Louis Carter shares how teaching autistic adults car mechanics can engage them more than video games. One student now repairs trains for a railroad, another does oil changes at a car shop, and a third builds custom cars. Mechanics and art are linked, Carter says, offering a path to real work and fulfillment.
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I can tell you how to get the autistic adults, fully verbal autistic adults, off the video games. There's now been 5 or 6 successes with car mechanics, car mechanics. And what that adult found is working on cars was a lot more interesting than video games. And you slowly expose them to working on cars. One of them is repairing trains now for the railroad, and they love it. Another one is doing oil changes. He's doing it in a place where you get to see lots of different kinds of cars. Another one is doing custom cars. Yeah, we need to get them out of the basement and start exposing them to things like fixing mechanical things. Mechanics. See, mechanics and art go together. I know that seems kind of weird, but they go together. And I don't know of any other examples where young autistic adults were gotten off of video games with anything else. Well, 5 or 6 car mechanics successes.