My son starts mainstream high school today, so the house is a collective bag of nerves (especially his younger brother, who's surprisingly anxious about starting year 5 at Primary without his brother around).

I'm sure my recollections of high school aren't nearly as bad as I paint them, but my memories are of a difficult struggle to fit in. 'Survival' is how I usually think of it. Of course, that was 40 years ago, but today I have to remind myself that his journey will be his journey, and supporting him means not adding to his baggage with my own.

My son was diagnosed with autism several years ago, so going to mainstream school brings extra challenges. I'm sure that if I were to press for it, I could get an adult diagnosis of the same, as we share many traits (which only compounds my anxiety about school), but I've turned my idiosyncracies into a design methodology that's kept me employed all my life, so for me, that would be an indulgence - a fashion statement, rather than anything practically useful.

My son's autism manifests mostly as a struggle with social interaction. He's a pretty laid back fellow - smart, funny, and very empathetic, but he finds it hard to communicate with his peers. The inherent fast paced chat of the hyped up 11 year old moves way too fast for him, so he finds it tricky to establish easy friendships. He's moving into high school as a well liked kid, but one with few solid friends.

Earlier this year. off the back of a Fortnite/ My Hero Academia crossover, we started watching some classic animes, and came across a series based on the webtoon 'Komi can't communicate'.

credit:Netflix

Komi is a girl starting high school crippled with social anxiety. She finds it impossible to speak to anyone, but to other students she presents as aloof and impossibly cool, so they are, in turn, too frightened to talk to her. The series sees her embark on a mission to gain 100 friends, aided by a boy called Tadano (their awkward love plot arc would make Richard Curtis gag on his smashed avocado), and the other people in her class as she meets them.

Along the way, they discover that all the pupils at the high school are paralysed by fears and idiosyncracies that are at odds with their public personas. Being Japanese, the way those idiosyncracies are handled is slightly different from our western experience. Issues of sexuality, gender, bullying and academia are presented in a way that might be considered insensitive, and there's much less focus on inclusion and empowerment than we might be used to. The characters have a limited supply of empathy from their peers, so have to actively push agains their anxieties to move forward. Being a Japanese anime, it's also enthusiastically bizarre, which paints a much more realistic picture of our kids than we might like (btw, if you're considering letting your children watch this, it's rated PG, but there were a couple of eyebrow raising topics that needed explaining with 'dexterity').

My son resonated with this series much more than narratives where a protagonist's issues are absorbed and diluted by self empowerment platitudes, and this has been something that we've taken forward as we prepared him for big school.

Netflix being Netflix, my 'suggested for you' list soon filled up with Eastern dramas, and that's where we picked up "The Extraordinary Attorney Woo".

This series from South Korea tells the story of Woo Young-woo, an autistic, rookie attorney. Her neurodiversity puts her at odds with her peers and clients, but also becomes a formidable skill, as her ability to memorise and connect data gets pretty handy in court.

The literal translation of the Korean title is "The strange attorney Woo", which would set it against our concepts of inclusion and sensitivity, and autism is handled in line with the title.

It's a bit ham fisted in a 'Rain Man' kind of way, with Woo displaying every ASD trait in the playbook, and as with Komi, there's a limited supply of social empathy. However, actor Park Eun-bin sympathetically brings across the everyday hassles that neuro-diverse people have to navigate out of sight of the world at large, and re-enforces the fact that many people with autism (my son included) don't need platitudes, or self belief, they need pragmatic empathy, and an understanding that many small social and practical functions require deliberate consideration and effort.

The following clip managed, in under 2 minutes, to teach me this about my son, (and about opening bottles, which I didn't even realise was a thing in our house).

credit: Netflix K-content

In Komi and Woo, we see characters who have to both draw on their inherent attributes and adapt in order to make their way. They're looking to break past their challenges, rather than define themselves by them. Thinking about my son, I want the world to accomodate him, but I also want him to face the things he finds hard - either to push through them, or to convert them into valuable skills.

Hundreds of anxious kids are starting school this week, and hundreds upon hundreds of anxious parents are dealing with the break from 'on tap' chats with teachers. Suddenly, there's a forest of challenges ahead, and the volume of trees makes helicoptering and lawnmowering impossible.

Taking lessons from Komi and Woo, we sent our son off with 3 words of advice: Listen, Ask, Talk. They might not be enough, but he'll figure out the rest. I'm anxious for him, but also excited, and a little annoyed that he looks way cooler in his uniform than I ever did.

“First homework of the term: K-Drama and Anime.”

“I am a pig, and as a pig, I have always stood out.”

“As coin use declines, so do our values”