'ASD children are very employable'

Today, even a child with speical needs can make a career for himself. There are many who are serving as professors, scientists, swimmers, accountants and musicians. The success lies in finding the right activity for such people so that they become skilled and dedicated employees

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is an umbrella term. It impacts a child’s social skills, communication and language skills and rigidity of thinking. The level of difficulty differs in each child and many children with mild ASD may have average to above average intelligence.

There are certain traits of a child with ASD which can be beneficial at the workplace:

• Ability to focus on one task at hand (if of interest) for a long period of time without getting distracted.
• Ability to continue doing the same repetitive task without getting bored once he has mastered the task.
• As many do not perceive the world in a normal way due to their sensory difficulties or thought processes, they might have a more creative side than regular people who are able to think out of the box.
• Many children with ASD may have a very strong competitive spirit and would not like to lose.

The key to successful employment for many individuals with Autism is in seeking career choices that suit their specialised interests, choices and strengths. Many children with ASD tend to focus on a very narrow field of interests and, in many instances, can be developed into very successful careerists. The skills can be uneven in children with Autism but the skills related to their individual interests tend to be very strong, often well above average.

Children with Autism can be either visual learners or non visual learners. Also, the children will be either high or low functioning and will have very poor short term memory but very often they have a better long term memory in comparison to many normal people.

The career a child with Autism/Asperger’s chooses should be such that it puts very little demand on fast processing of information in short term working memory. There are certain pointers which we should remember while choosing the work: The goals/endpoint of the work should be well defined and the organisation should also recognise the social limitations

Children who are visual thinkers will do very well in jobs like computer programming, commercial art, photography, video games designing, animation, web page designing, etc. ‘Visual’ children can even excel in sports like swimming or marathon running where the goal is predefined and the child has to compete with other athletes by looking at their individual positions visually. Children who are ‘non-visual’ thinkers would fare well in accounting, computer programming, physicists or mathematician, engineering, etc.

There are few children in ASD who are non verbal or have poor verbal/communication skills as well. They can be employed in an environment which is very quite so that the loud noise do not trouble them. They can be employed in a library reshelving the library books, data entry operator (child should not have fine motor problems), sorting goods in a factory or a retail shop or a warehouse, lawn and garden work, working as a conservationist in a forest sanctuary, or do a repetitive job of peeling or chopping in kitchen of a hotel or can be useful in housekeeping department.

Since children with Autism Spectrum have a wide variety of skill levels and functions, no one career or employment can be singled out as the best for a child to pursue. Individuals with Aspergers or who are high functioning ASD are quite likely to have more options available compared to children with more severe form of ASD. However, a large number of individuals at all points of ASD are very employable making them exceptionally skilled and dedicated employees.