A lot of you know that I am starting a coworking business. What you don't know are some details about my family. How is that relevent? Well, let's just start exploring that and hopefully the relevance will expose itself.
My son Quentin is 18. He was diagnosed when he was 7 years old with Aspergers Syndrome. For those that don't know, Asperger's is nestled under the grand umbrella of childhood Pervasive Developmental Disorders. Asperger's is also referred to as high-functioning Autism as the symptoms (social difficulty, limited eye contact, fixations, etc.) apply. Quentin is socially slow but brilliant and has a memory that beats most elephants, and is happiest alone on his computer or playing video games. Quentin attends a special school miles away but it hasn't proven to be effective.
Now, the parental challenge: How to ready my son for the world.
He doesn't like IT because that would be 'what Mom did'. He thinks he is too distractable to hold a job, but he loves to organize things. He organizes data and knows MS Word better then most.
In other words capability is not the issue, but self esteem is. The school has stated that he is not progressing.
So here is my idea. I hire my son to work for me. This does a number of things.
- Teaches him about the working world.
- Teaches him how to deal with people; more specifically customers
- Teaches him responsibility and accountability
- Gives him income
- Gives him a boss that understands him and his triggers i.e. 'know when to push'.
- Undue Stress on me trying to start a new business while having to push a lazy teen around
- Pulling him away from a scheduled additional year of school
Thoughts?
