DEFUSING THE AUTISM BOMB
By Binyamin Rose
Courtesy of Mishpacha Magazine
The “autism bomb” exploded on Stephen Shore at age 18 months, when he withdrew from his environment and stopped all verbal communication. Doctors told his parents they had never seen such a sick child and recommended his institutionalization.
That was 1964. Today, Dr. Stephen Shore is assistant professor of special education at Adelphi University. The elementary school teacher who once remarked that Shore would never learn mathematics might have been surprised to see him teaching university-level statistics courses.
Dr. Shore shared his early personal and current professional experiences during a break between lectures at Jerusalem’s 2012 International Autism Conference, sponsored by the New York-based ICare4 Autism International, which is building the world’s first global autism center on a 5-acre site adjoining Hebrew University.
Some 2 million Americans have been diagnosed with autism, which researchers define as a group of related genetic disorders that are rooted in genetic and environmental factors.
Dr. Shore is blessed because his parents advocated for him, and kept him out of institutions by implementing an intensive, home-based early-intervention program.
At first, his mother focused on getting him to imitate her. “It didn’t work,” said Dr. Shore. “A real key turning point was when my mother flipped it around and began imitating me. Once she did, I became aware of her and my environment, and she was able to move me along.
“The important educational implication is before any teaching goes on, you have to develop a trusting relationship.”
Dr. Shore’s power of speech returned at age four. By age six, he was able to attend a regular kindergarten class in Newton, Massachusetts, where he was “a social and academic catastrophe” and was bullied.
Like most autistic children, he pursued his own special interest with a passion-- devouring science books in the library, taking copious notes and copying diagrams. In middle school he joined the school band. That musical experience has been invaluable in helping him stir the emotions of autistic children through musical instruction.
While he prefers to start autistic children on the piano or the recorder, he says even if they have an inclination to play the tuba, he will play along. “What I do is to create fun activities that explore the elements of music and make the learning of music highly experimental. I remember teaching one child how to conduct. We took turns conducting each other. When I conducted ‘big’, he learned to play loud, and when I conducted ‘small’, he would play soft.”
When young autistics become adults, entering the job market can be a formidable and fearsome task, especially going through the interview process that normally calls for some opening ‘small talk’, a process that is unfathomable to autistics.
“The best way to sidestep it,” says Dr. Shore, “is to put the portfolio of their work in front of the person with the authority to hire as soon as possible, because the most important thing is showing the employer you can get the job done and do it right.”
He proved this himself as a youth, when he bought a customized bicycle, learned to disassemble and reassemble it, and then popped into bicycle stores and talked shop with the manager. Once he had proven his expertise, he would ask for a job as a mechanic. “It was obvious by then that I knew how to do it.”
Dr. Shore says more employers are beginning to see now what those bicycle shop owners knew then. “We’re at the beginning of an era where employers are beginning to recognize the contributions that autistic people can make.”