I'm at home now and while I'm identified as officially retired, I'm really working as the main care giver to my husband who has dementia - it is NOT a job I would recommend - but it's the one that needs doing now, and it's mine. Fortunately, the financial situation is sufficient for us to live with a comfortable simplicity - a fact for which I'm most grateful. Since his condition is degenerative, I do have to to do a fair amount of management of his life and I'll be having to manage other helpers as time goes on...and management of other people is one area that I have never liked at all.
I've had a lot of different jobs over my lifetime and some of them were much better than others. Reading through this thread confirms that most of my favorites when I was younger were typical Aspie positions...the only one I ever got fired from involved commission sales (I never made one!) - It wasn't until I was in my thirties that I discovered what I was most suited to...And aside from being a mother, which I liked very much, I gravitated towards task oriented positions that allowed me to solve problems and/or create things. I liked things to be structured, but without too much repetition - If it was too repetitive or lacked any creative spark, Once I mastered the tasks, it often became boring and I would quit...this would take about a year.
I liked being a groundskeeper for a city park system, it was very physical and I was able to work outside and experience the growing natural world...but I hated being around the chemicals and fertilizers. When I got pregnant, and had a miscarriage after being accidentally sprayed with insecticide, they sidelined me so badly in my duties that I 'got the message' and quit. Then I did get pregnant again and quite happily was a full time mom for several years. Later, when the kids went to school, I returned to work.
One of my favorite early jobs was as a proofreader, I got to read and I liked the precision of making sure everything lined up just so. Determining that all the fonts were sized and placed correctly was very satisfying. I also liked being a dental technician (mainly because it allowed me to be simultaneously ultra precise and to create unique items within a strict set of technical parameters) Dental tech however, began to change in the 1990's and become dominated by profit driven large labs whose purpose is to make money rather than create prostheses that improved people's lives.
Anyway, after I developed carpal tunnel syndrome, a very common malady in middle aged dental technicians - I got a job as an aide and an art teacher in my daughter's school - and that turned out to be one of the best jobs of my life. I learned about myself, about autism, realized and identified myself as being on the spectrum and got diagnosed as well...it really helped me to 'grow into myself' - which is pretty good, considering that I was in my fifties! I also found that I had something to give back to the educational community, and was able to help a lot of kids who were a lot like I'd been as a child...and I hope that I made their school lives a bit better than mine had been. It was a great school that had a pretty enlightened approach to education and the principal gave me a lot of creative latitude to work with a variety of students.
Because I could really identify with a lot of what the so called 'disabled' kids were experiencing, I communicated well with most of them and became sort of a bridge person for some of the most NT teachers...they were happy to have me working with kids that they just could not 'get'... I think if I did anything, it was show how 'successful' one could be as a teacher by respecting the student as a person first, listening and looking to find the child's style of communication and only then figuring out what could or should come next. I'd always try to find out what their special interests were before I ever tried to teach' something...and the best times were when I'd work within the context of that interest.
I was never big on demanding things like eye contact from kids who were on the spectrum. For some peculiar reason this is one of the big measuring things in the NT 'social curriculum' for kids with autism..but I was pretty good at explaining little 'eye contact' tricks to them like the rapid sliding glance, or focusing on the forehead or other nearby facial spots. I'd commiserate with them about how some folks needed people to be a certain way, and how to deal with bullies - Also the school had a pretty good NT program teaching the NT kids how to properly respect kids who were different than themselves.
I'd also defend kids who did not want to perform socially at recess...Instead of playing ball or some social game, a lot of spectrum kids needed social downtime after the intense interactions of class, and the NT teachers and aides were utterly mystified by the 'sorry behavior' of those who did not want to play games. Kids on the spectrum often preferred to sit and read, or focus on the ants on the fence or become involved in some other solitary observation like stimming in the sand box by running one's fingers through the sand for the fifteen minutes until the bell rang, and I was adamant that this was a good thing and helped the child to center and calm down. Sitting down and mirroring that stimming behavior was the way I made the first 'breakthrough' with one little boy who was on the verge of being sent away to another school because they could not figure out how to contact him. Ours was a school that did mainstreaming with aides in the classroom and most of the aides were young NT college students doing the ABA by the book thing... The NT ABA teachers never realized how subversive I was, they even thought I was incredibly successful and talented when some of the mostly non-verbal kids who avoided most social contact would voluntarily rush up to me on the play ground and greet me by name, or do something else 'remarkable'. The kids would giggle and hand flap and I'd smile back and say good morning. Their personal aide would demand proper eye contact or whatever the goal of the moment was, and that the child say something appropriately social...but I'd say - 'oh that's okay, this is recess right now, where we get to do what we like.' In later years, one student told me that early on in his time at the school, he figured out that I was 'safe' and his first grown up teacher friend, simply because I liked him just the way he was. It really confirmed that for him, my approach was the right one, instead of all the charts and demands and measuring of milestones to make him like everyone else and 'normal'...I let him go at his pace and that I really knew that he was destined to be his own very best self.
Anyway, those are some of the jobs I've had...and the good ones were those that helped me develop insight and understanding of who I really am, and the courage to become that person. The best ones were where I could give some of it back.
21 Sep 2016, 7:23 pm
