Emmett Doyle and Michael Wesely are students—a senior and a junior, respectively— at Apollo High School in Minnesota and are both acting in a school production of A Christmas Carol. Doyle is playing Scrooge and Wesely is playing Marley, who visit Scrooge in ghostly form. As noted in the December 6th St. Cloud Times, both have Asperger’s Syndrome and have found acting a way to work on their social and communication skills.

Elements of theater such as following a script (which enforces turn-taking in conversation), interpreting body language, developing empathy for their characters and working as a team all help with their everyday lives.

Through acting, they are memorizing social cues, which can in turn become more instinctive to them offstage.

“One of the cool things about theater is it’s easier to talk to people. You don’t feel so isolated,” said Wesely, a freshman. “When you get up on stage, you’re not you. Even though you’re not you, you can express yourself as that character.”

“It’s a lot easier to read these lines and think about what you’re doing.”

Theater, the St. Cloud Times notes, is potentially a “legitimate form of autism therapy.” As the article also notes:

Acting is something [Doyle and Wesely] do almost every day.

“We basically spend our entire time acting like we’re not autistic,” said Doyle.

Acting can be seen as sustained role playing, perhaps……….

23-year-old Alex Kwan is autistic and the team manager for the West Albany High School football team. Yesterday’s Oregonian describes how, for Kwan, football has become a “safe haven, a place where he is embraced for his differences instead of mocked because of them.” That’s real teamwork, yes?

As I note regularly here, finding the right school and teachers for Charlie, and making sure the education he’s receiving is appropriate, challenging, tailored to his needs, are our constant concern. ABC News visits the Community School in Decatur, Georgia; the school was the subject of a recent article in the New York Times magazine. The school doesn’t seem quite suited to what Charlie might need, but the focus on educating older—adolescent, teenaged—autistic students really interests me. Sometimes it seems the last time that most of us felt sort of confident that we had an idea about the right sort of educational setting and programming for Charlie was when he was preschool age—–elementary and now middle school remain territory for which there’s only a very rough map.

Learning about a career event in New Jersey that was attended by autistic students and other disabled students turns my mind to even more concerns. The event was held at Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp. in East Hanover in honor of national Disability Mentoring Day. There were 17 other national sponsors present and 50 New Jersey companies at the event, which was overseen by the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) and, within New Jersey, by Allies, Inc., which advocates for people with disabilities and their families.

Yeah, more to think about—-more new terrain to step into, after I take a really deep breath.

As a freshman at Leominster High School in Massachusetts, Michael Comeau joined the wrestling team. An article in today’s Sentinel and Enterprise notes that being on the team has helped Comeau—who was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome at the age of 12—to develop social skills. (And to learn to take down a teammate on the mat.) As his mother, Amy Comeau, notes, “‘Before I knew it, he was a member of the team……..It was pretty exciting for us because he’s never shown any interest in sports.’”

If Charlie has any inclination for this sport, I don’t think I’ll be practicing with him…….

“Four minutes of fame” came to teenager Jason McElwain when he scored 20 points in the final four minutes of a Greece Athena High School basketball game. That was almost two years ago—-a book by “J-Mac” and Daniel Paiser is out, The Game of My Life: a True Story of Struggle, Triumph and Growing Up Autistic. After those four minutes, McElwain became a national celebrity and his famous minutes on the court played and replayed on CNN, ESPN, and local newscasts across the country.

Well, last Wednesday night as Charlie and I were heading out the door for Special Olympics basketball, he ran back in to grab his ball and held onto it in the backseat of the car. He’s made one basket so far (Charlie is tall for his age, but McElwain has a few inches on him still). But there was just something about being there in the gym and on the court with other kids and the coaches and the parents on the sidelines. While the older kids were scrimmaging, Jim had Charlie practice shooting and Charlie held the ball over his head and threw (he has not yet made basket #2). Charlie gave his dad a lot of hugs and his eyes were bright, as was his whole face—–just from knowing that he was with the team, like McElwain, once upon a February night with the Greece Athena Trojans.