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In my last post, I wrote about the importance of figuring out where a teen or child’s interests and strengths lay. Mentors can help figure out how to turn an interest into a job, or into a means to earn money.
Temple Grandin (Thinking in Pictures; Developing Talents) speaks often about the importance of mentors in helping to turn interests into marketable skills. That is what helped her become the success she is today. Temple had mentors: her science teacher at school, her aunt, family friends, colleagues who were crucial to her success. If your child appears to have skills or a real interest in a specific area, someone who works in that field can help the child realize the application of his interests. Parents may realize their child’s talent, but not know all about a certain employment area.
For example, a child may enjoy spending hours on the computer, but his parent who is a taxi driver or a school teacher or an attorney, may not know anything about the field of computers, and employment possibilities. Someone who works in computers—perhaps a tech guy the family knows—can give insight to what is applicable to someone with that child’s talents.
Mentors can also help a student feel valued as that person will be interested in the same topic he is and will enjoy hearing what the child has to say, whereas family members may be tired of hearing about a topic they have no interest in.
In my son's situation (Jeremy, now 27) we discovered only four years ago that he was having dreams that he was painting colorful abstract portraits of people around him. Turns out Jeremy has synesthesia—he sees letters, numbers and people's emotions as color. We encouraged him to start painting, so he did and he loved doing it. Since then he decided he wants painting to be his career. I have had to find mentors to explain to me how to put on an art show, how to find galleries, how to get clients and many more aspects of the business end of painting. As well, Jeremy needed some artists as mentors to explain about different surfaces to paint on (wood v.s. canvas) and how to create the images of what he sees in his dreams. It is definitely time consuming at this point to learn all that needs to be learned, but bit by bit it is getting easier.
Different Employment Structures
There are different employment structures currently available and by analyzing a person’s strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, and by asking some of the questions above, a clearer idea of what could be a good match with the person on the spectrum is possible. There is full-time work, part-time employment, seasonal work, year round employment and so on.
Other less traditional structures are becoming more popular, and this is probably in response to the realization that most adults with disabilities are unemployed. We need to do a better job of preparing our students for employment, but we also have to start looking at other employment structures more conducive to individual employee needs.
One less traditional structure is customized employment, which means that the work is tailored to the individual, not the other way around. It can mean job carving, where one job is carved up into different tasks and shared by several people, giving each employee the part of the job they enjoy or excel at the most. Another type of customized employment is self-employment, which is sometimes referred to as micro-enterprise and which basically means having your own business or being self-employed. This can be a good option for those who are having a difficult time fitting into regular paid positions, or when there is no position available.
