This is the time of year when the weeks start speeding by. Coming up is our last Saturday of respite for Alex. School trips (St. John the Divine, the Bronx Zoo, IHOP) are coming fast and furious.

Ordinarily we get through it and know that in the fall it’ll all start up again. But Alex turns 11 in June, and the NYC Department of Ed. considers him a middle-school student as of September. Where will he go? We have no idea. His school, which goes up to age 21 and has multiple sites throughout Manhattan, has two middle-school programs. We visited one and thought it was OK, but it has no spots available.

photo courtesy of Bill Ward's Brickpile (flickr.com)

Ned goes to a school that houses five different programs — his elementary school, four small high schools and a special ed. middle school program. Could my sons possibly go to the same school building, if not the same school? Maybe. We called the Department of Ed. placement office and were told they have no seats, but that we should call our principal and ask her to reach out on our behalf. We did.

Then Jeff gave a talk and someone from the Department came up afterward to talk to him and tell him about a language-based program that might be good for Alex, so we’re looking at that too.

A few weeks ago, when we started thinking about the fall, we just assumed Alex would stay somewhere within his school, or perhaps try the program in Ned’s school. I liked them because last spring one of their teachers told me they expect their students to reach for college, when possible.

About the only thing I do know right now is that the day after Labor Day, a yellow school bus will pull up to our building and take Alex to school … somewhere in New York City.

Alex is entering 6th grade in the fall, and he will go to a new school.

It’s been six years since we toured special-needs schools. Back then, as Jill points out, we were looking for a kindergarten, and kindergarten classrooms for the autistic don’t differ much from kindergarten classrooms for the typically developing.

So this will be new. First stop was the school of Ron’s, Alex’s old terrific EI special-educator who’s now unit teacher of a special-needs site in a New York City public school.

I got to the meeting before Jill this morning; I rounded a corner and there Ron was. “There he is!” Ron said. A friend. He’s greyer (”More dignified,” I told him) but otherwise the same spark and firm handshake.

I did know  what to expect six years ago but now, I’m unsure what to look for in a school tours.  Here are the same tiled walls, same small bathrooms, same construction paper and marker artwork festooning the corridors.

Jill’s biggest jump start on this next-level search for Alex was a phrase she heard at another special-needs middle school. “We have,” the unit teacher of that school told her, “an expectation of college for our students.” We had never heard any educator say anything like that about Alex before, and it was like a strong new scent.

Still, with the budget crunch I foresaw late last year, I was hoping Alex’s current school could make an exception and perhaps keep him another year. Better to be with the people who’ve taken you from stop-and-stares to reciting “The Pledge of Allegiance” when the money dries up.

“Then Obama came through the funding,” Ron notes.

So it’s up we look. Suddenly I have to start from square one with people who’ve sometimes seen but not really met Alex, telling them all the clever cute stuff he does. How he tricked me out of the boys’ bedroom last night so he could get the cat off Ned’s bed. How he tricked Jill into taking her hand off a doorknob once, because he wanted to make a break for it. How he says clearly, “I want cookies!”

Ron’s school was similar to the one Alex is in now — some rocking, some stimming, wheelchairs parked in the halls. Classrooms had the velcro schedules (”sweeping”; “work time”; “clean up”), the looseleaf binders of simple sentences in big print. “Who wants to read me the recipe?” one teacher asked.

The classrooms were smaller. In one, colored cloth shaded the fluorescent overheads to cut down on distraction. In another, students used a computer to read and relate the life cycle of the butterfly. Science class. “That right, a chrysalis,” the teacher said. Ron shows us yet another loose leaf with a checklist of jobs the older students here perform at a local golf course: pick up trash, clean tables, stock storerooms.

We’re looking forward to Alex’s future. He could have one here.

“If there’s an opening,” Ron said.

(Great NY Times piece on the effect of swine flu-related school closings on special-needs parents.)

[Image: Credit: Valeriana Solaris (flickr.com)]

So yesterday I wrote “what comes around, comes around.” Siliconmom commented about this sentence, the last one in the post:

Is that one of the stages of being an autistic parent - that at some point you realize and accept that life is what it is?

For me, I would say, yes, very much, and that, too, hope starts with acceptance.

Charlie was around 5 years old when I let go of feeling I had to save him from, and fight against, and do the warrior mom thing. I’m not saying I don’t have moments when a shadow of the old “fightin’ spirit” passes through me (pre-IEP meeting, for instance, or when you get The Stare-’n'-Shakes-Head Combo in the supermarket). Being Charlie’s mom is not about doing everything I can to “take the autism out of him,” but rather of loving him as he is, for who is, no matter what.

Just over a year ago I wrote down some thoughts on recovery while grocery shopping. Kev at Left Brain/Right Brain blogged recently about some claims on Age of Autism about “‘‘hundreds of case reports’ of recovered children’”; these children’s “recoveries” was said to have occurred thanks to doctors following the Defeat Autism Now! protocol.

I have a xerox of the original DAN! protocol in a box of files, a rather dusty box of files, as Charlie was 2 1/2 years old when we were “doing our research” about those sorts of biomedical treatments. (In fact, I was paging through that xerox of the original DAN! protocol—we’d given the original booklet to Charlie’s pediatrician in Minnesota, where we were living when Charlie was diagnosed—when I was seen sitting on the porch of our house on this show.) While numerous other diets, supplements, treatment practices have been suggested as methods to “defeat autism” since I sent away for the DAN! protocol in 1999, the motivation of parents today in using such treatments is, I would think, unchanged. We all just really, really, really want to help our children do their best in this life, especially in their life when we are not around to help them, that they can. Biomedical treatments hold out immediate, visible results; education and teaching plod along and produce small gains that can get lost in the data collection and then it’s back to square one as programs get put on hold.

And who doesn’t want to see the progress, to get it quick, not to have to see their child go to “more special ed” instead of “kindergarten without an aide”?

I mean, we do really rely too much on the microwave oven.

Middle school, self-contained classroom, all special ed and one-on-one with the teacher:student ratio: That’s not the scenario that parents get promised when they sign the contract for intensive in-home therapy for a just-diagnosed 2-year-old.

it is the scenario for Charlie, my middle school, self-contained classroom, all special ed, son. I started the week with a pained reflection on Charlie’s middle school blues. The week (and the school year) are not over but, after a Tuesday home visit and long conversation with Charlie’s teacher, the blue is looking more like blue sky blue. Why and how, I’ll go into more detail later—suffice it to say, figuring out Charlie’s learning style take trial and error, and time. Teaching Charlie requires adapting one’s teaching style to him and his way of learning.

What comes around, comes around.

Fitting, then, to end this post about recovery by noting a few more thoughts about the topic, also while in the grocery store. For a variety of reasons that involved a lot of hot- showering in a relatively short period of time, Charlie and I ended up at the grocery store as it was nearing 7.30pm, rather late. Charlie got a shopping basket and went to look for sushi and into the bakery section, and then I saw that he had stopped, and was leaning forward to examine a display of DVDs, one by one.

That is to examine the purple cases—purple, the New York Times informs us, being the new pink—of certain DVDs with great care. You guessed it: They were Barney DVDs. Charlie went through each one, and walked around the case, and ignored my requests to look for otheritems. He circled round to the front and sifted through the Pilates DVDs, just in case there was some hidden DVD treasure. And when he’d looked his full, walking away backwards, eyes still locked on those purple plastic cases—-he picked up the shopping basket and we continued our tour of the grocery store.

No fuss, no muss, just peaceful Wednesday evening shopping, Mom and Charlie-style, with a bit of Barney to boot.

Recovery from autism is something we shouldn’t be worrying about. My son is autistic and the good times that we have — no way can we let thoughts about irrealities distract us from the goodness of every day together.

My son Charlie is, as I’ve noted here, 11 1/2 years old. He’s been attending middle school since September and it hasn’t been easy, and we’ve started to get the feeling that it’s not going to get easier. Charlie is in a self-contained classroom, located in a large middle school in our school district. There are three other boys—all older than him by a year or two, and all shorter than him—a teacher, and four aides in the room. He starts the day with Adapted Physical Education (APE) around 8.30am) and has speech therapy briefly with a speech therapist most days of the week. An occupational therapist sets up programs on specific skills, like writing and washing his face, that he works on throughout the day. He has a really good teacher and behavior consultants regularly visit the classroom. Charlie’s teacher and I email each other daily, sometimes a couple of times a day.

He does all right generally, but, for the past few weeks, he seems to be having one “incident” per day, in which he grabs at someone or throws himself down on the ground or tries to hit his head. Sometimes it happens because his classroom gets very noisy and, with his increased sensitivity to sound, he just can’t take it at some moments. Other times—as when he threw himself down on the sidewalk while on a walk outside last week—it’s less clear.

Charlie’s academic progress has always been slow and painstaking. He’s now writing both his first and last names and can write most letters of the alphabet (s seems to be particularly challenging), counting money, doing single-digit arithmetic with a calculator. Unlike the other boys in his class, Charlie is not interested in watching videos on a break (they have a TV set and headphones) and is minimally interested in the computer. It has been good that more of his schedule has allowed him to get up from his desk, to work on life skills like cooking and laundry: Charlie, as his teacher noted, likes to be busy and occupied, and to get up from his desk.

Sometimes it just feels like everything is working against him this year, though. After years of bus drivers who always greeted him with a “good morning, Charlie!” and a “smile,” and who clucked in sympathy when he was upset and assured me that “he’ll be okay, we all have our bad days” the bus driver this year has been, well, she doesn’t do any of those things. Added to this is the fact that Charlie’s bus arrives over an hour earlier than it did last year. He’s always had a hard time waking up, but this year it’s been compounded by a much earlier wake up time, and a less than warm atmosphere on the bus.

And middle school itself has been something of a brusque new world, after the coziness of Charlie’s classroom last year. As I’ve noted, the physical layout of Charlie’s room includes a low ceiling and no natural light. There’s over a thousand children at the middle school and discipline appears to be a priority, judging by administrators wielding walky talkies and the constant emphasis that “you could hear a pin drop in these hallways” when classes are in session. There’s no more playground and the main colors seem to be (as they were at my junior high in California) brown and beige.

I noted that Charlie, while the youngest in his classroom, is the tallest and, I’d also say, the most muscular and athletic (the result of all that swimming and 8-plus mile bike rides). So when he gets upset, other people react a lot differently than if he were 4 feet tall and a skinny little boy: Charlie’s the same height as some of the aides (none of whom were the aides he had last year, including one young man who was over 6 feet tall and could still give Charlie a piggy back ride a year ago). And I more than suspect, I think I know—that when Charlie is upset, people don’t see a frantic child, overcome by his anxieties and racing thoughts and unable to express himself. They see a 5′ 4″ pre-adolescent who’s really strong, and they step back, and want to look away.

Jim and I anticipated that middle school and adolescence would not be easy for Charlie. We’ve been talking a lot, talking to friends, talking to Charlie’s teacher; we’ve been asking questions, thinking, reflecting on how easy it is to go places with Charlie, from stores to subways to restaurants, and how much he helps us out, doing more and more small chores around the house. We’ve wondered if he’s not been feeling a kind of loss for his old school and classroom and teachers. After all, every day he walks onto the yellow schoolbus so dutifully and I wonder what he thinks as it takes him to the middle school, a group of low-slung brownish buildings, surrounded by grass and set back from the road.

Previously when Charlie transitioned from primary school to intermediate school (he’s not really “in a grade,” and has always been in special ed classrooms), it was really tough. He floundered and finally all but fell apart in classrooms in another New Jersey town and, just under three years ago, we took him out of school in November of 2005, things got so bad. We’re not at that point now (or not yet) but Jim and I have been worrying; it’s been hard to find ourselves potentially back at square one with Charlie’s education, after disrupting every aspect of our lives to move into our current school district. I’m hopeful that we can get ourselves, just muddle, through, a difficult period. While, at home, Charlie’s not always been without anxiety (sometimes he just seems to need to sit in his room with his favorite things nearby; he tells me “bye Mom”—-sign of typical teenagerism?), things have been generally peaceful, and he’s clearly a bigger boy who can do, who wants to, and who often has to struggle to “do it right.”

Charlie spent much of the weekend sleeping and some of it coughing: I’ve had a bad cold for the whole past week, and Charlie finally caught it. Saturday night—after napping a lot—he couldn’t sleep till 4am (and was beside himself at one point). Sunday he was much more easy-going, eager to get on his bike, and, while sitting on the couch afterwards, telling me the names of the aide last year who gave him the piggybacks. And then, of one of the aides he has this year.

And saying yes when I asked if he wanted to go to school tomorrow.

I’m on the train to Washington D.C., to attend a meeting of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, which coordinates efforts concerning autism within the US Department of Health and Human Research. There’s a list of the federal and non-federal members of the IACC here; the committee has been overseeing the writing of the Strategic Plan for Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) Research. Over the past year, there have been numerous calls for input from “stakeholders”—from anyone concerned about autism—and other meetings of the IACC and of workgroups concerning various parts of the plan.

I went to an IACC meeting just about a year ago and read this statement. While I wrote up and sent in a statement for today’s meeting, there apparently is not space on the agenda for me to read it at the meeting, though I was told that copies of my statement will be included in folders given to the members of the committee. I emphasized the need to focus on research that can directly affect and improve the lives of autistic individuals here, now and today, and on the need to provide education and services for autistic individuals in the community, and that integration and inclusion are not goals to be aimed at, but simply essential.

Time and again in the past years raising Charlie, we’ve more than once heard the suggestion (sometimes a very strongly put suggestion) that Charlie be sent “out,” as in to an “out of district” school placement, where he would be very much outside the community, the people, that he lives in. While we have in the past been interested in Charlie attending a private autism school where all the teaching might be geared towards kids with his sorts of learning profile, I really think that he would lose something if he were not in daily (if limited) contact with kids his age, in a setting that kids his age are generally in.

At the moment, this setting is middle school. I visited Charlie’s classroom on Monday: It’s a well-ordered environment. Charlie uses a schedule broken down into a series of small binders throughout the day. There’s photos, small phrases, and Language Master cards velcro’d to the pages, and he knows to get the different binders and work through the pages.

The physical environment of his classroom is more, what shall I say, institutional-seeming than last year—he’s in a lower-ceilinged room with windows that look out onto a hallway, across from a small courtyard—generally, it’s the whole middle school (with some 1400 students) that seems more “institutional-seeming.” It’s a huge 70s-ish building with lots of shades of brown, all on one level, and without the aesthetic attributes of the town’s high school and elementary schools. It is, indeed, a middle school, playgroundless and the first step towards some kind of adulthood not only for Charlie and his three classmates, but also for every other student at the school. There was a fire drill when I visited. The 1400 students plus many, many teachers and staff all streamed out and stood in neatly ordered rows before streaming back in. Uncertainty, simple bafflement, the wish to run and loll about on the grass, yawns—-these were all to be seen in many of the students.

I thought of Charlie’s struggle to accommodate himself to getting up earlier and to a much earlier start to his school day. Seeing the while middle school out on the grass together, dutifully and somberly lined in rows for a fire drill, many pretending not to shiver in short sleeves though they’d been told to get their coats, it occurred to me that Charlie’s not alone in feeling a sort of loss and puzzlement at finding himself in a bigger setting, and with so many more expectations and demands placed on him. And yet—-

And yet, back when I was just starting to teach (before Charlie was born), I taught Latin at a private school in St. Louis, Missouri. I taught both middle and high school students and was surprised to discover that that 7th and 8th graders seemed so often the most eager to learn, the most determined to know every miniscule thing about third declension i-stem adjectives; the most curious, intellectually and otherwise. And, the most uncertain, insecure, and defiantly confused about anything social (and, of course, involving the opposite sex).

Charlie’s different in ways small and profound from his peers. He doesn’t have homeroom as he stays in one classroom; he doesn’t have science or social studies and he’s not in his first year of learning a foreign language. But he is one among many other kids in our town; he’s not hidden away, and he’s not at all forgotten.

And I guess it’s to make sure that he and kids and individuals like him are never forgotten, segregated, or give second or worse-class treatment, that I took the 5.46am train to Washington, D.C.

Go here to see the agenda for the November 21st meeting.

My son Charlie’s in a self-contained autism classroom located in the middle school in our suburban New Jersey town. His teacher has been wanting to set up opportunities for non-autistic students to spend time with Charlie’s class but all the middle school students at Charlie’s school are so tightly scheduled that it has not been easy. Just getting some time to talk about autism and disabilities to them is an operation in and of itself.

In Massachusetts, “I Care” (which stands for Introducing Children to Acceptance through Reading and Education) is a program that (quoting from a description on The Jamie Fund website) seeks to “help explain why some classmates might be different than others.” The program was started by the mother an autistic daughter, Kim Piro, and is described in the Norwich Bulletin.

When Jamie was in kindergarten, Piro, volunteering in Jamie’s class, noticed that the other kids didn’t know how to approach or interact with Jamie.

It was then that she had the idea, which was destined to grow into a large special-education awareness program, to read a book on autism to the class.

With the teacher’s permission and with Jamie removed from the class, Piro read a story about autism to the kindergartners. After reading the book, when asked if there were any questions, 24 little hands went up.

“They asked me everything about her,” Piro said at the time. “’Does she eat the same foods we do?’ They couldn’t believe that she rode a scooter and ate ice cream.”

“The next time I volunteered, I saw a big difference in the way they treated her. They had learned why she screamed, that she uses her voice differently. They accepted her. They couldn’t wait to tell me that they were doing things with her,” Piro said.

That experience was the beginning of what would become the I CARE — Introducing Children to Acceptance through Reading and Education — program, which Piro founded and which continues to grow.

The I-CARE program essentially mimics Piro’s original experience with Jamie’s kindergarten classmates. Volunteers go in and read books on a variety of special needs — not only autism but also Down syndrome, spina bifida, cerebral palsy, kids in wheelchairs, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and more.

Piro arranges for the books to be available in the elementary school libraries. She has formed discussion questions, which are stapled into the back of each book, to facilitate the experience. She has recruited dozens of mothers — of both special- and regular-education children — to head into the classrooms.

Piro also hopes to see I-CARE expanded to elementary schools in other towns in Massachusetts, including Maynard, Weston and Oxford.

In Texas, Emily has been blogging about the Circle of Friends program. Small steps to big things.

Let’s End Adolescence writes Newt Gingrich in the October 30th Business Week. Adolecense, argues Gingrich, is a 19th century invention and, indeed, a “social experiment” that has largely failed. Why keep supporting a “system for delaying adulthood and trapping young people into wasting years of their lives”? Why not skip the whole notion of some kind of transition stage between childhood and young adulthood and stop (as Gingrich seems to suggest)  delaying the inevitability of adulthood, and have kids “shift to serious work, learning, and responsibility at age 13 instead of age 30″?

Well, Newt, let me tell you something.

At 11 1/2, my son Charlie’s definitely in the throes of adolescence. Almost all the clothes he wore last summer have either gone into the Goodwill pile, or been hand-me-upped to my drawers and (you’re gonna gasp) Jim’s. Every night when I look at the reflection of Charlie and me in the bathroom mirror as he’s brushing his teeth, he seems taller than the week before (the day before?). Jim’s been using the electric shaver on Charlie’s upper lip and, as noted before, the hormonal thing has hit big time. We had dinner last night with friends whose baby isn’t even 6 months old: Needless to say, a lot of memories were stirred up of what it was like to hold a long-limbed big-head boy in the crook of my left arm. Now he’s the one looking down at me.

I’m not sure adolescence can be done away with—-it’s part of the process of growing up. Gingrich proposes having children (I guess he wouldn’t say “adolescents” since he’s calling for the end of such a notion) start job-training earlier and start taking on the professional and financial responsibilities involved. But there’s a reason for “adolescence,” for extending childhood or (if you want to think of it this way) delaying adulthood.

Charlie, not even in his teenage years, just having started middle school, and the youngest in his middle school classroom, has already started pre-vocational training. Folding laundry, cooking, food prep, vacuuming—-these are “life skills” on his IEP, but they also fall under the “pre-voc” category. We continue to teach him writing, reading, simple arithmetic; we often have to really emphasize how he needs to keep studying these things: Because everything about Charlie’s learning has to, already, be “functional.”

The purpose of Charlie’s education doesn’t have to automatically be to teach him to “get a job” and “use his skills.” I continue to teach him cello and piano. Just as much as any child, Charlie needs to have all areas of his education addressed and not only those that are “functional.” For a child like Charlie—whose academic program is far different from that of his peers and who’s going to be in special education for the rest of his schooling—-there’s just as much a need to develop his abilities and his interests and to expose to the arts, to music; to provide him with what you could call as much of a liberal arts education as possible. It’s music and sports that play a role in helping Charlie to allay some of his anxieties, do something he’s good at, and develop interests that could potentially be lifelong. Sure Charlie needs to learn skills for a job that will drawn on his abilities, like that of 22-year-old Andrew Janusz, but work is one part of the big picture.

When the talk turns too much to teaching Charlie “pro-voc” skills and our requests for music lessons are greeted with “oh sure” and bland nods and suppressed rollings-of-eyes, I hear the voice of “hurry hurry hurry.” Adolescence is not turning out to be the easiest of times for Charlie, who I suspect must often be feeling like the same kid he’s always been, but in a body that’s becoming an adult’s. Charlie needs time to grow up. It’s taken him longer than most kids to learn to do so much, why push him (not to mention other children) ahead so fast? What’s the rush?

I’ve become rather obsessed with exercise—-no, I’ve not become a calorie counting fiend tracking the minutes on the treadmill. It’s making sure that there’s enough physical activity integrated throughout Charlie’s day in general and at school in particular that have preoccupied my thoughts. I’ve noted that the very layout and physical space of his middle school classroom are very different from the windowed, light-filled classroom of his elementary school last year; the fluorescent lights just seems to buzz and glow more harshly.

Charlie has gym every morning around 9.30am. He has a locker now and has to change into and out of his gym clothes. The adapted physical education (APE) teacher has put together a very fine schedule of activities including soccer, yoga, volleyball, aerobics, and (though not skateboarding, as at this school), golf. (And Charlie got a hole in one the other day, his teacher noted to me.) One doesn’t want to ask for too much but, well, gym at 9.30am means that the boys in Charlie’s room get in their workout first thing in the morning and then….that’s it.

Because, there’s no recess in middle school.

And, there’s no playground in middle school.

And you’ve four growing boys who’s always had a need for jumping, fidgeting, being in motion, and can’t always tell you that’s what they need. In their elementary school, they had scooters to ride and someone left behind a bike that fit Charlie perfectly; he used to ride it around the school with an instructor running after him (and enjoying every moment of it—-Charlie’s not the only one who relishes getting outside the classroom). Charlie’s in a self-contained autism classroom with the same three boys he’s been with for two years and with a teacher who’s thoroughly up on their learning styles, past histories, communication needs. But it’s middle school, with expectations of being “more mature,” rules and dictates for discipline—-walky-talky bearing administrators roam the halls, not students—-and the difference from the sun-lit corridors of Charlie’s old elementary school, with PTA parents bustling around with plates of cookies, are palpable.

Charlie’s teacher, recognizing the need of all the kids to be in motion, is wondering about getting access to a treadmill and/or exercise bike. For Charlie in particular—as noted, he’s the biggest kid in the class (and the youngest) with long arms and lanky legs to throw around—-Jim suggested that he get a chance to be in motion as much as possible, and Charlie’s teacher has been having Charlie get out of the room and walk. Since it’s gotten cooler, most of this walking has been in the hallways. Fortunately, it’s a big middle school with over a thousand students (which in itself must be something for Charlie to get used to—-being in a building with over a thousand other kids his age, not including numerous teachers, administrators, support staff………).

After some of “those sort of days” in October when I start reading Wrightslaw (obsessively, yes), and after a lot of discussion and some reaccessments on everyone’s part (teachers and Jim and me too) about how to change our approach to teaching Charlie, he’s had some solid days. He’s still adjusting to the middle school schedule: School is over at 2.30, but Charlie is usually “done” an hour earlier, and his teacher has been moving around his activities, trying new teaching methods, making suggestions to us and listening to our suggestions.

Just hoping we can keep doing the same as the year unfolds and that we can remember, staying in motion—-that’s the key. And there’s a lot of hope in the air here right now, and I think we’re going to take that and run with it.

It was Back to School night for Charlie’s school Thursday. As we have one car, and had no babysitter, Jim and I decided that I’d go first and he’d get Charlie some dinner and then I’d call him and Jim’d go in and meet Charlie’s teacher. This plan indeed worked, and proved prudent. As we neared the streets surrounding the middle school—several streets away from the middle school—-both sides of the street were packed with solid lines of cars and SUVs and minivans. At one point, Jim and I reached out and folded in the mirrors of the black car, so an SUV could slowly ease its way past us. I had also read that parents could take buses from the high school and an elementary school and so avoid having to fend for a parking place.

Needless to say, I am pretty glad that Charlie takes the bus, gruff bus aide and stern driver and all this year.

And even more needless to say, am I glad we moved to this town, for all the ways the move complicated things for Jim and me (work commutes, living arrangements…….). Charlie’s Adapted Physical Education teacher was there and she showed us her website, gave us two email addresses to contact her with, and explained how she’s set up APE this year. Charlie has gym every morning; he and his classmates change in the lockers rooms and put their stuff in lockers. They’ll be doing everything from fitness exercises, yoga, aerobics, and dance, to soccer and basketball and volleyball and softball, to golf and ping pong and horse shoes. The APE teacher also coaches softball and invited us to see her team play.

Then, Charlie’s teacher went through the day’s schedule and the skills they’ll be working on and the curriculum. Charlie’s desk was again a far wall next to a relaxation area outfitted with a mini trampoline, an exercise ball, and a butterfly chair (which, apparently, all the kids love). The shelves were full of neatly labeled binders, a Language Master, bins of supplies with photo cards to identify them, a smaller binder with his daily schedule. He gets to do some kind of cooking activity every day (cold snacks right now, like celery and crackers with peanut butter; Jello and scrambled eggs—-later). And two more emails and two phone numbers from Charlie’s teacher.

Since there are (as various principals and a case manager mentioned when they dropped in to introduce themselves) some 1400 children at the middle school, Charlie and his classmates start their day some 15 minutes later, and their schoolbus is the first in the bus line at the end of the day. Charlie’s teacher kept emphasizing that being in middle school was as big a transition as going into preschool. We talked about inclusion and pre-vocational training, and everyone was given if ID card to have our kids carry when we are out and about.

As I hurried to Charlie’s classroom, I had passed room after room of parents sitting in whatever Period 1 class their child had. Charlie spends most of the day in his room, while going to the home ec room to cook and work on life skills (laundry, washing dishes) and to the gym. When Charlie was little—just diagnosed, three years old, five years old—-I used to wonder how things would be when he was older. What is middle school like for a boy who still needs photos on his schedule? For whom math means learning the values of coins, and reading is still single words? Would it be some endless dullness; how could anyone stay busy and learn without English class and Science and Pre-Algebra and Social Studies and a foreign language and the full range of classes?

Charlie’s clearly going to be busy and learning things he needs to learn for everything that happens after he finishes school and (hopefully) starts working. His teacher talked about ways to use new technologies and showed us a language program she likes to use, and exuded a straightforward confidence that her students can do it; will.

I met Jim and Charlie in the parking lot and, after getting a bit lost (every street with large houses looks like every other street with large and largish houses in the dark, and our town has few sidewalks and streetlights), Charlie and I went home and then drove back to pick up Jim. I’ve known Charlie’s teacher since we moved into our town over two years ago—-she was Charlie’s teacher for a few weeks when we first live here and she was phenomenal—-but Jim had to yet to meet her.

And the first thing he said when we picked him up? “They really like Charlie.”

That kind of says it all about why Charlie likes school, and learning now, too.

Some will remember last week for June 4th and “Green Our Vaccines” rally.

I remember it as Charlie’s last full week of elementary school.

• Low Birth Weight and Preterm Birth: Autism Risk Factors?
  A new study in Pediatrics links low birth weight (less than 5.5 pounds) and preterm birth to an increased risk for autism in infants by about twofold, and more so in girls than in boys.
• “The issue here for me is did our teacher behave as alleged?”
  An editorial in the June 3rd Palm Beach Post about 5-year-old Alex Barton being voted out of his kindergarten class quotes Michael Lannon, Superintendent of Port St. Lucie, along with more details from the police report.
• An Argument about “Difference” and “Deviance”
  Professor Stanley Fish of Florida International University, in Miami and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, opens a post about “norms and deviations” on his New York Times blog by citing a letter published in Time magazine.
• How Invisible is Autism in Women?
  Is female “invisibility” in the autistic spectrum a feminist issue?
• The Rallying of the Green
  The “green vaccine thing” is but another instance of rebranding.
• No Wonder It’s So Expensive to Be a Parent
  The average mother of a child under 15 spends more on fast food per year than on books, music, movies, and video games combined, the June 2nd New York Times reports.
• Change the Schedule!
  “Change the schedule!” That was apparently the rallying cry of the June 4th Green Our Vaccines rally.
• Boy Dies During Nap, Possibly From Secondary Drowning
  10-year-old Johnny Jackson died last week while taking a nap in his house from “asphyxiation due to drowning”—-according to today’s ABC News, Johnny may have died from secondary drowning.
• Needed: Good Communication Between Parents and Schools
  It’s always struck me as a sad irony that, when it comes to parents trying to make sure that an autistic child succeeds at school, communication can pose some of the greatest obstacles. Too often I’ve found it just very hard to let teachers, therapists, and staff know what is going on with Charlie and what our goals are, and I know the reverse has occurred.
• 1500
  That’s journalist Arthur Allen’s estimate of how many people were at Wednesday’s Green Our Vaccines rally; a bit smaller of a number than the “close to 10,000” elsewhere noted.
• Recovered or Not?
  In article after article about the “Green Our Vaccines” rally, it is said that that her son is “autistic” and “has autism”—contrary to what was said at the publication of her book last September.