 years to finally get my degree. Most of the time I went to college I was also working at the same time. I went to night school, I did weekend classes. I think I might have even done an on-line class. One thing my dad told me frequently throughout those many years of college was, "Cathy, once you have that degree, no one can take it away from you!" That was a pretty good motivator. There was more than one time I was ready to give up. Anytime I thought about it or got frustrated I would remember what he said. As my only daughter heads towards the next couple of years of high school and then college, I will continue to support her, love her and guide her towards adulthood.
When Dominic was diagnosed with Autism at 2 1/2, I went to our local library and took out every book I could find about Autism. Sometimes I would bring back 20 books. This was 2006, so a lot of the information was very "dated." I guess I was looking for a book that would tell me what I should do next, like a "manual." Autism doesn't quite work that way! The saying is, " if you know one person with Autism, you know one person with Autism." Every mom to an individual with Autism follows their own "path." I think as moms, we judge ourselves much harder than anyone else does. I was 41 when I had Dominic. Did he get the diagnosis of Autism because I was an older mom? because I drank a lot of pop? I could sit and think about that every minute of every day. I am pretty integrated into the Autism community around Lansing and have told more than one person that it took me about two weeks to come to terms with Dominic's diagnosis. It is so incredib...
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