'I'm not always going to be there to tell him he's going the wrong way'

The way Debbie Doyle saw it, she had no choice. Her son, Michael , is 20 now, a freshman at Bay State College hungry for his independence. And so she let him do it: After dropping him off at school , she let him wander off in the wrong direction.

"I didn't stop him," Debbie Doyle said. "This was one of the things we had worked on with him. . . . I'm not always going to be there to tell him he's going the wrong way."

Making the transition from adolescence to adulthood is difficult under the best of circumstances. But it's especially challenging for people like Michael Doyle, a Somerville High School graduate who suffers from a daunting variety of conditions: hydrocephalus, an abnormal buildup of fluid in the brain; moyamoya , a rare, progressive cerebrovascular disorder; and a nonverbal learning disability.

In response to the difficulties that Doyle and many others face, Children's Hospital Boston recently launched a five-year project that will focus on children with disabilities, identifying ways to ease this transition into adulthood and increase their access to recreational activities and better health care.

The project, made possible by a $4 million grant from the US Department of Education, is the first such program in the nation, according to hospital officials . Dr. Laurie Glader , one of the doctors participating in the project, said the study is long overdue.

"I think there has been tremendous progress over the last couple of decades. Things are very, very different than they were in the 1950s where there was a tendency toward institutionalization," said Glader, the medical director of the cerebral palsy program at Children's Hospital. "However, there are barriers that still exist. There is a need to go further."

Decades ago, researchers said, little was expected of most children with disabilities and complex medical needs. Even just 20 years ago, someone like Michael Doyle would not have been considered capable of going to college, said Bill Kiernan , director of the Institute for Community Inclusion at UMass-Boston.

"Primarily," Kiernan said, "people looked at them and said, 'We can't expect much from these guys.' Now we know we can."

But Dr. Judy Palfrey , chief of the division of general pediatrics at Children's Hospital, said knowing these children can do better isn't enough. Statistics show they are still likely to lag behind their peers in both employment and education. A US Census report released in May found people without disabilities graduated from college at almost double the rate of those with severe disabilities and were four times less likely to live in poverty.

Given these disparities, Palfrey said, it's important that doctors identify children with disabilities early, especially children in low-income homes. One piece of the Children's Hospital study will focus on doing just that. Another will follow 120 Boston-area youths, teamed with mentors, participating in inclusive recreation programs at local YMCAs, and a third project will seek to identify resources that will help children with disabilities go to college and find work like their peers.

"It's hard enough for anyone to make the transition from high school to college," said Palfrey. "But it's particularly difficult for young people with disabilities and special needs."

The Doyle family in Somerville knows all about that. Debbie and John Doyle have two children with disabilities: Michael and his sister, Krista , 12, who suffers from cerebral palsy, a seizure disorder, and microcephaly, a neurological disorder in which the brain fails to grow to normal size.

Over the years, Debbie Doyle said, they have struggled to find activities for their children. Krista cannot talk and or go to the bathroom on her own. Michael gets lost easily, struggles with balance and eye-hand coordination, and has to spend at least twice the amount of time as his peers do on basic homework assignments.

That made just graduating from high school a challenge, Michael Doyle conceded recently. And life isn't any easier for him now that he's a freshman in college.

Just weeks after starting school, he had surgery to have an artery inside his brain moved -- a complication of the moyamoya, a narrowing of the brain's major blood vessels. He returned to his dorm two weeks later, scrambling to make up the work that he missed and bearing a large semi-circle-shaped scar on his forehead.

"I think my dad was initially worried about what people were going to say," said Doyle. "They were looking back at what happened in high school, when I was made fun of. They were worried, and I respect that."

But Doyle, who wants to study early-childhood education, said his classmates have been good to him. They made him feel comfortable enough that soon he removed the baseball cap he had used to hide the scar.

Daily living is still a struggle for him. Even something as simple as clipping his own fingernails can pose a problem. But Doyle, who will be consulting with Children's Hospital researchers on their study, said he's happy to be just another kid at college.

"I love it," he said. "We're in the middle of everything. I like the independence. I like living on my own."