Growing Up Is Not Easy

Brooke Dickerson’s 19-year-old so, Quinn Carey, has attended 10 different schools, yesterday’s Santa Cruz Sentinel reports. Diagnosed with autism as a young child, Quinn has not been able “to receive the consistent care that is needed to develop the skills he is lacking.” His mother notes that his physical size has been a factor:

Now fully grown at 6 feet tall and about 300 pounds, Quinn is more than a handful. The family has taken him to schools in Morgan Hill, San Jose and Palo Alto, but the schools shut down or turned Quinn away because of his size.

“It’s nuts because he’s entitled to appropriate education,” Dickerson said. “He is denied treatment here because of his size and then he is denied over the hill because he is from Santa Cruz. We grew up in Santa Cruz, Quinn loves the ocean and there is nothing here for us.

My son’s grown tall—taller than me, and he’s 11 1/2 years old—and this fact has (not always for the better) changed how people respond to him. So far there’s been a place for Charlie in a public school autism classroom; reading about Quinn Carey’s experience, makes me pause.

Some years ago, when we were trying to find a new school placement for Charlie,I visited a large “center” for children with many disabilities, autism included. I was shown a room that would be for children Charlie’s age: Most of the children were working at their desks one-on-one with instructors. And in one corner was a child—he must have been as old as Charlie is now—he wore a helmet and a loose t-shirt and baggy sweats and he was standing on a gym mat. His arms were out and tension and fight were in his body; at least two instructors were standing, arms out and ready to grab or whatever, him, and to block him from running away from the little padded area he was being fenced in. As we left the room, the woman who was showing me the school wiped tears from her eyes.

(No, Charlie did not attend that school.)

Charlie was really struggling—really—in those days. He’d been restrained too too many times and the result was that his “behavior problems” multiplied. Since then, slowly, with lots of back-stepping and revising of plans and gritting of teeth, we’ve tried to figure out how to help him calm down from really anxious moments while staying safe. There are ways to help a very upset child that are not overly physical; there is a need to better educate about such methods.

And certainly there’s an unspoken need to teach every autistic individual—every one; to really teach them.