I'm Pam

Hi everyone,

I'm Pam. And I'm familiar with blogging. My family and friends use it as a means of communicating.

I'm also fractionally familiar with autism. I currently have a student with autism. He's a fifth grader and somewhat high functioning. He has a younger brother who is also autistic and who is much more severe. Only Caleb goes to our school. In another blog, at another time, I'll share what they believe to be the cause of his autism. It's pretty interesting.

He is able to read, but not comprehend or remember what he's read.
He is able to do math calculations, but has difficulty with applied problems.
He fixates on certain things. Right now, he's into "The Munsters". Last year it was the Wizard of Oz.

He has an incredible memory for dates. I mentioned last year that my dad was born in 1917. My dad also passed away on February 28 this year. Caleb was very fascinated by that but we hadn't talked about it since. But the other day he said to me, "Your dad would be 90 now, but he died in February and he was born in 1917 -- a little "Rain Man" like. He also said, "Your mom was born in 1922. She's 85 now." I had also mentioned her birth year. He can tell when all of the actors in the Munsters were born and how old they would be now. It's quite fascinating.

Caleb also has a "stim" - a repetitive motion that seems to soothe him. He will flip the pages of a book with his thumb. I've been told that it's not a good idea to let them indulge in their "stims", because it's a form of escapism for them when they should be engaged in the real world.

Caleb is on a gluten-free, casein-free diet. His mother says that he has improved a lot since going on this. He was new to our school last year so I didn't know him prior to the diet. He is also on medications. Currently they are switching his medications, because he is almost always well-behaved at school, but seems to have problems at home. At school he has had just a few episodes when he was upset by something and the gen ed teacher had to call me to settle him down.

I'm only at my school 4/10 time. I take him each day that I'm there for 30-45 minutes. We also have another teacher's aide at school that works with him some. Most of the time he is in the classroom, and the teacher struggles with what to expect from him. It's a difficult situation, but the parents want him in the Christian environment and want him to just "get" what he can out of the school experience.

I'm looking forward to learning more about ways to improve his reasoning skills, and to help him comprehend what he reads, if that's possible. I'm currently taking a class towards my "Inclusion Specialist" degree which is an incredible amount of work and study, but I will do my best to "study" along with the rest of this Study Team also.