When Uriel Sang: Parenting an Exceptional Child by Danny Or Fuchs

Author:Danny Or Fuchs [Fuchs, Danny Or]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-07-10T23:00:00+00:00

Communication Class[10]

We went to see the mayor because we wanted to get to know him and talk about the village’s children who were on the autism spectrum. Our goal was to help establish a treatment center in the area, just like anywhere else in the country. At the time, I was serving as the chairman of the Israeli Society for Autistic Children’s infant division. I arrived at the meeting with the manager of the education department, who said hi and joined the meeting. Then, out of the blue, they announced there wouldn’t be any communication classes in Kfar Vradim next year, as they decided to close them.

“The communication classes will act like a ‘magnet’,” someone remarked.

Others agreed. “If Kfar Vradim becomes a good place for autistic children, the village will be swamped with special needs children.”

And there was no budget for that, of course.

Naturally, I became very upset. After all, the village received large amounts of funds from the Ministry of Education for every child with special needs. So give me a break! Who are you kidding? There’s a budget problem?

Then they said there weren’t enough children to hold a communication class. “Don’t worry. We’ll find you something in the nearest big city.”

Actually, they wanted us to go back to the days when Uriel needed to commute for over two hours each way. Special education classes started at eight o’clock in the morning and ended at 4:45 in the afternoon. Uriel would need to leave at six in the morning and return late in the evening. It was simply unacceptable.

Let me be clear: we’re talking about communication classes. Each class has up to eight children with a special education teacher, an aide, and a team of therapists. The classes are normally located in regular schools so the children can be integrated with a regular class to study subjects they are advanced in, such as computer science, English, arithmetic, or art. The interaction integrates the children within their comfort zones, which is great for both sides. This is how you integrate non-autistic and autistic children and help them learn to accept each other’s unique differences.

Uriel was only six and a half and already spoke English, having learned it all by himself on the computer. He downloaded tons of movies and applications on Natalie’s phone. How did he do it—all by himself, without any guidance? It was pretty crazy. He posted photos on his friends’ Facebook walls and created collages of games and images he downloaded from the Internet.

A friend called us one morning and asked, “What happened? Did Uriel wake up early this morning?”

“Why?”

“Well, he sent me over two hundred and fifty photos…”

Uriel continued stimming and always looked at us with his head tilted sideways. Eventually, I realized he was simply looking straight at us. Like most children on the autism spectrum, Uriel’s eyesight is different.

A bicycle instructor once told me the first time he instructed children on the autism spectrum, they all rode with their eyes looking at the ground. He couldn’t understand what was happening.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.