u/luoyun

My kid is 10 years old and both gifted and on the autism spectrum (officially tested for both). He is in public school but I draw from homeschool resources over the summer to enrich his learning. He is a rising fifth grader.

He participates in E-ELA and has since first grade but this year struggled with text-dependent writing responses. For example, these tasks included analyzing character motivation and tone in middle grade readers like The Westing Game. This is a skill I would like to help him hone over the summer.

To that end, I’m looking for recommendations on secular curriculum that would help accomplish this. I do mean truly secular, nothing “neutral” or from any publisher that has a religious bent to it. This is perhaps my only requirement. I’m open to anything that fits that rule. Thanks so much in advanced!

I think people sometimes assume biostatistics is one of those careers where you wake up one day with a PhD and magically become employable.

My path was a lot messier than that.

I worked full-time through grad school. Not “part-time internship while studying” full-time. Actual full-time jobs while juggling classes, research, projects, deadlines, and trying not to completely lose my mind. There were years where my entire life was basically work, school, coding, and caffeine.

A lot of my early career was in healthcare and public health research support roles where I became the person people handed complicated datasets to when something wasn’t working. Missing data, broken workflows, messy longitudinal tracking, geospatial analysis, regulatory reporting, statistical programming… I kept saying yes to harder projects because honestly I didn’t know another way to learn.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped being “someone who knows stats” and became “the stats person.”

I learned quickly that biostatistics is only partly about math. A huge part of the job is:
- cleaning chaos
- figuring out what question people are actually asking
- translating technical findings into normal human language
- explaining why the model broke
- defending methods decisions
- making reproducible workflows so analyses don’t implode six months later

The degrees mattered, obviously. But the thing that got me hired was being able to demonstrate real-world problem solving.

I had experience balancing competing deadlines, working with clinicians/researchers, handling ugly real datasets, and building analyses from scratch instead of only following textbook examples.

I also think working while in school changed how I approach research. You learn very quickly how to prioritize, communicate efficiently, and survive under pressure when your schedule basically requires time travel to function.

Now I work in academic medicine doing clinical analytics and biostatistical consulting, which still feels surreal sometimes because I spent years convinced everyone else had things figured out better than I did.

If anyone here is trying to break into biostats/data science:
- Learn R thoroughly.
- Work on real datasets whenever possible.
- Don’t underestimate communication skills.
- Get comfortable with ambiguity.
- Your first jobs do not have to look glamorous to build valuable experience.
- And honestly? Persistence matters more than raw brilliance in this field.

Most of my career came from being willing to keep learning after I was already exhausted.

Names changed for privacy reasons. My son is 10 and in the fourth grade in a very well-funded public elementary school in PA. He was diagnosed with level one autism spectrum disorder a few months ago following neuropsychiatric evaluation. He participates in gifted/out-of-grade level instruction and maintains As and Bs. He is an only child.

This year has been a tough one for him. It’s like a switch flipped with puberty coming on. His behavior changed very abruptly around November of this school year. He went from an average kid to one with quite the attitude, marked by sarcasm and eye rolls. This sudden shift in behavior led my spouse and I to seek outside evaluation that led to the autism diagnosis. He’s in talk therapy once a week for a hour and a social skills group that meets monthly, both recommendations from the evaluation process. I should note nothing major changed in his personal life as far as traumatic events or similar that would have triggered the behavior change.

His teachers were a part of the outside evaluation process and were informed of the diagnosis as soon as it was rendered, both via a letter and a full diagnostic report.

Two days ago, I received the following email, copied and pasted verbatim with the principal and his entire educational team CCd. Bobby is a pseudonym.

“Good afternoon.
I am writing to share some information regarding Bobby’s behavior in math class today, while I had a sub.
While the class was working on guided math practice, Bobby finished his assignment about a minute early and began playing with dice. When he was asked to put the dice away, he responded with a significant amount of disdain and attitude, stating, "I have nothing else to do." His tone was very disrespectful and not the way one should speak to an adult or any fellow human being.
At the end of the class, the sub spoke with Bobby privately to ask why he continued to be disrespectful. During the conversation, the following was noted and told to me:
When asked about his behavior, he initially claimed, "I wasn't exactly being disrespectful."

Since this sub has known Bobby since kindergarten, she asked if she had been nice to him, and he agreed that she had been.

He was then asked if he had been nice to her, to which he replied, "Not really."

Finally, she asked if there was something he needed to do (meaning an apology). He did offer an apology before leaving the room, but it was done begrudgingly, without eye contact, and in a tone that lacked sincerity.

I wanted to make you aware of this interaction so that you can discuss it with him at home. My goal is to ensure that Bobby understands the importance of maintaining a respectful attitude toward everyone in the classroom.
Best regards,
Math Teacher”

I am of two minds here: of course playing with dice is distracting and shouldn’t be allowed. Teachers have a hard enough job and deserve respect. Autism is not a free pass to be an asshole. At the same time, it’s almost like this particular teacher isn’t well-versed with working with autistic kids and could use some additional perspective on the issue.

What struck me wasn’t even really the original behavior. A 10-year-old finishing early, getting bored, and responding with attitude is not exactly unheard of, autistic or not. What stood out to me was how much emphasis was placed on the performance of remorse afterward: the eye contact, the tone, whether the apology sounded sincere enough, whether he seemed sufficiently deferential during a socially loaded interaction with an adult.

The thing is, those are exactly the kinds of moments autistic kids often struggle with most.

As if this isn’t enough, my son said he first elected to read a book to himself before pulling out the dice, but was told reading isn’t allowed in math class.

I guess I’m asking for the perspective of other educators here. I don’t want my mama bear instincts clouding my judgement more than they already are.

Free to a good home is one balcony ticket and parking for Purity Ring: A Place of My Own Tour at the Roxian Theater tomorrow. Comment if interested.

Edit: gone