Is it a society/systemic problem or an individual’s problem?

[AlertCat]

Just heard on R4 about the problems facing (particularly) young people with neurodivergence in finding work, and I completely agree. But then the young man who was speaking went on to say that he had been pushed by the job centre towards working for MacDonalds or somewhere like that, and he said ‘nobody wants to work just to earn money. We want to do something we’re passionate about.’ And went on to say that he would like to sail, and he wanted the training and qualifications to be offered so that he could follow his dream.

AIBU to think that the second part of this is nothing to do with being ND, is a problem faced by all of us, and that all young people (ND and NT) really need to take work that they can get and can do, just like anyone else has to, while maybe working towards something they would prefer? Albeit with the support they need around their neurodivergence to do this.

Obviously in an ideal world we’d all have access to unlimited training and learning opportunities, but we don’t. Very few people are lucky enough to follow their passion.

YABU- ND young (and older) people should get more support to find work they’re passionate about, and not be forced into jobs they don’t want to do.

YANBU- this isn’t an issue of being ND, it’s a societal problem/a fact of life that just has to be accepted or worked around.

Well, yes, I guess you are correct. But this was just one offhand remark a ND man on the radio made. Wanting to sail (or follow other aspirational dream) and not wanting to take lower paid jobs is not something typically associated with ND. Plenty of NT feel the same way too and act accordingly.

Nothing is stopping him working in McDs while he develops a career in sailing. It's not that hard, pay for the training and find a boat looking for crew?!

I don't think anybody wants to work in McDonald's. But we can't all be professional sailors. Most people passionate about sailing do so as a hobby and have professional careers to fund it. And excuse my language but many are as 'spergy as they come!

You' re right.

I think that young people ND or otherwise should be supported to do qualifications and find work they are passionate about.

I'm coming at this from the angle of how much the education system is geared towards going to university and graduate jobs.

The tax payer lends an academic person up to around 50k to go to university. Lots of further education courses are really badly funded in comparison, or self funding if you have an equivalent level qualification. They also have conditions like having to have gcse in maths/English, even though those skills aren't hugely relevant to the job.

But that said I think McDonald's is a perfectly good employer and it is a great place to work, even if it's to save up and self fund your sailing course and lots of people do works they aren't passionate about because it is life.

I think the difference is if you are ND you won't believe how strongly you are pushed into certain role. The send scheme my LA offers is you can work in a cafe, you can work in horticulture, you can work in IT. Those are the pathways presented to school leavers, with ehcps at special schools, which are supported. Everything else is a battle.

Yes it jarred with me too.

Yes, this.

Though several friends’ kids who worked in McDonalds said it wasn’t in fact at all a bad place to work, there was a lively social life attached and if you stick around a bit, lots of promotion opportunities. Admittedly, they were mostly there short-term. But working a full day job while funding a passion project or training is a perfectly ordinary thing to do. The guy who cuts our grass is doing sailing qualifications. The instructors at the water sports summer courses DS used to go to are mostly also into sailing.

I have not done the poll because I don't like your options - too much bias, and very unfair.

Someone who is neurodivergent should never be pushed into working at MacDonalds because of sensory overload - it's bright and very colourful, it's busy, it's noisy in the kitchen, there are endless interactions with people.

I suggest the young person chose sailing as a working environment because of these sensory issues. I am not saying he should be supported in this choice, but realistic options should be explored that suit his neurodivergent needs - eg. horticulture, gardening, parks and recreation

People should be supported to find jobs which complement their strengths and take into account their weaknesses.

There would be far fewer unemployed, and much shorter MH waiting lists if people weren't forced into jobs that are completely unsuitable for them.

That guy was living on cloud cuckoo land. It had nothing to do with being neurodivergent.

He was going on about ‘well, it feels like work is just a hamster wheel until you die’. No shit Sherlock. You’ve got to do repetitive stuff to get at good at it to make your way up in life.

Then he started to go about how he wanted to be a sailor and if he had the finances, how good that would be. Yeah, and we all want to be Celebrity chefs. But it takes work doesn’t.

What a batshit interview which basically summed up the problem. Too many people, with too high an opinion about what they ‘deserve’ despite having 0 talent or even putting the work in, and expecting for everyone to carry them. They think they are something special out of 7 billion people in the world.

That dude needs to be made to get a job asap, so he can experience the real world, rather than the unicorn and fairies land that he lives in.

We need to stop indulging this nonsense. Where anyone who wants a free ride can get one by referring to being ND. It’s actually quite disrespectful and does a disservice to genuinely ND people, making them out to be lazy freeloaders who can’t manage to do anything in life.

Most people are doing jobs to earn money, not because they are passionate about accounting etc. It’s a ridiculous.

And what does this ‘support’ look like. The jobs are there if he wants one. Do you expect employers to create Mickey Mouse jobs because someone is too precious to work in McDonald’s.

He could work in number of places that aren’t McDonald’s. But until people stop indulging nonsense exceptionalism from self important people who think the world owes them a living, they will always think they can the be the next Jack Sparrow or Ben Ainslee.

You get a job, you work out what you like about it and don’t like about it, you make sure your next job has more of the things you like and less of the things you don’t. It’s an iterative process when you are young, and hopefully by your mid 30s you’ve found something you can tolerate until you retire. No one walks straight in to their dream job!

Waiting for someone to come along, clutching their pearls about how cruel this thread is and how discriminatory to ND people because people are daring to call out the sheer levels of self importance and exploitation of ND as an excuse to be a layabout.

I think the widespread urge to find your passion and make a living from it is a societal problem. Younger relatives all seem to be doing multiple degrees at great expense to find their passions. I think the older generations accepted that you sometimes got lucky and passions and good remuneration match up, but most of the time they don't, and financial security wins out.

As a young person I (NT) was able to work pt in hospitality, study for my desired career and do voluntary/experience stints. It was hard - I barely slept and had no down time. I’m not sure that’s an option for young ND people. I suspect the hospitality work might be too overwhelming to allow them to also do the career building stuff.

It's both, really. The young person you heard on the radio has unrealistic expectations about work. Most people work because we need the money. Very few of us are passionate about our jobs.

But also, many existing jobs are structured in ways that make them unsuitable for ND people. Disability discrimination is a real thing.

This is true. My autistic DS is on one of these schemes. Luckily he quite likes outdoors work and food prep but those are mostly his only choices (charity shop was the other).

The biggest barrier he faces compared to my NT children is that he has a much lower tolerance for 'sucking it up' in the face of demanding, unsatisfactory jobs or circumstances.

In the same vein as the years of school refusal we went through he will just vote with his feet rather than put up with a sensory overload or a situation that feels uncomfortable. His ability to be forward thinking is very lacking, he lives in the moment where as his NT brother is able to look into the future and see something as a stepping stone to better things, therefore worth putting up with in the short term.

If he found his niche he'd probably stay doing it for the next 50 years but realistically this only happens for a very small number of autistic people.

I hope your sons scheme is going well. I think we are going to pick the horticulture option, but he actually wants to work with animals but there isn't a pathway for that locally.

It seems so annoying that they put support in but only for a very specific set of roles. It wouldn't cost more to support a child into something they would prefer.

I also recognise the lack of sucking it up and forward thinking compared to NT sibling.

I think doing different jobs when you are younger is helpful because it gives you an idea of what things you enjoy and what things you absolutely couldn’t put up with long term.
I did lots of jobs when I was younger- I worked Saturdays and Sundays all through my degree, took on cafe work during holidays for extra income. I did a couple of office jobs (not for me!)

I am autistic and have found that being self employed is the best way to go for me. I enjoyed my time as a teacher but there were a lot of aspects that I found challenging and I’m not sure I would have wanted to do that until retirement age. Office jobs and the normal 9-5 are not for me, but I wouldn’t have known quite how much I struggled with this until I tried it.

The only thing I didn’t want to try was bar work because I have double hearing people and communicating in busy places like pubs and bars due to my inability to block out background noise. I don’t even socialise in those places so working there would not have been for me.

I think any young person needs to be willing to get out and do different jobs while they either train or decide what they want to do. You gain so much more confidence which stands you in good stead for later life.

This is a common BBC problem-interviewing people who are not qualified to be interviewed on a particular topic.

There's actually another thread today that's even more bat-shit..Calling all biological - cis - women. Could we all stop raping each other please? (BBC Radio 4) | Mumsnet

Thanks. It's up and down tbh. He seems to enjoy kitchen work but my worry is that it's been in a controlled, managed environment so far. He's working in the kitchens belonging to the college of his SEND course. If you chucked him into a pressured environment like McDonalds or a pub kitchen during high peak traffic I don't think he'd cope.

I agree.

I do think there's a wider social issue about the unrealistic expectations of younger people. It's multifactorial - the fact that very few young people can do the sort of early jobs we all did any more, the fact that many young people have mobile phones and other high value items from young that they didn't have to work for, the fact that COL means that even quite decent wages seem hopeless in terms of quality of life, that fact that buying a house is impossible unless financially assisted, making saving feel pointless etc etc.

That said, that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be additional support and reasonable adjustments made for those with disabilities/differences. It is really important that we don't alienate or exclude those with lots to give of given the right support and setting.

I have a relative who absolutely cannot work in any other way than for themselves. But they do that and earn well, working hard etc.

The interviewer sounds really ignorant. Focused interests is a small part of ND and traits need to have a big impact on life to get a diagnosis.ND youngsters are also coping with severe depression, extreme anxiety, repetitive behaviours such as (pacing, self harm, phrases), social difficulties, fixed mindset, additional ND such as dyspraxia, ADHD etc. They can’t just switch it all off hence having a diagnosis and many are waiting for treatments, support and medication.

McDonalds is frankly the last place young people like this should be in.

There's pretty limited training available for young people with ND.

As others have said, it is often provided by charities (so not state provided education) and is focused on one or two pathways - horticulture is often one, a place near me runs a bicycle maintenance store with placements there in the repair/IT/customer service sections.

People are funded through university or BTECs but actual vocational training is pretty thin on the ground these days. If you don't have the gcse passes for either the uni route or BTECs there's not a lot out there.

Obviously some people with ND are very bright but there is a reasonably big group of people who have autism or adhd with learning disabilities. For that group there is a lack of vocational pathways.