Life Skills, Relationship or Career?

[Dadwith2Autisticsons]

Ollie, yes, the question was later changed to order the three items, as others were having difficulty or issues with the question as I originally posted, as it was worded the wrong way.

Life skills is things like daily living activities, like being able to cook, clean, do other chores, budget and manage money, drive, time management, prioritize tasks, handle personal needs, and using the senses, or however one wants to define life skills.

 

[Skyblue1]

This has been reworded from the original post, so if anyone wants to answer, then you are welcome to.

If you had a choice between more than adequate life skills, a decent career and a healthy long term relationship, what order would you pick them?

The original post specified that you could be great at one, but fail at the other two.

Life skills a decent job. Then a relationship

 

[Skyblue1]

I think it is important and healthy for Autistics growing up to know:
"I am not a 'broken' neurotypical. I'm a *whole* autistic."

Amen

 

[SchrodingersMeerkat]

I'd rather have a career. My life revolves around my future career. If I ever do marry in the future, my future husband or future wife will probably be someone from work.

 

[Dadwith2Autisticsons]

Life skills, as then I could be successful in a career and relationships as well.

That was my main reason for picking life skills first too.

Also, for me, with life skills then I could have determined if a relationship or job was important. I mean, I felt my social skills was always preventing me from doing more things in life.

Only when I was more comfortable with that skill and the other life skills and feeling more independent there could I determine more what I wanted or needed in life, as pertaining to relationship and work..

 

[Dadwith2Autisticsons]

I so agree with that! Be creative in helping him find his voice. I've found that offering my non-verbal nephew written multiple choices helps us communicate. He will pick the option that fits or most closely fits what he wants or is trying to tell me. When he was young (he is now about 25 years old), I made charts of verbs, nouns and adjectives for his selection so he could construct a meaningful thought or express his wishes. For example, he might select "I want" as his verb, "lunch" as his noun, and "fish taco" as the adjective for lunch. It's not perfect by any means but it works for us.

You might construct a similar chart to explore which of the 3 options in your hypothetical question your children would chose as their first priority. Of course, since your children are so young, they probably won't understand what a career, a long term romantic relationship, or life skills even mean.

I also realized that there was meaning in my nephew's constant echolalia and his verbatim quoting of television show dialogue. Most people would think he is just rambling, but he often answers questions or expresses his thought/desires by quoting something he heard on Sesame Street or Judge Judy or other TV shows. You have to listen closely to figure it out. Just keep trying.

Things are very slowly heading in the right direction regarding Dylan's speech, as my last reply to Alaska shows. He is starting to on rare occasions echo letters of the alphabet, or randomly say a few letters in a semi-clear way, and parts of a few words, too, like uh, for up, or oh, for open. We are constantly researching things too.

Again, it is a lot harder to educate him as his concentration is extremely limited, because of ADHD issues, in addition to his Autism, and so he is so active all day moving around, and as he sits only for a few minutes before running and climbing. So, we often have to instruct on the go with him. He cannot follow any direction yet. He loves mostly his iPad, and PECs and sight word and phonics apps, but we attempt lots of one-to-one activities with him daily too.

 

[OlLiE]

Ollie, yes, the question was later changed to order the three items, as others were having difficulty or issues with with the question as I originally posted, as it was worded the wrong way.

thank you

 

[ImAnAspie]

1) Life skills;
2) A decent career

As for a healthy long term relationship, the next time a relationship looks like it's heading my way, I'm going to run so fast, you won't see me for the dust!

 

[JoyChaos]

healthy long term relationship. two ND people, both undiagnosed ASD and ADHD...its a hot mess around here sometimes, other times its gold

 

[Flinty]

Literally, I can't answer this right now, because everything is in flux. Talk to me in six months.

 

[S-Head]

This has been reworded from the original post, so if anyone wants to answer, then you are welcome to.

If you had a choice between more than adequate life skills, a decent career and a healthy long term relationship, what order would you pick them?

The original post specified that you could be great at one, but fail at the other two.

Before I read any responses: 1. healthy long term relationship, so I would have the strength and support to proceed with the other two. 2. a decent career so that I could financially support #1.

3. would be the life skills. But it may be a dilemma because it may not be possible to achieve #1 or #2 without having some of #3.

So the most pragmatic approach may be to have parts of all 3, and then work on improving them all as the opportunity comes up, although not waiting for the opportunity and using that as an excuse to stop improving at any time.

 

[WittyAspie]

I want a healthy long term relationship. When the career is over and the company forgot your name, when you are to feable to make use of your life skills, your special someone will still be there beside you. A healthy long term relationship is by far the most important, even from a logic oreinted AS perspective.