I am looking for people who value sincerity, honesty and integrity to work with my Autism Spectrum son in a number of areas. The job entails teaching my son various life skills, such as how to interact appropriately with other people, how to keep his apartment and himself neat and clean and how to travel safely and independently in the community, and, most importantly, how to control his impulses.
My son, who has a degree in Biochemistry from City College, is gifted and intelligent. He has always had an enormous thirst for learning, and an impressive ability to acquire and assimilate knowledge. The mentor’s role is to motivate him to stay focused, communicate with other people appropriately and develop—to whatever extent possiblehis sense of self and his place in the world, while also supporting him in his various intellectual and artistic pursuits (and vice versa). One of our overarching goals is to work with him and his other mentors on figuring out an appropriate career path for him.
Since the best way to reach Benjamin is through learning, it would be great (but not necessary) to find a mentor with a knowledge of music, computers, phonology, various fields of science and/or foreign languages.
My son has been studying violin for several years and has been developing a classical repertoire. (He is not a talented violinist, but he keeps at it.) He recently started studying guitar and piano. He excels in the visual arts. Musicians and artists have been successful teaching giving him lessons in Art, Chinese and Italian, and most recently, Russian.
I want to emphasize that this is a long-term job, with the potential for more responsibility and more hours, depending on the mentor’s interest in and ability and commitment to working with my son. I also want to be careful not to mislead applicants by putting too much emphasis on my son's academic and artistic gifts: his deficits in the area of attention and communication are significant and just as great as, if not greater than, his gifts.
To be clear: I am not trying to make my son into a Renaissance man. The teaching is merely a means to an endthat end being to figure out a way to help Ben make progress in the acquisition of the social and communication skills in which he is extremely backward, and to teach and motivate him to control his impulsive behavior. Working on B's deficits is the ultimate goal of all our work with him. The Pandemic has come bearing its own hefty share of challenges for my son. Helping deal with the trauma of it is an important focus of everyone's work with him.
This is very much a collaborative effort, and can be inspiring and rewarding, depending on what you value as a human being, and whether or not you enjoy Benjy for the unique—and at times, quite challenging, person that he is. It can also be very frustrating, if this is not your thing.
What I have been trying to do is build a community of like-minded, deep-feeling people, devoted to helping my son develop the skills necessary for him to make use of his considerable intelligence and gifts, the ultimate goal being to give him a chance to live a happy and productive life and one that is as independent as possible. That is why I have been placing this ad on Craigslist very month!
It is essential that working with my son be as rewarding for his mentors, as it is for him.
The hours are flexible, as is the start date.
If you have answered this ad before, please do so again. Since there are some shifts that are now opening up.
My son lives in Washington Heights, right next to the A train.
Please send your resume to Maxine.