Interests and guidance

As my children with autism start becoming young adults, it has been important for us to foster their interests and guide them towards their future.

This can be extremely difficult if you don’t know exactly what your child wants to do. When our children were younger, we tried to expose them to as many activities as possible so that we could see where they tended to excel and where they were the happiest. Honestly, this took a very long time. There was gymnastics, hockey, art, girl guides, scouts, youth group, soccer — the list goes on and on.

Some of these were successful and some were not. But it opened our eyes as to how to help guide our children into future possibilities. One thing we discovered through all of these activities was that neither one of our children liked being on a team — both had different reasons. Our daughter didn’t like having people depend on her to win and our son just didn’t care if he won or not because he just wanted to have fun.

They both more or less liked being alone which is very typical for people with autism.

With some guidance, we discovered that both of our children are very artistic but in different ways. Our daughter ended up going to a high school for visual arts and is currently studying graphic arts at University. She discovered her passion through many of the activities that she took and we helped her figure out what she wanted to do. She is not only an incredible artist, but she makes jewellery, paints, sews — so many creative things.

It took our son some time to figure out what he really enjoyed and through discovery we found that he gravitated to more than one thing. He really likes building things with his hands so he has taken a few shop classes in high school in which he has built some really amazing things and he also really enjoys photography. During covid, he took some on-line photography classes and actually won himself a professional camera and hasn’t looked back! He loves getting out there with his camera and his phone. Since he started with this interest, I have personally taken an interest in this as well and this is now something that we really enjoy doing together.

This summer I have helped him begin to set up his photography business that he can hopefully make some money from it as a part-time job. He enjoys taking the photos more than actually making the merchandise, but he has become quite good at doing both. Even if this doesn’t turn out to be a career, its a way that he can express himself and hopefully make a little money doing it.

I think as parents, we are proud of our children for the progress they have made and we will continue to guide and support and help them into the future!