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Oh, p.s. my son graduated college with a B.S. in Computer Science in Real Time Interactive Simulation with a minor in Mathematics and now works full-time at Microsoft. He is still very much prepared for disasters, including zombie attacks.
Some autistic students stay with the same intense interest for a long time, while some change their interests over time, or, morph them, or, even have many interests going at once! As with anything, autistic people are individual first, of course.
That said, for sure there are many ways to leverage an intense interest or obsession into a career. Sometimes it’s straightforward – if a person loves history and knows everything about it, perhaps becoming a history professor is up their alley!
As for autistic scientists, for sure intense interests can be harnessed to work towards future careers. When my own son was in 10th grade, we lived in Southern California, and he experienced the first large earthquake that he could remember. He became extremely interested in disaster preparedness, via Zombie preparedness. Every essay he wrote, every class discussion he had, revolved around zombies. He even wrote his college entrance essays around this topic! I worked hard to advocate for this to be allowed, accepted, celebrated, and, in fact, in his high school year book, one student wrote that it was the highlight of his year to hear my son talk about zombies in every class. (My son was valedictorian, but that is another story.)
All that to say – be creative, and be sure to allow the intense interests, WHILE incorporating them into things that students need to do.
This is Sara Sanders Gardner, not Arianne, but I saw your post and wanted to jump in with some thoughts. I hope you (and Arianne) don’t mind!
What you’ve described is how some video games work – the characters respond based on how the player chooses. As an autistic person myself, I’m not sure how well that would teach someone how to respond in a real situation. Using skills across settings is our most difficult task, and this wouldn’t prepare us for that.
Something that I have found to be immeasurably useful, though, is using Collaborative Problem Solving, which is researched based to increase Cognitive Flexibility, Frustration Tolerance and Problem-Solving skills across settings. It has recently been shown to also improve Executive Functioning Skills. I have personally used it for 17 years, and have taught thousands of families to use it as well. I currently use it in the college setting, teaching peer mentors to use it with autistic college students.
To prepare your autistic student for life on their own, I would highly recommend learning and using Collaborative Problem Solving as much as possible, and getting everyone in your student’s life to do it as well, as much as is reasonably possible. You can learn about it at http://www.thinkkids.org or read about it in Stuart Ablon’s book “Changeable: How Collaborative Problem Solving Changes Lives at Home, at School, and at Work.”
(I also used it with my now 28-year-old autistic son who recently purchased his own home and is living by himself, cooking, cleaning, getting to work, and doing all the things one does. Including holding down a full-time job.)
Hi, I’m the author, and I’m autistic. As others have stated here, I’m proud to be autistic, a long with the many other positive qualities that define me. It’s just that in this particular article, I was writing about autism and not my race, gender, or other defining characteristics. I understand that it’s jarring to hear it when you have learned that person-first language is more respectful, however, many of us feel disrespected and discounted by person-first language and we ask that others please respect the way we choose to refer to ourselves.