For the first time since we had a chaotically late driver a few years ago, we’ve run into a snag with Alex’s school busing common to the autistic.
The driver says Alex is constantly getting up while the bus is in motion and refuses to behave during transport. One part of us finds this hard to believe: Though Alex is certainly capable of disruptive behavior (our family holiday dinners being People’s Exhibit A), he is and always has been a model traveller. Never a whisper of a complaint from any bus company (never a whisper of a compaint from the airline …read more

Charlie’s bus ride home from school seems to take some 15 minutes, hence my daily rush from work to get to home. The December 8th Newsday reports that more than 1000 special needs children are”sent off Long Island for education and sometimes housing, costing schools and the state millions of dollars.” Two New York state lawmakers and parents are calling on education officials to change regulations that currently limit how many children can be educated at “special sites” on Long Island.
How far does your child—or do you—travel to school?
(Not, it’s hoped, two hours.)

One of my students is writing her senior thesis on environmental psychology and classrooms for special needs students. This is the fourth year I’ve known her; she’s an education major and has a special needs sibling, and I’ve long shared stories with her about Charlie and found her a sympathetic and supportive presence. Early yesterday afternoon, she stopped by my office and she asked me a series of questions, as research for her thesis, and I’ve been reflecting on her questions and my answers to them.
What do you worry most about for Charlie?
I’m afraid this one was too easy …read more

Eureka! A possible stocking stuffer that combines sensory input with one of Charlie’s preferred foods—edamame—and can be attached to the D-ring on his bookbag and readily squeezed when the noise on the schoolbus gets, well, noisy:
Asovision Edamame
If that seems a little weird (and the price is kinda steep—equivalent to buying a couple of bags of frozen edamame), there’s always virtual bubble wrap.

I mean, at least two hours each way, to school and then back home? That’s how long 5-year-old Brandon Montanez, who’s autistic, rides the bus to get from his home in Bensonhurst to Learning Springs School in Manhattan, according to yesterday’s WCBStv. Brandon’t bus ride used to be 90 minutes long each way—-already too long—-New York’s Office of Pupil Transportation changed his route (and his driver and bus matron) on short notice and, more than understandably, it hasn’t been easy for Brandon:
“It’s been a nightmare,” says Michelle Montanez, Brandon’s mother. “He was jumping on his seat, he was throwing …read more

Autism myths abound and Kev is collecting, and dissecting, them at this new site. One myth that especailly irks me is the notion that autistic kids are “in their own world” and “withdrawn into themselves” and, generally, “out of it.”
My son Charlie is thoroughly engaged in and attuned to the goings-on of the world all around him. He may not look like he is, and he often does no respond in the usual ways that people are accustomed, to indicate social awareness. Due to his limited language, people tend to assume, or too quickly assume, that he does not …read more

A three-year-old autistic boy died after being strangled by his seatbelt on a schoolbus this past Sunday, the Jerusalem Post reports. An aide has been arrested:
During a police investigation into the incident, the boy’s mother said that she realized he was unconscious when she boarded the school bus to help him off after it arrived at her house.
Police later began to suspect that the incident was a result of the boy being improperly secured into his seat, a suspicion that led to the arrest of his aide
Many, many thoughts with the boy’s family. Many.

A $3 million civil rights lawsuit has been filed against the Knox County School District concerned the alleged rape of a 14-year-old girl with Asperger’s Syndrome by an alleged sex offender who, according to today’s Knox County News, had been deemed “too dangerous” by his court-appointed guardian to be unsupervised. The 18-year-old boy “was being transported to a sex offender treatment program at Halls High School when the alleged rape occurred.”
According to the lawsuit, bus owner Stanley Rudder had warned Knox County school officials the girl, identified only as Jane Doe in the lawsuit, “would not make it two days” …read more

Every day as I drive to and from work I see the buses: Little yellow schoolbuses like the one Charlie rides; minivans with faded lettering (”Angeline’s Transportation”; “school children inside”; “this vehicle stops at ALL train tracks”), sometimes with a rather jalopy quality and lots of dents in the fenders. We’re fortunate that Charlie is able to attend school in our town and rides a bus with his classmates, but a couple of years ago, when he was in a private school, he rode in one of those minivan buses. It was 45 minutes each way (depending on traffic). The …read more

My office in Jersey City is in an old house, on the left-hand side of a one-way street going down a steep hill. Several of the buildings and some of the other houses belong to my college, but many (including a very large apartment building across the street with aging cement steps) do not. Parking is at a premium; there’s no garages to speak of for the residents of the apartments so the street is constantly lined with rows of cars, a beat-up yellow school bus with the windows painted white, delivery trucks. Students try to park on the street …read more