⏺️🎙️ Addressing Workplace Challenges For Teens & Young Adults

Autistic individuals often encounter challenges in the workplace, such as frequent career changes and difficulties with workplace relationships. Many autistic teens experience job loss or switch jobs frequently, which can be incredibly frustrating for those seeking financial independence.

But why do so many autistic people face these obstacles, and can anything be done to overcome them? The answer is “yes”!

In this Masterclass, Stacy Badon will explore these challenges and provide practical solutions to support families.

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Transcript

We are here today to talk about addressing workplace challenges. And I know that everyone is  really looking for resources on how to navigate autism after our kids are little, right? We forget about the teens and the adults. So we have to make sure that we are giving everyone suggestions and guidance, but also support, right?

Because our role as parents is to help our  go into the world and be who they're supposed to be and take care of themselves in whatever way that looks like. So workplace challenges is a big topic when it comes to teens and adults and it is because we grow up, we are supposed to go to work and many autistic individuals have talents, skills, degrees, experience but the workplace challenge is what limits their Success in the workplace.

And so we're going to talk about how we can make things a little bit better for autistic individuals, and it starts at home. So a little teeny bit about who I am. I'm an educator. I am very fortunate to have been able to start my own micro virtual school and I teach autistic kiddos around the globe online.

I am a former speech therapist. I used to work in the public schools in Southeast Louisiana. I am an advocate, which I feel like most of us should be advocates. You don't have to have the title or the career or the training to advocate for individuals, specifically individuals with a disability.

And I do a lot of volunteer work in the autistic community. I am a sensory enrichment therapist. I am fortunate enough to co host a podcast with an amazing autistic individual in New York City. I am a mom of two boys and a grandparent of two little girls. And I am a friend and colleague to some of the most amazing autistic human beings, little and adult. 

Many of my students have parents that are autistic as well. And I've been with Autism 360 since the very beginning. And so today we are here. Oh, I don't know if you all just really quick. I don't know if this will go back. Let's see. So one of the things that I to give in terms of who I am is I am that person that is going to fight for the shifting of the narrative around autistic individuals.

And one of the things that I always say is coloring is not enjoyed by every child. Why are we working on coloring and coloring outside the lines is not a bad thing. That actually leads into job skill qualifications, like autistic individuals have so much to offer because they might color outside the lines or not stay within the lines.

Coloring is not a necessary developmental skill.  And I think that it's important for us to understand some skills we focus on because we think it's important because every other kiddo does it. is not necessary for work, right? We want our children to have skills and grow up to be able to provide for themselves.

And the level of provision varies for everyone, not just autistic individuals. So we are going to explore those challenges and I will provide you with some practical solutions to support yourself if you are autistic or the autistic individual in your life. Keep in mind that the information I will provide is general information not necessarily specifically tailored.

However, the I feel like the general information is a great guideline and it's going to give you the ability to think about, huh, I never thought about that. And then you can decide, do I need to get support to tailor that specifically for my loved one, my individual, my child who is autistic, and I think that will be some information we'll provide you with later on how you can do that, but let's get into the good stuff. 

All right.  So I wanted to start with this slide because socialization and autism in the workplace is probably  the one like top three situations that  cause So I wanted to Dilemmas, right? That can be challenging, that often cause autistic individuals to be fired or to quit because of burnout, right?

And that's that  needing to retreat and regather energy after a conversation  can be something that is misunderstood in the workplace.  It can be looked at as not being a team player, not wanting to hang out with co workers, which  Hanging out with your coworkers is not part of your job. Your job is to do your job. 

However, there's a little bit of a workplace sort of socializing, right?  So that can be difficult when the autistic individual doesn't necessarily have a place to retreat to when they need to regather their energy after a conversation or a team meeting.  Another one is picking up on tones. Sometimes the tones may be perceived, remember it's all about perception, and all of us perceive things in a different way.

We can all go into a movie theater and we can watch and listen and some of us will perceive it as scary. Some of us will perceive it as loud.  Some of us will perceive it as boring, right? How we perceive things is our reality. So if an autistic individual feels like someone in the workplace is using a harsh tone, then that can be problematic if that's not the intention of the person who was speaking to them.

And this is why Open communication is so important. Difficulty with facial expressions, can be a little tricky, but in the workplace, I feel like it shouldn't have to be, you shouldn't have to read facial expressions. Your workplace should be very clear. It should be very,  The expectations should be clear and communication should be effective, but sometimes it's not, and so reading facial expressions can be a little tricky.

Another thing that a lot of my autistic friends will say is they overthink, I overthink, oh my gosh, I overthink everything and when I overthink,  then people get frustrated, people think that I'm not responding to them because I'm thinking,  and so that can get a little bit it can lead to a little tension, right?

Because The non autistic colleagues are interpreting it differently when the autistic person is just thinking all of the options or whatever they're thinking.  Sarcasm and jokes, we all know, and if you don't know I'm here to tell you that autistic individuals are very literal thinkers. And the goal is not to make someone not literal.

Right? That's not the goal. Everyone has a different way of processing information, autistic, non autistic, but one of the commonalities with autistic individuals is everything is taken literally. And so when you're in the workplace and someone communicates a task or communicates something and they may be saying a joke or maybe they're wanting you to read between the lines,  that can cause confusion.

Some problems and challenges in the workplace. Because if the person speaking to the autistic individual does not realize that they are taking everything literally, then there's going to be a miscommunication. And the last one I put here is one that  You know, I wait for the day when I don't ever have to talk about this again.

But avoiding eye contact is something autistic individuals do because it is uncomfortable. They cannot process facial expressions, look at you, and auditorily process. So we need to move away from that demand for eye contact. It is not necessary.  All right.  So some more of the challenges I wanted to break down before I get into the practical solutions.

And some of you may not even be aware of this, hopefully some of you are parents of children that are emerging teens or teens going into the adult world and you're getting this insight just in time to help them and guide them. So it's good to be able to prepare and be proactive around how does autism affect a person's ability to work?

And what I will say is this,  I believe every human being on this planet has something to offer, right? We just have to be willing to look for what it is that person has to offer. And sometimes it looks different than the traditional way of work, right? So thinking in terms of the workplace and structure, Autistic individuals need to have the structure, knowing what to expect.

That's why we use visual supports, visual schedules. They need to know what the routine is, when is this task done, when is this task completed. If you're thinking about the workplace, and these things are not laid out in a structured way, with clear communication, it's really difficult for an autistic, I don't know what to do with this arrow, I do apologize. 

An autistic individual. Will have difficulty staying organized if things aren't communicated to them or managing their time and keeping track of task is something that they need to have systems in place in order to do that. But if they're not getting the information. from co workers in a timely manner, then that's really difficult.

The other part is just in terms of understanding the executive functioning for neurodivergent individuals can be a little glitchy, right? And so staying organized managing time and keeping track of tasks can be a little difficult, but guess what? If we put supports in place, if we know the individual and we know what supports they need. 

Then it's a win. Then they can go into the workplace and they can participate. Socialization. We already talked a little bit about that one and broke it down. But it is that struggle with working as a team player. And, I remember An autistic friend of mine explained it to me in terms of, it's not that I don't want to work as a team.

It's the fact that working as a team, like when we're brainstorming at the table, I can't process when everyone's throwing out ideas, right? When people are just saying things and there's different tones I have to process and no one's writing it on the board, it's difficult for me. So I prefer to do projects where I work alone.

Because that's a lot of hard work. So it's not about not wanting to be a team player. It's really knowing what works for them and choosing the tasks that are less challenging. No, that's not laziness. That's human instinct, right? Or what can I be better at, right? What can I do? I can do independent tests.

Working as a team is okay, but there's a lot of work that I have to do to be able to regulate and communicate. And so maybe I don't feel that I'm as effective communicating effectively to solve problems, generating ideas with coworkers. This is where the concept of remembering that autistic individuals communicate and socialize differently.

not bad, not wrong, differently. It is no different than I will give an example. I am currently in Mexico, and Mexico has a different way of communicating. Their communication culture is different than the one that I grew up in, and so I have to make adjustments to understand and communicate with people that live here.

or I'm not going to have any effective communication. I have to understand their tones are different and I have to realize that in the states I may perceive that as harsh. But that's just the way it's communicated in Mexico, where I live, not all of Mexico. So I'm giving this example just to help you understand that an autistic individual may be very blunt in the workplace.

They may communicate in short, quick sentences and then walk away without saying, I'm leaving. That can cause challenges if this is not known or understood by the other co workers, right? It can cause challenges.  The other one is the big sensory flag, right?  School is overwhelming. Workplace is just as overwhelming.

Sensory overload in the workplace does occur, especially when supports are not in place. And this is why one of the strategies that we will talk about is knowing how to advocate for what you need. You certainly cannot be an autistic individual and just walk into a job without understanding what works for you.

That's so key to understanding what you need what you do well and what works for you and what supports you need so that you can avoid sensory overload. A really good example is requesting that your desk, not be  where there's a window and people are passing by, or requesting that you can have a soft light and not have to work under fluorescent lights, or requesting that you can have a fan at your desk so that you can regulate the temperature if things are not regulated within your interoceptive system, right?

So these are things that the autistic individual needs to be aware of so that the sensory challenges in the workplace can not be an impact or a significant impact.  The last one that I wanted to mention is that mono tropism, right? And I don't know if you all had a chance to watch the webinar that I did previously on mono tropism.

If not, it is on the TI Autism 360 app. But mono tropism is that sort of flow of energy onto a task, right? And it also impacts executive functioning. It appears. So I will give you a scenario. Let's say that an autistic individual is in the workplace and they have a task to complete and they start the task because their executive functioning is ready.

They're on it. Everything's all aligned. Their sensory is regular. Their sensory system is regulated. So they start a task and they're working on the task. And then a coworker sends an email and the coworker sends an email that needs an immediate response.  The autistic individual is not going to notice that email.

They're not going to pay attention and attend to the ding, right? That says urgent, or just an email. They're going to stay in the workflow. They're going to stay in the workflow. So this is misinterpreted by someone that you're not communicating. You're not doing your job. You're not responding to me when I need it,  but they're working.

They're in their monotropic state. They're getting their task done. This needs to be communicated, talked about, and it needs to be understood by the colleagues and the employer. Because they're working, they just can't stop the flow because they need to complete the task. It's the same with our kiddos.

All right.  So I want to get into a little bit of what we can do, right? How can we prep to avoid some of these challenges?  So one of the things that I think it's important to think about is It's career exploration. And when I say career exploration that doesn't mean a commitment to going to med school.

It doesn't mean a teen or young adult has to decide what they want to do for the rest of their lives. It means looking at your teen, young adult, or even preteen, and they want to get a job All the other kids get a job at 16 and buy jeans or go to the movies or I don't really know what teens are doing these days with their money.

However,  teens sometimes want autonomy over spending so they want to get a job when they are of age. Exploring that career, that job, that entry level of going into the workforce is thinking about,  so what are you interested in?  All right, you're interested in this. What do you do well? Okay, you do that really well.

How can we take what you're interested in and what you do really well and prep you for getting a job or direct you towards choosing the right career path for college or for Like a trade school, right? And it starts with exploring what the individual is interested in. And what they're really good at, right?

That's how you get success.  The other is job shadowing. So for these, I'm going to give you some examples that you can think about how you can apply this to your individual scenario. Job shadowing is a scenario where let's say I have a 14 year old and they're looking forward to working when they're 16.

They really like animals. So what I will do is I will get them to volunteer at the animal shelter.  Or they can shadow a veterinarian, right? And see what does that really look like? What does a veterinarian do? It's one thing to say, Oh, I love animals. I want to be a veterinarian. Being a veterinarian is not just about loving animals.

It's about going to school for a long time. It's about knowing a lot of information. It's about really liking science, right? It's about running an organization, a business, right? As a veterinarian. So those things need to be explored. And the only way sometimes for our teens who push back to understand, Oh, I know that you love animals, but maybe veterinarian's not the career for you because they don't understand what it really is.

They can job shadow for a week for two days with a veterinarian,  and then they recognize, Maybe there's something else I could do with animals, right? The same with internships. And let me go back to that. It may not always be they find something else when they shadow. It may be that they find what they didn't know they could do with animals while shadowing the veterinarian, right?

Somebody is the person that bathes the animals when they are finished with surgery and gets them ready to go home.  That's a job, right? So we don't know about those jobs because we don't see behind the scenes, but if you job shadow because you love animals and you think you want to be a veterinarian and then you see all of the other support jobs within the veterinarian office, that can be a win as well.

Internships, right? This can be something like job shadowing, but internships are a little bit more of a commitment. And this is where, and I will talk about this a little bit more in the next slide, I think, where you want to use your community resources and your networking, right? Mentoring. 

Mentoring is something that I think we've forgotten about. I think that we are also into our own little technology segmented worlds. We go to work, we come home, we close the door, we get ready for bed, and that's what we do the next day over and over again. But mentoring is a great way for all individuals, but I think for autistic individuals, it's a great way to  Find out what you do well, so that you can explore your careers.

But also, when someone is mentoring an autistic individual, they're not just mentoring them for a job duty. They're mentoring them for communication within the job place, within the workplace. They're mentoring them for responsibility and accountability. So it's not just get a job. There's a lot that's involved in getting a job, keeping a job and being successful in your job.

It's not just about getting the job.  Work sampling is It's a strange little term, but it is something that I actually like to recommend to parents for kiddos who are into, let's say science, or they're really into technology. And I think it's great to sample a little bit of what some of those jobs can entail, right?

And that kind of intertwines a little bit with job shadowing and the mentor. But it's more of, Looking at videos of what jobs and are looking at videos of what careers and job folks do in terms of what does a veterinarian do? What does a nurse do? What does a phlebotomist do? What does a weatherman do?

I have a student who loves the weather. He says he wants to be a weatherman. So we spoke to someone who was a weather forecaster and We looked at the job qualifications, and he thought, Huh, maybe I'll do something else in the weather, right? I don't want to be on TV, right? That's not what he wanted to do.

So looking at sort of samples of what jobs are, even if it is watching videos on the internet, or if you have a networking opportunity within your community to explore some of those things. So those are really good as well.  Apprenticeship. Apprenticeship is one of those things that I feel we need to really bring back.

And that is, apprenticeship is someone bringing  an individual, specifically an autistic individual, let's say that someone is really good at building, right? An architect can be an apprentice to help them with making models for the  presentation of a building that an architect has designed, and that apprenticeship can build a skill set for the autistic individual, and then they're going into the training college or the training school with a little bit of experience.

And that's really helpful. It's really helpful. I wish that, that our societies were not designed where you had to leave secondary school and decide what you want to do and go to college right away. I think there needs to be a little time of figuring out who you are and what you really want to do.

Some people know, some people don't.  All right. So  in reference to those things that I just spoke about. What you can do as the parent, as the friend, as the spouse of an autistic individual, either seeking their first job, looking at what they want to do as a career, or simply going into the workforce to be financially independent and get their own apartment, whatever it is their goals are,  use your network connections to provide access.

to opportunities for getting a job, right? Or any of those things I mentioned in the previous slide. Use your network connections, right? Within your church, within your workplace, within your family. That's what community is. It shouldn't be pick yourself up from your bootstraps and go out on your own and find it, right?

We're supposed to help one another. So networking within your community and giving your child opportunities, your teen opportunities to explore some of those job and career opportunities that are available. If you don't have that, if you don't have that now, then you need to build it.  Talk to folks. Go within your community that you if you go to the same coffee shop, if you go to the same laundromat, if you go to the same grocery store, that can be where you can build your support. 

You may not have that, right? Maybe you don't have that network of connections, but you go out into the world, you go to the same stores, you go to the same restaurants, that can be your support network, right? I had a student of mine who was going to college.  That they were prepping for college and they wanted to make money because they wanted to buy a motorized bicycle for college.

That's what they wanted. They wanted to transport themselves to class and they wanted to get a job to save the money and get it themselves.  So the parents were able to get the bookstore that they frequented because they were a reading family and the bookstore was able to give him a part time trial job and he ended up being successful and he was able to work and save money and then he worked at the bookstore when he was on semester break.

The places that you go, that's your community. That's where you can build that network support system. Getting a job, workplace success and career success for autistic individuals.  It doesn't start like when they get the job. It doesn't start when they're 18. It doesn't start when they become of working age, it starts. 

When they are getting to that transition of teen adult and prepping with your community network, trying things, figuring out what you don't like, figuring out what you do right? I remember I loved books, and I thought, I'm gonna work in a bookstore. I'm gonna work in a bookstore.  Then I realized, working in a bookstore does not give you an opportunity to sit and read books.

You're cleaning, you're organizing, you're checking people out. There's no reading of books. So I thought, I can't work at a bookstore because I want to read books. If I'm going to be around books, I'm going to want to read books. So I didn't go to work in a bookstore. I worked somewhere else because it wasn't what I thought it was going to be.

But I couldn't have known that unless I tried it out, unless I explored, unless I asked questions, which is why we need to build that set support network within our community. The other thing is  You know, we really have to encourage our autistic folks that are in our lives to want to go into the workplace.

We have to promote that opportunity and we also have to believe they can. I think a lot of times autistic individuals go into the teens or adult stage and they don't think that they can because no one's told them that they can.  Sometimes parents feel defeated. They feel like, oh, it's been a struggle when they were younger.

There's no way possible my child could ever work in the workplace. The workplace looks different. We live in a time where you can work from home. You can create your own business with the talent that you have. We have opportunities to  make an income in ways that we've never had before. So we need to encourage that.

We need to promote that. We need to support that as our children grow. And we need to encourage that with our teens and young adults who come up with ideas that we may think are crazy. What do you mean you're going to do that and make money?  Who knows? Some of the best ideas are the ideas that are outside the box.

There is an autistic 12 year old kiddo in the United States that makes money designing websites for businesses because he is a techie  and he asked his parents if he could make money doing it and his parents designed a little small business that they co own with him and that's what he does. It's what he likes to do.

That's it. He claims he's saving money for college, but I'm thinking he might not have to go to college because it already has a head start, right? Encouraging that, promoting that. Don't just say, oh, my child is non speaking, they can't. Yes, they can. Non speaking individuals work in the workplace. And  individuals who are intellectually delayed work in the workplace.

Everyone can. We just need to find out what they need to support themselves or what supports they need in order to have a productive adult life. All right, and of course I'm not speaking of, individuals. Some individuals have  medical situations as well where the workplace can be a little difficult, but there are so many opportunities.

These are times when we can get really creative about working. making your own money. There's something to be said about making your own money and autistic individuals want that pride as well. They want to have that autonomy of choice and where they spend their money. The other thing I think that is really important in terms of supporting the autistic individual is it's really important to talk about and decide on self disclosure. 

And I think it's a personal choice.  I think that autistic individuals, and this is not me thinking, I apologize, I will refrain that and say autistic individuals have told me that it's a personal choice. And there are some situations where you can divulge, Hi, I'm autistic, and these are my supports that I will need to do this job, but I know I can do it.

And here's my resume, right? Or some individuals will go and get a job, prove themselves, and then self disclose, right? What I will say is this, if you are any individual with a disability, even though it feels uncomfortable sometimes, even though it can be a tricky situation, and it is a risk, in order to get the supports you need, Something has to be divulged, right?

Or you have to be really good at advocating for what you need. Soft light, sensory needs, whatever it is. Because if you cannot request your supports, and it is misunderstood in the workplace, then it's hard to be successful. It's really hard. And you're not going to keep every job. That's just ridiculous to think that.

We don't lose jobs. We don't quit jobs, right? That's how we learn about ourselves, right? We take a job. We are like, I don't want to do that. Or we take a job and maybe it's just not fair. It doesn't pay enough, but we change jobs all the time. That's not anything unusual.  All right. So now I'm going to segue into  the career right in terms of  We have the job, teens working, we have young adults working, college is not something everybody wants, college is not something everybody needs, and school is not something everybody likes.

So some folks, autistic or not, but we're specifically talking about autistic individuals, may not want to go to school after they've gone to secondary school and graduated. So thinking in terms of a career is not dependent on  College education. A career is something that you build based on your strengths, your skill set.

And I think that for neurodivergent individuals, the discussion around finding the right career needs to be very specific.  You need to have something that is aligned with what you're interested in, right? You have to work within your interest because that motivation is going to increase job satisfaction.

And if you have job satisfaction, then you are more likely to push through challenges. You are more motivated to advocate for yourself because you really want to stay in that job. You are going to be successful because you're interested. It's important. Taking a job that you hate because everyone wants you to get a job or a career is not necessarily going to be It's really healthy mentally for a neurodivergent individual.

It's not usually healthy for non neurodivergent individuals, but with the fact that someone neurodivergent already has this battles of navigating a system and a world that's not designed for them, it is really important to find something that is aligned with their strengths, something they're interested in because it does increase job satisfaction.

It reduces stress, and if your stress is reduced, you're more productive and you're less likely to have a meltdown, and sensory overload will be a little bit easier to handle.  It also improves your performance. If you're doing something you enjoy, if you're doing something your brain is really good at, if you're doing something that challenges your brain in a strength area that you have been building on ever since you were a kid, your performance on your job is will build your career, and people will see that, and that will create opportunities for someone's career to grow in whatever direction that they're looking for. 

The other part is, it is really important for neurodivergent individuals to choose a career for their adult life that is going to provide work life balance. And this is important, I think, for most of us, but I think it is so important. Super important for a neurodivergent adult because autistic individuals need time to decompress from engaging.

They need time to regulate their sensory system. They need time to  reboot their social battery.  So if you work work, then there's no time for that, right? If you get a job that doesn't give you the work life balance, burnout occurs. Autistic burnout occurs. And when autistic burnout occurs, especially in adults,  it's shut down for a really long time.

And that means you can't go to work. It means you are really struggling to do simple daily tasks. And then that kind of derails that career path that you may have as an autistic individual. So it is important to know that balance and understand it. And I think it's important for parents to recognize that as well, that the expectation, it's not that you're expecting less.

You're expecting what works for that individual. It's really important. It really is important. All right. Thinking of career and getting something that you like and focusing on something that you're really good at, right?  That is where you want to shine as an autistic individual. Help your autistic teen young adult shine on their job application.

Let them know, I am neurodivergent and I can hyper focus on a task until it's done. So if you have something you need me to do, I can get it done. That's a benefit of being autistic. Pattern recognition. Oh my gosh, I can spot an error. I can be really good at editing. I will not miss a thing and I can hyper focus on it for long periods of time, right?

Because my brain is really good at it. These are the things that we need to point out when we're interviewing for a job. We're looking for an internship. We don't need to just focus on, oh, I need supports because I'm autistic.  That's part of it, but because I'm autistic, I can hyper focus. I have pattern recognition like you would not believe.

Oh, my creative thinking will offer this company. Or my creative thinking can build a business. My logical reasoning, right? I'm not going to waste time socializing at the water fountain. I'm going to put systematic things in place. I'm going to get the task done, right? It's about finding what benefits come from having a neurodivergent processing system in your brain, and how that can benefit an employer. 

Boast about yourself, right? Pull those things, especially if you are reviewing your diagnosis, right? Hey, listen, I am autistic, and I can do this. All right. The other one that I think is something that a couple of my autistic colleagues pointed out to me on several occasions is attention to detail and focused.

And this was in regards to me battling with trying to do Excel. Like my brain does not comprehend Excel. Love technology, can't get the Excel. But my autistic colleagues are on it, right? That attention to detail, that focus, that data entry. They're like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that's where they can contribute to something that I can't do, and then I can contribute to something that may be a challenge for them, and then we can work together. 

We need all kinds of minds in order to  be productive in the workplace, in order to have a business run efficiently,  or even something in terms of just managing you know, when I think of workplace, that includes household, right? Because  when you are an adult, you are managing your household. I know it's a little stretch, but it is important to recognize it's not just going to work.

We are working at home. It's just for different reasons and in a different way. So it's important for autistic individuals to not focus so much only on I'm autistic, and these are the supports I need, and these are the challenges I may have. But bring to the table the stuff that your child can do, the stuff that your teen can do when you're networking and talking.

You can bring to the table, a friend of mine said, listen,  I can be one of your best workers.  I  don't need to stop and socialize. I can hyper focus. I can complete a task and my interceptive system doesn't need a lot of food. I eat one meal a day. This is a story that a friend of mine told and that's how they promoted themselves for this job.

That was a very high pressure job that Certain times of the year they had a lot of things to get done. I think it was with money counting and taxes or something, but thinking in terms of when you go for any internship or job interview or any career that path that you have, where you have to interview for a college or a trade school or whatever it is, talk about the strengths of having an autistic processing system. 

That is a benefit to the workforce. Autistic individuals have a lot to offer. We just need to be open and understanding and knowing what those benefits are so that they can be successful, which is a benefit for all of us, right? Harnessing these traits opens doors to numerous career paths. For example, if pattern recognition is your forte, consider a career in data analyst. 

can uncover trends and insights that might be overlooked. And the great thing about a lot of these jobs where pattern recognition, data analyst medical billing, you can work from home. That cuts out the socialization part, right? Remember, we are in a time where there are so many ways to bring in income, legally.

All right.  If hyper focus is a strength you can thrive. Software developer, someone who creates Oh, my gosh. What do you call those advertising marketing, right? Like hyper focusing on that you're creative. You can hyper focus on it. You can tackle complex coding challenges, right? I always say that my little ones who love to line things up in a very specific about order.

Those are the kids that will probably grow up and if they can get a job and let's say a lab and analyzing DNA, they're going to find that pattern to cure that disease. Because they're going to hyper focus on it. They don't need to stop and talk about what they did over the weekend. They want to get the job done.

These are benefits. Stephen Shore is an autistic individual who does a lot of work  with companies helping them see the benefits of hiring an autistic individual. And this does not require all the time verbal communication skills. I think that's important to know. Just because a child uses an AAC device or a different way of communicating doesn't mean they can't work.

It's not nothing to do with that. Like we need to think about that. So the last thing I want to talk about before we get into a few questions is tips for finding the right job, considering what you want in a job. And when I think of this, I think of why do you want to go into the workplace as a teen or an adult?

Is it because you want money for spending? Is it because you want to save for something specific? Is it because you want to be independent and live outside of your parents house? What do you want from a job? You can't find the right job if you don't know why you want one, right? Research different companies.

Find out about disability hires. Find out about accommodations in companies. Some companies are much better at accommodating individuals with disabilities than other companies. So research that. Do the work before. Don't just jump into, oh this is what all the other teens are doing. Oh these are the only jobs that young adults can have.

There's so many jobs.  Also, I always think it's great to ask for recommendations. Talk to other autistic individuals. Hey, where did you work when you were in college? What's a good job? What's a good company? Ask. People have information and insight that can be very beneficial. We need to use our community to find out for ourselves.

What works and what doesn't work. We can't stay in a bubble. We have to get out of that bubble. We have to network. We have to network. The other thing is give it time. This is one of those things where sometimes having an autistic teen or young adult, we feel like, Oh my gosh, they can't seem to find a job, right?

Oh, it's because they're autistic. No, there are non autistic teens and young adults. Trying to find the right job.  If the job doesn't work out, it's a learning experience. You learn about yourself. That is the purpose of your teen and young adult years. To figure out.  I figured out very early. I am not an early morning worker.

I cannot take a job where you have to get up early in the morning. I am not going to be the best employee.  Yeah, I guess I could make myself, but I'm not. So I don't take those jobs. I don't look for those jobs. They don't work for me, right? And I learned that by taking a job that I had to get to at 4 a.

m. in the morning. So that didn't work out. That doesn't mean it's the end of the world. It doesn't mean I can never work. It doesn't mean I'm a poor worker. It means that was not the right job for me.  We get jobs when we're young, we lose jobs, we change jobs, we learn about ourselves. There will always be other opportunities, but you have to stay  within your network of community, right?

You have to get out there, you gotta get out there.  That's usually the hardest part, getting out there, talking to people. All right, so I've gone through all of that and I've given you some general information and Autism 360, I've been with them. Since the very beginning. And one of the things I appreciate is the fact that parents can get workshops like this masterclasses, webinars and you get information and you start thinking, but then how do I apply that to my kiddo?

How do I apply that to myself? And that's where autism 360 program can be really helpful. It's really great for parents to advocate, learning how to know what. job opportunities your kiddo can have, what companies, what to ask for, right? Advocating for yourself, your child is so important.

I cannot tell you how important that is, especially if you are trying to build career workplace independence. You have to know how to advocate for yourself. And I think that's one of the great things about the autism 360 program is that you learn how to advocate for the individual that is autistic, right?

And a lot of families have more than one child that's autistic. I have families where mom and dad are both autistic and both want to be in the workplace. And so it's a different approach. They have to advocate for different things. And that's the benefit of  Joining a program or getting some one on one coaching from someone because the generalized information is supposed to get you thinking, supposed to give you ideas, and then you have to fine tune how you can fit that into your specific situation.

If you are interested in learning more or exploring the app, I encourage you to get your phones and scan the QR. I have to say, every time I say scan a QR or I scan a QR it never ceases to amaze me where we've come in this world of technology, like this is what I'm talking about. There are so many job opportunities.

Somebody creates QR codes. They probably never leave their desk. They probably don't have to talk to anyone. More than likely, they might even be neurodivergent. It's a great job. Somebody does this.  There are ways to be independent and work