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THE ONLY DREAM I HAD for my son was that he’d get a job. To most parents, this probably seems like small thinking. Why wasn’t I dreaming of him walking across the stage after earning his medical degree, or walking down the aisle with his new bride, or the joy of him holding his first child? Because that would not be his reality.
It took me a while to accept this. Based on my life, I always felt folks could overcome most obstacles if only they tried harder. I thought my son was no exception. All his mother and I had to do was guide him through his public education and it would all work out.
Well, that was not meant to be.
My wife and I are totally different people. To those readers whose spouse is always on the same page, God bless ya. My wife and I disagree more than we agree. Our saving grace is that we can make each other laugh. This is a blessing, especially when you’re raising a special needs child.
Every time I’d talk about his future career success in a 40-hour-a-week job, my wife would say, “You’re nuts.” She would tell me she sees him working maybe one or two days a week, with the balance of his time in adult daycare centers or volunteering in our town.
This was unacceptable to me. I wanted him to carry his weight in society. I wanted him to contribute to our community. To Republican readers out there, I’m sure this is how you’d like all citizens to live. I can’t disagree. But matters didn’t turn out as I wished for my son.
When he was in our public school system, he was exposed to many facets of education, as all students are. To the students who are destined to go on to college, academics are the focus. To those students who love to work with their hands, trade schools or technical high schools are available.
My son was shown different jobs that they thought he might be able to do. The list was not extensive. It merely consisted of those businesses that the school had connections with. This was referred to as “job sampling.” I thought this was the key to his success and future career. Surely, when employers saw my son in action, they’d jump at the chance to offer him a full-time job after he graduates from high school? That never happened.
There’s a book titled Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton. The premise is, we’re all given gifts and talents by God. If we apply training to these gifts, they will become our strengths. If we seek employment that utilizes these strengths, we will have successful careers.
To identify our gifts and talents, we simply need to notice what things come naturally to us. For those who like numbers, maybe a career as an accountant would work. For those who enjoy engaging with and convincing others, maybe a career in sales is the way to go.
In my son’s case, he obsesses over chairs that aren’t pushed into the table after you leave. I thought, “Who does this for a living?” I decided he should become a school janitor. With this new awareness, I asked the school to have my son work with the janitors as part of his job sampling. Made sense to me.
Unfortunately, my son’s skills as a janitor started and stopped with pushing chairs back into place. When you tell my son to wipe down a table, he does it. But for those who expect a thorough wiping, he doesn’t do it. Regardless of how many times you attempt to instruct him on the proper technique for wiping tables, it just doesn’t stick. A career as a janitor was off the table.
In speaking with his school’s job coaches, the one job that he did without prompting or continual instruction was when he worked at a local supermarket collecting shopping carts. His gift was he recognized when a shopping cart was not in its proper place—the shopping cart corral—just like when he saw when a chair wasn’t pushed in.
Eureka. I’d found the perfect job for him. It took us a while to get him that job, but we finally did with the help of Easterseals. Up to this point, he worked in an Easterseals workshop. The workshop paid him by the piece, which is less than minimum wage. These workshops are allowed to pay less than minimum wage because they get an exception from the Labor Department because they’re “employing” people who couldn’t work elsewhere.
The grocery store is considered “competitive employment,” since he would be competing against “typical” workers, not just “special needs” workers. Therefore, he’d be paid minimum wage, which would be far greater than his piecework pay. All looked good—until he started work.
He was good at collecting shopping carts. The problem occurred with the human resource rules—in particular, taking breaks and stopping for lunch. My son can read time, but he can’t measure time. He can read that it’s 3 p.m. But if you tell him we’re leaving in 15 minutes, it doesn’t mean anything to him. Moreover, the store changed his hours every day, so his break times weren’t always the same.
He had an older smart phone that his mother passed down to him. I set up the timer feature on the phone so an alarm would go off at the break times for that day. I gave him a three-by-five-inch index card for that day showing him when his break times and lunch time were. When the alarm went off, he could read the time and match it up to the card to know whether it was a break or lunch. That worked well, except he didn’t have to clock out for his breaks or to go to the bathroom, but he had to clock out for lunch. The problem: He’d forget to clock back in after lunch, thus losing his pay for that day, because it would appear he’d clocked out and left work.
My career dreams for my son came to an abrupt end when COVID-19 hit. His mother didn’t want him to work under these conditions. As much as I hated to see his job end, she was right. As the world quickly learned, people were dying from the virus.
He would never get his job back.
My son is hardly the first person to find it difficult to identify the right job. To those who struggle at work, does the position utilize your strengths? Just because you have the knowledge to do the job, are your gifts being used? Are you a doctor who should have been an artist or a fashion designer who should have been a librarian?
Working a job that isn’t right for you leads to a difficult life. My advice: Don’t swim upstream. Do who you are.
David Gartland was born and raised on Long Island, New York, and has lived in central New Jersey since 1987. He earned a bachelor’s degree in math from the State University of New York at Cortland and holds various professional insurance designations. Dave’s property and casualty insurance career with different companies lasted 42 years. He’s been married 36 years, and has a son with special needs. Dave has identified three areas of interest that he focuses on to enjoy retirement: exploring, learning and accomplishing. Pursuing any one of these leads to contentment. Check out Dave’s earlier articles.
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I have a special needs daughter. My only goals for her (hard to accept as someone who has a PhD) were her to get a high school diploma, graduate without being pregnant (yes I had her on birth control) and without a police record. Somehow all 3 were achieved. The problem then becomes the following 70 or so years and how to help her handle those, her 5 kids (failure of birth control as in failure to use it, now has had her tubes tied), can’t keep a job due to her issues and it takes 3 grandmas to keep all the balls in the air for her and her kids (no the fathers are not in the picture). There are no easy answers and the safety net in this country is inadequate for people who are not really capable of holding a job/earning a living (and some not at all) without significant assistance/oversight but are not disabled enough for social security disability (although most people getting that are still living in poverty).How do we plan for the help they need when we won’t live to 130 or so to oversee/work to mitigate this train wreck in slow motion with both our kid and our grandkids? This society (USA) is not well set up for that. And politics only complicate the situation.
I agree with David (up to a point). Yes, we Republican readers want all members of the society to contribute in a meaningful way with respect to their skills and knowledge. No, we don’t want a society full of lawyers either (my apology to those readers).
As Morgan Housel said, “… Almost no one knows what they want to do at that age (18)” Job sampling is a great way to expose to a young person who is clueless about a certain career.
I agree with the other commenters about the “Republican readers” line. Very disappointed to see this kind of divisive partisan rhetoric in Humble Dollar.
I did read the rest of the article, and Dave did a nice job of telling his son’s story and making an important point. But that line, coming early in the article, was such a turn-off that I almost stopped reading.
Agree. Please keep the partisan politics away from Humble Dollar!
Thanks for sharing. I have a special needs son as well and my dream for him is very similar to you. In some ways, my son is “high functioning” but in other ways, still needs a lot of guidance. He currently lives in a group home with a lot of oversight but is getting opportunities that may allow future work. Many may appreciate what you wrote today. I truly understand.
Nice article.Thanks for sharing.
The main point of the article is well-taken, and excellent advice for all young people, special needs or no. For my part, early on I so very much wanted to be a great (and professional) musician, and was unable to see that my goal was akin to a very short person wanting to play in the NBA. I ended up spending my work life in a lucrative but somewhat lonely career that didn’t really suit my unrecognized needs for camaraderie and deeper relationships (long story). Given that personal experience I recommend that young people do three things. First, take time to best ensure your path matches not only your passions, but your demonstrated abilities, i.e., don’t be a masochist while seeking a pie in the sky. Second, consider seeking a life / life’s work where you will engage with others in a common, meaningful purpose and earn the real riches in life, which are loving relationships. Last, keep your eyes and ears open for one or more great mentors who will help guide you. (Btw, there’s a great, now ended, series of podcasts called “The Oath” where mentorship is discussed a lot.)
Regarding Mr. Gartland’s “Republican” comment, maybe it was a little gratuitous, but I understand what he meant. Guess I won’t get started down that road, except to note to the other commenter that H. Clinton’s “deplorable” comment did not refer to half the country, but to half of Trump’s supporters, who, in my view have been busy proving her correct ever since. Her full remarks, which almost nobody seems to know about, were much kinder and more supportive of the remainder of Trump supporters.
Accuracy and context is important, especially these days, is it not?
Ah yes, so very kind of her to also say Trump supporters—a.k.a Republicans, were also racist, sexist and homophobics.
It seems clear that Mr. Gartland and I both made the error of touching the realm of political viewpoint online, which, outside of red or blue like-thinking silos, seems never to produce anything but ill will and less understanding rather than more.
That entire issue is a terrible shame, but nothing that can be solved here. I apologize if I exacerbated the matter and detracted from the primary subject of Mr. Gartland’s message.
Great article David. Thanks so much for sharing the very personal story that many of us can relate to. Makes one think and be grateful for life of ones we love.
Thank you for sharing your family’s story. I too have a son who thinks differently than most of us. He is in his 30’s, lives with my wife and I, and is a tremendous help to us as we age. He is high functioning and able to maintain a job. There have been many challenges for all of us over the years and I admit I was the source of many of them. It was only after I changed my way of thinking that I could appreciate those, like my son, who see the world differently than me. That is a gift. I hope you have received similar gifts. PS my wife has always been wiser about these things than me.
My husband and I are personally close to a widower who has not one, but two special needs sons. They are not as functional as your son seems to be. His wife died in an auto accident, leaving him the soul caregiver to their sons. He is a Republican.
My point is this… We all want the best for our children. Republicans or Democrats, we want to give them every opportunity to have a meaningful life given their disability.— And certainly don’t have unrealistic expectations of them.
The words” Republican readers” could have easily been replaced by “some readers”. republicans are not a different form of humans who are without sympathy, love and understanding for those, not as fortunate. your comments reminded me of a politician who called half the population of the country “deplorables”, among other things, simply because of their political leanings. This is the kind of rhetoric that has divided our country.
Viewpoint aside, I very much admire the encouragement you give your son to be everything he can be. My very best wishes to you and yours.
That’s why I turn to HD every day. Articles like yours David.
The service you both do for your community on your trash-collecting walks may not be noticed by many, but it makes our world a cleaner, more beautiful place. Thanks for your inspiring stories, in particular this one about finding and using one’s gifts.
One of the things I like about HD is the absence of political viewpoints. While I admire your commitment to your son, I did not appreciate your comment about Republican readers since it suggests you think Democrats are less likely want everyone to carry his or her own weight in our society.
What a lovely, meaningful article, and I couldn’t agree more with your conclusion.
David – You’ve mentioned your son in several articles. My regards to you and your wife for all you do to support his life.
David, You have certainly found your “job”, which entails being a loving and understanding father. Every child should be so lucky.