Helping my brother with reading...and everything else

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I recently joined to help my little bro. I have a seven-year-old brother who has autism and is pretty high-functioning. He's funny, chess-obsessed, and has nice tastes in music. His teachers said that his performance is low in basically every school subject and that they'll let him go to second grade in September, but later on, he might get held back. I'm helping him with his reading, but progress has been slow. He can read anything...but comprehending is hard. Sometimes he reads words like he's rapping. Unless I tell him to concentrate, he doesn't focus on the meaning. But I know it's hard for him and I can tell he's trying.

Is there anything that I can do on my end that will boost his confidence in reading and help with comprehension? Is there anything that I can do now, like skills or school stuff, that can make it easier for him later?

So kind of you to go to such lengths to try to understand your brother! I'm not a parent, but will try to give some advice anyways . First of all, it's common to have attention deficit disorder (ADD) together with autism (I have both), you should maybe look into that just to be sure (many different types, it can be mental only, doesn't have to have the obvious physical behaviors). Secondly, having obsessive special interests is really common for autism, what immediately comes to mind for me is to see if you can somehow try to combine his special interest (chess) with school subjects, although it would require some creativity. Maybe get some books and stories that are chess related and use them to practice. If he loves chess, then he probably possesses a strong talent for analysis which he just struggles to direct to things he is uninterested in (that could be due to ADD), so I think with the right adjustments, he might find he is capable at and can enjoy math as well. He will probably have to find some strategies that are personally effective for him, everyone is different, but if he does, it might help in the future.

Hi, thanks for helping your brother.

First off: you have to have confidence that your brother is perfectly fine the way he is. It's not that he needs to adapt to the school or the teacher. It's the other way around. Autistic children learn differently. The main mistake of our society is wanting too much to make autistic children "normal" first, so that they can learn from public schools. Autism happened *before* we humans had public schools. So, if anything needs to change, it's our public school system.

Your brother needs development: brain development. That, should be the priority. Whether he does well or not in school, is totally irrelevant. This is what I tell my children's teachers: I don't care about my children's academic performance, at all. I only care about their creativity. Even if my children get zero score in tests, I'll still be a happy parent, as long as I see they keep their creativity and are developing intellectually. (As it turns out, my children actually perform pretty well in school, despite my disregard for their academics.) School, is just a small part to my children's development.

As another person has pointed out: you have to leverage your brother's interests to develop him. Chess is good, music is good. More than 50% of children on the spectrum like elevators, so elevators are good, too. Schools can help to create these opportunities. You should keep in close touch with school and participate in the Parent-Teacher meetings as well. Keep weekly e-mail communication with the teacher, so that you can learn what happens in school. And vice-versa, you communicate to the teacher about your brother's interests and passions at home. For instance, my son likes elevators, carnivorous plants, mousetraps, etc. So, the teacher will ask him write essays (with drawings) on these objects. We even create opportunities for him to do presentations. Here is an example with my son's first grade presentation on the elevator inside the Washingon monument:



We also supply the school with a stack of sketching pads. So, whenever my son is bored in class, he is allowed to draw pictures and not pay attention to the class.

Go visit your local public library and talk to the librarians there. Look for odd, funny books with pictures. In a recent thread in this you see "Elephant and Piggie" series being mentioned. My son likes anything funny and odd: dinosaur walking in cities, Captain Underpants, carnivorous plants, Mercy Watson, etc. Here is a video clip of him reading about a lizard wrapped in leaves and stuck with honey:



Read the other thread on this topic: http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=358488

Because school teachers tend to lack drawing skills, you need to mobilize your family to draw pictures for your brother, until the point that he can draw pictures himself. It's not about input, it's about output: he needs to acquire interest and skills in expressing himself, through his hands. Pictures will help to connect his good moments to his bad moments, too, and you can help to eliminate his frustrations that way. See:

http://www.eikonabridge.com/fun_and_facts.pdf

Lego, Mega Bloks, snap circuits, (on top of chess and music) all create opportunities for him to express himself, manually. They all create opportunities for essays to improve the writing skills of your brother. Music also create reading opportunities. For instance, my son learned about the meaning of "splinter" from a dreidel song. My daughter learned to memorize a whole song from "Legend of Zelda," she figured out the music notes and she performed on stage:



The thing is: don't pay too much attention to school subjects. Pay attention to your brother's interests, and mobilize everyone at home (including ABA therapists, and respite babysitters if you have them), and in school (class room teachers, aides, speech therapists, etc.) to focus on your brother's interests, and develop your brother from there. Developing your brother as a human being with intellectual capabilities, is much more important than meeting academic requirements in school. You may want to take a look at how Elon Musk raises his children: http://fortune.com/2018/06/26/elon-musk-ad-astra-school/. There are no grades. You will see that I am not the only parent thinking and raising my children differently. The only difference is I don't have the resources of Elon Musk, so I make things happen from within the system. Ha ha. You can always point out Elon Musk's case to school teachers, and tell them about your position.

Oh, and decline/defer all attempts (or as much as possible) from school or ABA therapists on social skill development, or speech therapy. All those are useless activities and cause more harm than good. Your brother is perfectly fine the way he is. He will develop all those skills on his own, no help needed. If he wants play dates, wait until he asks for them. Brain development, in the sense of connecting different parts of his brain, is the only thing he needs. Don't let other people fool you: they have no clue about how to develop autistic children. Autistic children are not defective: our society is. The very first thing in interacting with autistic children is to treat them as equal-rights human beings, and our society fails miserably at that. The moment you think autistic children need "treatments," you are already viewing them as defective and not viewing them as equal peers. The moment you think you need to "teach" them "coping techniques" to handle their temper, you are already not treating them as equal peers. What I want to say is: people out there tend to think that somehow they are superior to autistic children. Don't let them do that. Remember this: the destiny of autistic children is not to fit in, but to stand out. You train them to be leaders, not followers.