He’s got the will. Can he find a way?
In the past decade, Tom Whalen, a 27-year-old Baltimore County man, has had jobs at an animal shelter, a mailroom, multiple grocery stores, a doggy day care center and a landscaping company.
He is chatty, outgoing and engaging, quick to win over strangers and ask for opportunities. Then, in short order, he loses them.
“He could get jobs,” says his mother, Sue.
“The problem is maintaining them,” adds his father, Ed.
Tom was born with a heart defect, took forever to potty train and played mostly by himself during preschool. He was in kindergarten when an observant teacher offered the Whalens a hypothesis that might explain their son’s behavior: autism.
The next 12 years of school were marked by special-education plans, adapted-learning strategies, personalized assistance and lunches spent at what Tom remembers as “the reject table.” But it was also a haven of structure, safety and socialization. He had a place to go, people to look out for him, opportunities every day to learn and find his strengths. (Tom could solve complicated math problems in his head — he just couldn’t explain to teachers how he’d done it.)
High school graduation was a victory and a plunge into the abyss. What now? “I was scared to death,” Sue says.
What Tom did first was attend community college, which didn’t work out very well. Without the rigid schedule and personalized support that aided him through high school, he drifted, often skipping class to sit in the campus library.
So he dropped out and started spending his days mostly alone at the family’s home in Northeast Baltimore. “At that point, I realized I have a bit of a wild streak,” Tom says with a smile. He wears “Star Wars” slippers and shifts his baseball cap up and down on his head as he sits on his parents’ couch.
Sue and Ed remember this period less fondly. Tom, who had been placed on a two-year waitlist for help from Maryland’s Developmental Disabilities Administration (DDA), would load up his backpack, step outside and start walking toward the city skyline.
He would wander through Baltimore for miles, sometimes end up lost and then refuse to answer his cellphone because he didn’t want to get in trouble. Once, he got mugged. Sue felt herself edging toward a nervous breakdown.
She called her contact at the DDA in tears, begging for assistance. Tom’s case was bumped into “crisis” status, which allowed Sue and Tom to start looking at day programs for people with disabilities. Few seemed tailored to adults with autism, and some seemed more like nursing homes, where they knew Tom would languish.
Finally, in 2012, they found Itineris, a center created by parents of other young adults with autism. To the Whalens, it seemed like nirvana — a homey environment where Tom could socialize, learn life skills, interact with the broader community and, best of all, get help finding — and keeping — a job.
But even with assistance, that hasn’t been easy. Unlike other developmental disabilities, such as Down syndrome, people on the autism spectrum don’t seem much different from anyone else — and therefore don’t offer a visual cue to help new customers or co-workers adjust their expectations accordingly. The shoppers who complained to Tom’s manager at the grocery store didn’t know he has autism. They just knew they didn’t like to see the guy bagging their groceries biting his fingernails and picking at his face.
Other times, he would get in trouble for making off-color jokes. The filters that might help someone else know what not to say in a workplace just weren’t in place for Tom.
And, more than once, he misread the signals from a friendly coworker. Tom’s crushes were unrequited, but he didn’t understand that until it was too late.
“We had to limit his phone use, because he’d get somebody’s phone number and call them 20 times a day and text them,” Ed says. “He had 10,000 texts in a month.”
Still, what Tom wants, more than anything, is to work. “For money and independence,” Tom explains. “I have to do something to fill the void.”
“We’re talking about adults,” says Ami Taubenfeld, co-founder and executive director of Itineris. “Not that your work defines you, but work is important to everyone. Whether it’s volunteer or paid. To have a meaningful day — whatever that means for them.”