Baltimore Examiner: Anne Arundel County Renovates "Snoezelen" Room for Autistic Students Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Examiner, February 21, 2007:

[...] Today, the snoezelen room at Central Special School is only four white walls with a bare white floor.

But after a planned $14,000 renovation that will occur during the next three years, the multisensory stimulation room will be transformed into a captivating haven for the school’s autistic students.

...

"It’s an environment that would probably be calming for just about anybody. For a person with autism, it can also help them focus," said Jennifer Repella, director of information for the Autism Society of America. Autism is a disability that hinders the development of social and communication skills.

For out-of-state readers, Anne Arundel County has about 500,000 people, middle-income, immediately south of Baltimore. Traditionally it is considered suburban Baltimore rather than suburban Washington but the western rim of the county abutting the Patuxent River is oriented more towards Washington and is closer to Washington than to Baltimore. Then again, Reisterstown NW of Baltimore has become a Washington suburb for at least one long-commuting attorney....

My family lives in Baltimore County, which surrounds Baltimore City but does not include the City (the jurisdictions are parallel and border each other, but do not overlap.) We have been quite pleased with Sam's autism services from both the Department of Social Services and the County Board of Ed. Sam is making progress towards his goals. His autism is less profound than that of some students; he enjoys being held and rough-housed with (in age-appropriate ways for a 4 year old), uses limited but clear speech to connive his parents into giving him a cookie and gets along quietly with just about anyone. He does not seem to have a need for a sensory stimulation environment as of now; he likes his music and toys and loves to sing (well) and play percussion at perfect 4/4 time, something he did not learn from his Dad. (His parents could probably benefit from a sensory deprivation room, however.)

I have not talked much about Sam for a few reasons. One is that I don't see my kids as an ornament to show off to strangers. Another is that it risks boring the reader to tears. I am self-absorbed enough without adding "self-absorbed obnoxious Dad" into the pile. But autism is a matter of public health, education and employment law policy as much as any other topic. Perhaps my talking a little more about Sam will help others, in some small way, learn from our experience. He's not at the age yet when I can really mortify him by discussing his business in public; frankly, autistic people tend (usually) to be less concerned about that sort of thing, anyway.

Autistic people have a great variety of needs. Some never leave home, some live in group homes. Some get math degrees from Princeton. Some get doctorates. Many work in technical fields, where picking up on subtle social clues is less important (e.g. graphic design jobs and software engineering are common placements.) A lot of autistic people fail to get employment not because they cannot get the work done well or they lack a work ethic, but because they get interviewed by HR rather than by the technical departments and HR down-rates them.

The long list of ways in which the world should be made more humane should include making it more hospitable to autistic styles of being, seeing and working. Most autistic people are not Rain Man, though it is speculated that much of what has gotten perceived as eccentric genius or, perhaps overbroadly, intellectual nerd culture is a partial by-product of variant forms of autism or related. The highest rates of autism diagnosis for children in some recent years in the U.S. have been in Santa Clara County, California, the home of Silicon Valley. This suggests a correlation between software and engineering skills in parents and autism-spectrum disorders in children (but does not prove a correlation and certainly does not prove or disprove any cause or causes.)

Odds are, if you don't know any families with autistic people, you are incorrect (or maintain a very narrow social circle.) You may hear references to Asperger's Syndrome, which has been placed on the autism spectrum. There are autistic bloggers, some of whom blog about autism but more of whom blog about, well, things that are more interesting to them in addition to, or rather than, autism-spectrum disorders. Another time, I will provide a post highlighting autistic bloggers and authors and self-help organizations by and for autistic people.