Bill Gates has Autism

Bill Gates has Asperger's, which is a form of Autism. He is one of the most successful people in the United States. I was just watching some videos on Autism and I found this one of Bill gates rocking back and forth in a business meating. Videos of the Miscrosoft moqul, Bill gates, displaying the rocking sterotopy reinforce the idea that self stimmulatory behaviors can exist without impeading a person's success. In school, I see teachers telling kids to put their hands stop or to sit still. Maybe we shouldn't put our focus into trying to make these autistic kids look "normal". You should watch this video, it might give you some new perspective on socially accepted behaviors.


I enjoyed this video of Bill gates because it shows his sense of humor. People tend to think that the autistic have no sense of humor.

Fun with Autism

Friday was full of excitement. Andrew perseverates on the grills of cars because they look like smiles. He talks to them, yells at them and laughs at them (even if they are not in his sight). I can't imagine having a brain that keeps me stuck on one thing for so long. Its hard for him to learn, do work or talk to friends because he is only thinking about the smiling cars. In the lunchroom, he can see the parking lot filled with happy cars, from his seat so he even had a hard time eating because he was so busy laughing with the cars. After lunch, I took his best friend (does not have autism) and him outside to look at the cars. I asked his best friend to show us the right way to look at cars and to tell us what he was thinking about the cars. Then I asked Andrew if it made sense what his friend was saying, he said yes. For the rest of the afternoon, when he started to get silly about the cars, I would ask him if that was the way his friend would act. That kept him focused for the afternoon. What would you do?

No worksheets

I have had time to work with Andrew again. He has PDD.NOS which is a confusing form of Autism. His language skills are very low and he gets frustrated very easily because it seems that he understands exactly what you are saying to him but he has no idea how to respond. Math is very difficult for him, he figures out the addition problems on his fingers says the answer than immediately forgets what he says. He usually ends up tearing up his paper and screaming. So we have started writing math facts on Popsicle sticks. He pulls a stick out of the container, reads the problem, solves the answer and doesn't have to write it down. We got through 20 math problems today in about 5 minutes, I remember it used to take over an hour for him to write the answer to just one problem. The best solution for him is no worksheets. We then played number games with a giant number grid and he actually had fun with math instead of throwing a tantrum.

Slow Motion Writting

Sometimes people with autism think much faster than people without autism. Jane has pretty terrible handwriting, she has a great imagination so its a shame that no one can read what she writes. When she unscrambles words in seconds, I began thinking about how quickly her autistic brain works. I noticed that she is writing way faster than any of the other kids. She gets all of her work done in half the time. So this week I told her to slow her writing down so we can read it. She said "Do you mean write in slow motion?" "Yes!" Now I just remind her to write in slow motion before she starts and her handwriting is beautiful. The occupational therapist was try all sorts of different pencil grips and pencil wrist slings to get her writing under control when all she needed was to write in slow motion.

Child Abuse

I just learned that Mahesh's behaviors began when his grandmom came from India to live with his family. She took on the role as disciplinarian and started physically disciplining him. Last year his teacher took him to the nurse to document a gash on his face from something she had done to him. I have not seen any physical marks on him yet but as soon as I do, I will take him to the nurse to document it and call child protection services. This will be my second call this school year and it is only October. Sometimes working with children is so sad.

On a happy note, Mahesh has had no severe behavior problems for the past two days. Tuesday as we were walking out to the bus, I noticed he was mesmerized by the safeties. So I told him that the only way to become a safety is by having good behavior and making good choices everyday. On Wednesday, I got a safety belt out of the closet to hang on his chair to remind him of his goal. I also had Andrew in regular ed for almost two hours today, he tried his best, answered some questions and even did partner work with a typical child. i just had to constantly remind him to use his self control. That was fantastic.

Bizarre Impulses

On Friday, Jane was having a hard time. Her pencil was not sharp enough to write with. When she was given a new sharp pencil, it was somehow too sharp. She screamed AHHHHHHHHHHH ITS TOO SHARP and stabbed her self in the hand with it. Blood was all over her writing assignment. I can't imagine feeling the need to stab your self just because something is sharp. The other children are afraid of her. To be honest, I used to be afraid of her until I started working with her daily. Now I understand that most of her behaviors are a result of her anxiety and I can reassure her that I am here to help her. This reassurance calms her a bit.

Today (and almost any given day), Andrew was sitting on the floor listening to a story, he turned around quickly to no one and started screaming Patsy Cline's "Crazy" someday he will burst into "Cry Me a Wiver (River)" or "I'm a Joker, I'm a Smoker, I'm a midnight Toker". The children in his class no longer even react when he breaks into song, it is very amazing.

Mahesh has been in isolation for uncontrollable behavior including hiding a pencil in his shorts then stabbing his teacher in the back with it as she walked down the hall. He has not been allowed out for recess because he is endangering other children, so I have been giving him a private boot camp to give him exercise and to let him know that he is not in charge. Today, I was going to have him walk up and down the stairs 20 times but at 19 times he started refusing, so I told him that no was the wrong answer and he had to do 11 more, he said no again which was the wrong answer, so he had to eat lunch in isolation. At the beginning of each step from there on he said" Yes is the right answer I will do it again". This I could not believe after seeing so much Oppositional Defiance from him. He then did 20 wall push ups and marching in place for 2 minutes. When he went into the regular ed room with his special ed teacher closely supervising, he told her that he was going to do the right thing so he can make her happy! Progress was made, hopefully he won't have to work in an isolation box for much longer.