Employment

   How do you motivate a child with Asperger Syndrome or autism?  

   I saw a nice feature in the paper this morning about Autism Awareness Month.  Of course, in our family, every month is Autism Awareness Month.  Every day is Autism Awareness Day.  Every minute is...you get the idea.

   We’ve seen a lot of progress since our son was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome in 1997.  Especially in the way the media is increasingly portraying people with autism spectrum disorders as people and not aliens.

What’s your child with Asperger Syndrome going to do for a living?

Too early to start thinking about that? Really, it's not. While your ten year old or teenager doesn’t have to immediately choose a career, he’s much more likely to find and keep a job when the time comes if you start preparing him in two important ways.

It was the dead of winter in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.  In the gathering darkness, Julie and I got off the snow-plowed highway and walked carefully across the icy restaurant parking lot toward our dinner break.

“How are you tonight?”

“We’re great. How are you?”

That’s when our waiter, in the midst of the clatter and chatter of the dining room, went off-script.  He smiled wryly and said, “Living the dream.”

So, what do you do?

It’s one of the first questions one adult asks another when they meet.  What do you do for a living?  What’s your job?

Many students with special needs may have trouble seeing themselves as employees or understanding an employer's expectations of an employee.

We’d do anything for our kids with Asperger Syndrome.

Is that always a good thing?  Hmmmmmm.  Hard to say.