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* My Experience of Early Intervention in Autism 2002 * Diet/Allergy Therapy 2003  *Storms for Bullies 2007   

My Experience of Early Intervention in Autism (2002)

After my friend informed that VH, my youngest son, has autism, I started trying to educate him.

Very early I found out that I had to fight with his grandparents to teach him and that I could not make him to understand or learn anything. I analyzed the cause and believed that VH was spoiled by his grandparents and he did not go through a normal babyhood. For example:

-  He was handheld all the time.

    I had a very hard time making him understand what a baby does, e.g., he did not know how to crawl, cry, baby talk,
    or baby walk ... etc.

-  He did not know what the feeling of pain was.

   The grandparents treated him as if he were a doll, not allowing him to have any chance to get hurt. That meant VH

   was not allowed to go any place or be exposed to average life experiences at all. For example,

   When Van-Hai was two years old, I gave him a tricycle, and two days later the grandparents took it away because he

    fell down. It saddened me that he fell down, but he needed to learn about falling down.

    When he was 4 and half years old, I saw that he kept pushing his elder brother who is a normal child, off the training
    bike. When I asked his brother to get off the bike. VH got on the bike and rode very well which surprised all of us.

    When I took him to the school playground to practice riding the bike, he kept hitting the wall, chasing me in every

    direction, or falling off the training bike. In these actions, I realized two things:  

    *  He knew how to ride the bike which enabled him to chase me in every direction.

    *  He intentionally hit the wall or fell down to get the new feeling - pain.

-    If he fell down or cried for some unknown reason, the grandparents would blame everything and anyone and made
    everyone work hard to cheer him up.

-   He did not need to ask for food or drink.

     He was fed every two hours even through the night.

-     He could do anything he wanted.

    For example, he broke his brother’s toys or tore his brother’s favorite books, and he laughed very hard because liked

     the sound that breaking and tearing made.

   * His brother got angry because he had very few toys and books and he was forced to share toys and books with VH.

   * When his brother scolded VH for breaking his books/toys, his brother  was punished, and there was never any
      compensation for his brother’s loss.

      His brother learned to hate VH instead of loving him!     

I could not do anything about it unless I wanted a house that was constantly in a boiling fight! The only thing I could do was to take his brother away from VH and protect his brother from unfair treatment since the grandparents did not allow me to do anything to VH.

When VH was 4 and half years old, I realized he is autistic, I fought bitterly with his grandparents to educate him. I did not believe that he had brain damage since his eyes show wisdom. I believed that VH was a spoiled brat and had been made an idiot because he was treated as a doll, not a human. To educate him, I laid down two plans:

-  I needed a real baby to teach VH to go through babyhood.

   Because I could not borrow a baby 24 hours a day, I decided to have a baby of my own.

   * I gave birth to his sister in September, 1994.

-  I needed full education rights to educate VH instead of getting all the interference from grandparents constantly.

   * The grandparents finally agreed to no interference in November, 1994.

To prevent the new baby from having the same problem as VH, I told my husband that I want the full education right to the baby.

1-  When baby came home from hospital, my parents-in-law did the same thing as when VH was a baby.

      They did not allow the baby’s elder brothers to touch the baby.

      As soon as I could stand up after C-section, I brought the baby to her elder brothers’ room and gave her to them and

      taught them how to hold the baby and love their baby sister.

2-   To prevent the baby from weak muscle tone as VH due to too much hand holding, I trained the baby to do push-ups

       instead of holding her whenever she kept crying and there was nothing wrong.

       During her push-ups, I sang the alphabet song or counted the numbers to her and VH and was able to train VH to do
       the same thing.

3-   I played Sesame Street tapes for the baby whenever she was awake starting at 2 weeks old.

      I had around 35 tapes which were recorded for VH. These tapes helped him to open his mind to learn.

4-  I gave the baby Van-Hai’s Skill Training Folder, and all his training toys.      

      After I gained full education right from grandparents, I started to do behavior modification on VH since he had

      horrible behavior patterns.     

      * It took me around one and half years of hard work to correct his worst behaviors.

      * Every time I got mad with VH, grandma sent the baby to the study room. I had to train VH and baby at

         the same time.         

         The interesting point is that VH could learn better when he was watching how I taught the baby.

5-  I tried to delay the immunization shots until the baby was healthy.

     But the last time I brought her to get shots on 1/5/1996, the nurse recommended to get all the shots done since she

     was late for some shots. After the shots, she did four things:

    - She packed her favorite blanket and moved to sleep with her grandma.

    - She refused to get in the car.

- She refused to go outside the house except that I occasionally persuaded her to walk to playground.

    - She was terrified whenever a stranger adult neared her.

I felt very strange. To prevent any disaster, I did the following:

-      I went to Saratoga Library to borrow around 30 children’s education tapes every three weeks.   

    These tapes covered  how to read the alphabet and count numbers. After she could read alphabet and number, I got
    the next set of tapes that teaches how to read a simple book and other preschool activities.

-   I prepared flash cards to teach her how to read words and numbers,  later sentences.

-   I set up a home library which contains various topics for teaching both VH and baby.

Wendy enjoyed the above activities very much. The following interesting situations occurred when she was around three years old:

      -      She packed her favorite blanket and moved back to sleep with her mom.

-           She could read the simple picture books.

-           She loved to get in the car and go to the Saratoga Library to get her favorite tapes.

Since she agreed to get in the car, I set up the following activities for her:

-           Registered her in Montessori preschool.

-           Brought her to the gathering of  Friends of Children in Special Need (FCSN).

-           Signed her up for swimming lessons.  

-           Signed her up for Chinese lessons. 

Unfortunately she refused to join any of the above activities, and I have to threaten her that she would not be allowed to go to Saratoga Library to borrow tapes if she did not go to the above activities. The result was that all the activities failed miserably.

-  She refused to take swimming lessons from the teacher.

    She kept crying until both teacher and I surrendered.

-   In FCSN, from beginning of 1998 to the end of 1999, she sat in the stroller (otherwise, she sat on my lap) and 
    covered herself with her favorite blanket for two years.

She refused to join any activity, and she cried if anyone tried to invite her to join the activities.

    She drew her own pictures or worked the fun books instead of listening to the teacher in the classroom.

-    She was a failing case for Montessori preschool.

    I sent her to Montessori preschool in 12/97. She felt miserable there because:

   * Every time she cried, she was sent to the office.

      Hence, she stayed in the office over one month which broke the school record for the children staying the office.

   * There was no diaper training in this preschool.

      Since she had no model, it was impossible for us to train her.

   * Montessori emphasizes the free spirit which Wendy has lack of.

   * Every morning I had to drag her to school.

In April, 1998, the Montessori preschool notified me that Wendy could not get any benefit from the school and I had better find someplace else for her.

I looked around and no school could take her. I put her in the Rainbow Preschool waiting list and called the school every week for 3 months.  Finally, there was an opening and she entered the Rainbow preschool in July, 1998.

Rainbow Preschool was a perfect fit for Wendy.

-  They did diaper training by the following methods:

   * Wendy observed the other kids doing diaper training.

   * They trained us how to work with school on diaper training.

   By the end of August, Wendy completed diaper training!

-   They did not put Wendy in the office whenever she cried.

   They encouraged the other kids to understand why Wendy cried, and encouraged them to comfort her. She stopped

   crying in a couple days.

-  Wendy loved the school instead of hating it.

    She felt that everyone loves her and she could play with all the kids.

-   They found out that Wendy had overall delay in her development.

   * Every time there was a kid that fell down or got a bee sting, Wendy was one of them.

   * Wendy could not understand the lessons or speech based on her age.

Since I went through a similar situation with Van-Hai, I knew what I should do. I contacted the school district to evaluate Wendy. The result was that Wendy did have a problem, and she was qualified to go to special education.

Unfortunately, by the time the results of the evaluation were returned, summer was near and Wendy was supposed to go to kindergarten in September. I made the decision to go to regular kindergarten because Williams is a well-known blue ribbon school and she might have a chance to fit in with the help from speech therapy and adapted physical education.

Because Wendy had an adult-phobia syndrome, I was very worried whether she could cope with kindergarten life. I sent her teacher a copy of IEP and explained about Wendy’s situation. The teacher was very understanding and gave her special treatment.

Gradually, Wendy adjusted the new environment. I thought that finally everything was fine with Wendy. Her teacher sent notes requesting the parents to work on Wendy’s math because no one could make her understand simple math problems although she could talk one mile per minute.

In FCSN, she started enjoying herself after she adjusted kindergarten life in 2000. She played with all the kids, and talked to the teachers all the time. FCSN gatherings become her favorite program. If she does not behave, I can threaten to not bring her to the gathering (to make FCSN gathering more attractive to the children, I call it party time.).

Originally, I had an agreement with my husband that he was to take care of Wendy and I would take care of Van-Hai.

Due to her father failing teaching Wendy math, in 6/2000 Wendy started to attend Abacus/Mental Math class. In 9/2000, she became the best student in math in her class, and has confidence and enjoyed math very much.

I thought that everything would be fine now. I took a suggestion from a friend not to send the IEP results to the first grade teacher to allow Wendy to have a normal life. The result is that the first grade teacher kept sending notes home that Wendy did poor in both school work and homework. She summoned both parents to school for conference.

I brought the IEP results with me for the conference. Her teacher expressed the following:

-  Wendy was mentally behind two years of her age.

    She could not understand age-appropriate concepts or activities.

-   She did poorly in homework and that needed to be improved.

-   She could not comprehend the school work because she was lacking  many real-life experiences.

    She suggested Wendy attend various extra-activities and play with the kids that were same age as she.

-    If she could not improve by the coming April’s conference, she would  be retained to re-study the first grade.

Based on the conference I realized that Wendy had the similar problem as VH although her symptom was less serious than VH’s. Hence, I planned to put Wendy in the same therapy as VH:

-  I supervise Wendy to do homework instead of her father.

   Since Wendy did poor in her homework, it meant that her father flunked in the homework of first grade although he

   claimed that teacher made homework stupid. 

   When I took over her homework I found out that she was afraid of drawing. To solve this issue I talked to her brother’s
   art teacher to see whether she could get in. Unfortunately, the answer was no because the class was full and I had to put
   her on a waiting list in the same class because Wendy had adult-phobia syndrome and she would refuse to learn if her

   big brother was not there to enforce the study.

  * In January 2001 she got in the same art class that her brothers were taking.

     She refused to follow the teacher’s instruction for the first three months which were better than VH in some sense

     because VH did his own dinosaur skeleton drawings for a year.

-    I signed her up in Kuk Sul Do exercise class in 11/2000.

    Kuk Sul Do has been helping Van-Hai improve his physical condition, and I am sure that Wendy would get the same

    benefit. But Wendy refused to join the exercise class and sat on the bench for three months.  When I tried to drag her
    down, she kept screaming. To help her attend the class, I changed our schedule to join the class containing the kids
    around her age, and this action proved to be excellent. She started to join the class and began playing with the other
    kids in the class.

-   In 11/2000 I started to teach her the piano and brought her to observe Van-Hai’s piano lesson since her adult phobia
   syndrome prevented her from taking piano lessons.

-  She attended chess, dance and art drawing classes after school programs for a semester in spring 2001. 

In April 2001, her teacher said that her mental age caught up one year, and she could go to the second grade in

September, 2001.

Since all the programs helped Wendy improve her mental age, I arranged for Wendy to attend all skill therapies VH has been attending with the hope that her mental age can catch up with physical age:

- In July 2001 Wendy started to take piano lessons from VH’s teacher. She enjoys the lessons very much.

- In September 2001 I signed her up for Chinese class, and pulled VH to the same class too.

  Wendy enjoyed  it very much. In one month, she overtook VH and became his Chinese tutor.

In the beginning of second grade, I submitted IEP results to Wendy’s teacher to prevent any complaints from the teachers.

In November 2001 her second grade teachers had concerns about Wendy’s clinging to the teachers which is not age appropriate. I did not know how to handle it since I am already swamped with Van-Hai’s problems. Her teacher arranged for her to see a counselor.

The conciliation seemed to help Wendy’s development. Since there were no other complaints from her teachers, my life is much easier than before. Thank God! 

In May 2002 Wendy skill age caught up to her biological age except for the grammar part. Her teachers commented that Wendy is like a little sponge and absorbs every subject and tries very hard to please everyone! Her teachers believe that all the classes Wendy attends help Wendy to reach today’s state.

Thanks to all of her teacher’s for their support!

 Diet/Allergy Therapy (2003)

When I first heard about diet control for allergy, I never thought that my family had anything to do with it because none of us has any frequent symptom of sneezing, ear infection, spotty skin, watery eyes, sickness, and etc..

I never went down this path to do any investigation until my autistic son showed non-stoppable violent behavior and I drained out my wits in helping him.

When Van-Hai entered puberty stage, his behavior became violent. With behavior modification, he was barely controllable. With piano music control, his behavior improved but all other developmental skills did not have any enhancement.

Thanks to Mai-Lin, she persuaded me to see Dr. Marinkovich and found out Van-Hai has surprisingly many allergies. With doctor's suggestion, I started a brand-new regimen of treatments:

1.  Van-Hai started to take Creon 10 Enzyme in 8/2000

     Result: With or without Creon, the symptom did not

                   have change. Hence, I dropped it until doctor

                   requested me to try it again with diet control.

2.  After the discussion with doctor about the result of  allergy blood test, I did the following actions in 10/2000:

          -   I went to Van-Hai's school to request the

              teachers' help to avoid Van-Hai's allergies.

          -   I put Van-Hai under the following control:

              Ÿ        Diet Control

              Ÿ         Creon 10 (Enzyme)

              Ÿ         Vitamin A 

              Ÿ        Multiple Vitamin

Diet Control and Creon 10   Van-Hai did not give me any trouble when I made him to take Creon every 4 hours, but it was very hard to make him to do diet control because of the following reasons:

      -  He had many allergies and almost nothing he could

        eat for the present diet. We had fights over the diet

        based on the allergy test result. After one month's

        struggle, we compromised for Van-Hai not to eat any

        food with 3 stars and above and did our best to avoid

        the food with 2 stars.

     -  His siblings could eat the food which he was not

       allowed to eat. Especially his little sister liked to dance

       around him with forbidden food and singing the song,

       "You can't eat and I can eat!".

Result: His violent behavior was getting better in one

              month. Conclusion: His violent temper was

             caused by food allergy.

      Vitamin A and Multiple Vitamin   Doctor

      recommended Van-Hai to take 1 pill of multiple vitamin

      and 2 drops of vitamin A daily. With Vitamin A, Van-

      Hai seems to comprehend a little better. Hence, I

      followed the recommendation to take 1 multivitamin

      pill and 2 drops of vitamin A daily.

      Van-Hai became ill for 1 week in 11/2000, and then

      had high fever to 104 Fahrenheit degree for another

      two weeks which scared me to death. He was 

     always very healthy and never got ill. I examined what I

      did which caused him so ill. The only new factor was

      the diet therapy. Hence, I stopped all actions

      immediately until he became healthy. After he was

     healthy, I restarted the diet therapy in stages:

     1)   Started alternately taking multiple vitamin and

           vitamin A every other day for 2 weeks

           Result: He was still healthy.

      2)   Added diet control and Creon for 2 weeks.

            He was still healthy.

     Conclusion: The overdosed vitamin caused Van-Hai

      very ill!

Cranberry Juice   Since allergy is the key to Van-Hai's violent behavior problem, how can I do to reduce the effect from allergy? Cranberry juice came to my mind.

 Since Van-Hai had so many allergies and cranberry

juice is famous in cleaning some bad factors from human body, I made Van-Hai to take this juice as his only drink.

There is one dilemma is that cranberry is very sour, and Van-Hai refused to drink it. Hence, I started experiments by mixing it with different juices.  (All the juice is the natural juice without any additive.)

      -     2 cranberry juice to 1 apple juice 

             It was still too sour!

    -       1 cranberry juice to 1 apple juice

             It was still too sour!

    -       1 cranberry juice to 2 apple juice

             He accepted it with reluctance.

    -       1 cranberry juice to 3 apple juice and 1 pear juice

             He enjoys drinking it.

From then on, natural Cranberry Apple Pear Juice becomes his daily drink.

Result of diet control, Creon, vitamin and Cranberry apple pear juice

      Van-Hai had the following improvements:

        -  He stopped violent behavior in 1/2001.

       -  He was willing to try new food which is not on the

          allergy list.

          But we all felt miserable because he could not eat

          the food he desired and his little sister teased him

         constantly.

     All siblings had allergy tests in 1/2001

There were three reasons for me to determine bringing Van-Hai’s siblings to do the same allergy tests:

     1.      I had hard time making Van-Hai on diet because

              his siblings did not cooperate.

     2.      Van-Hai and his siblings come from the same

              parents, and they share the same gene.

              What is the difference between Van-Hai and

              his siblings and it made him to be autistic and his

              siblings to be normal?

      3.     If Van-Hai has so many allergies which worsen

              his autism symptom, what do his siblings have

              which can cause difference? What is the

              pattern?

With these unanswered questions, I brought his siblings to go through the same allergy blood test. The result was interesting:

     Ÿ         His big brother has many allergies but  

                  fewer and less serious than he.

           Ÿ         His little sister has more allergies and more

                        serious than he.

Based on test results, every child was put on diet to get equal treatment since they all have allergies. The result was unexpected:

    Ÿ        His big brother tried his best but he did not

             like any food which was given to Van-Hai.   

             Negotiation: He will not eat any Van-Hai's

             favorite food in front of Van-Hai.

     Ÿ       His little sister held me and cried very hard!

             But rule is the rule, she had to be on diet! 

             She was always very picky on food. During diet

             control, she was barely eating anything although

             her attention and learning capability were

             improved.

            Since health is the top of priority for her and she

            does not have autism, I had to give up her diet

            control. But I gave her warning:

            she will be put on diet immediately if she dances

            around Van-Hai with forbidden food.

     Result: After his siblings were cooperating on diet

                  philosophy, Van-Hai is much more corporate

                  on diet control.      

Increase dosage from Creon 10 to Ultrase 18

     In 01/2001 doctor changed from Creon 10 to Ultrase 18 after I told doctor that Creon 10 has good effect on Van-Hai. With Ultrase 18, he has slightly better temper.

Since all the treatments on Van-Hai help him through puberty crisis, I had the questions whether they can help normal people.

    Ÿ        Since Ultrase is Enzyme, it does not have side

              -effect, and it does help Van-Hai.

    Ÿ        Van-Hai has the same physical change,

             enormous pinpoints, like his big brother as soon

             as entering puberty period.

             His pinpoints seemed to get better when he

             started to take Ultrase.

    Ÿ        The different diet seemed to have good effect on

             his siblings although failed at the end.

    Ÿ        I have been working on a safe method to treat

             pinpoints for the family, and failed. 

With the above consideration, his big brother started to take Creon 10/Ultrase 18 in 2/2001 since his big brother was still in puberty stage. After one month taking the Enzyme, his big brother’s pinpoints situation was improved.

It is interesting to finally find out a method to treat our pinpoints problem without side effects after so many failures

Effort to go beyond diet control  

With the complete diet control plus cranberry juice and Ultrase 18, Van-Hai once again became a nice nature child in 4/2001. But I felt very sorry for him, his face looked very sad whenever he picked up food and I told him that he could not eat!   I started seeking possibilities to allow him eat the forbidden food without digressing his allergy treatment.

    Ÿ         Allowed him to eat one item at a time on 2-

              stars allergy list.

    Result: It did not make him have bad temper.

    Measuring Tool: I used Mental Math to measure

    whether the food will cause any problem because

    Mental Math requires a lot of concentration and brain

    power. Mental Math can measure whether the food

    caused any damage through blood circulating to the

    brain.

Ÿ         With doctor's agreement, Van-Hai is allowed to

          eat the food on 3-stars list one item at a time.

Result:  he was still fine.

After he can eat all the food on 3-star list, he started to eat the food on 4-stars list.

Result: he turned violent within 1 hour! I had to wait around 4 hours to get him cool down. 
         

With various experiments, I found out the reasons that Van-Hai turns to violent:

      Ÿ         He eats the forbidden food on 4-star list.

      Ÿ         He forgot to take Ultrase 18.

With all the above efforts, I am very happy that Van-Hai can almost eat everything except milk, cheese and eggs, and he is now a happy young man with autism symptom.

NuThera P5P

 Thanks to Bin-Jen, she told me that her child learning and speech ability improved after taking NuThera P5P. This is a mother’s dream that there exists a way to help these most difficult areas which had been failing for so

many years.

Van-Hai started to take NuThera in 7/2001, and in 8/2001 Van-Hai’s speech and learning capability did get better.

In this stage, Van-Hai was reasonably under control if he obeys the following rules:

    1.      Take Ultrase 18 and NuThera pill every 4 hours

             and 4 times everyday.

    2.      Drink Cranberry Apple Pear juice.

    3.      Do no eat the forbidden food on 4-star list.

    Unfortunately, he usually does not follow the rules.

FAME shot  - Allergy shot for food allergies

In 1/03/2002 doctor gave him FAME shot because Van-Hai did not take medication as instructed by doctor. FAME shot is M-EPD Antigen Mix. After 2 weeks from the shot, he became gradually more social and more aware

of his environment. The effect of FAME shot lasts for 2 months. After 2 months, he seemed not so actively engage the social activities any longer.

Now, Van-Hai has a FAME shot every two months, and he will keep the following plan:

    1.      one shot every two months for 2 years

    2.      one shot every 4 months for 2 times

    3.      one shot every 6 months for 2 times
       

 If there exists bad effect, it will be reversed back to step 2.

If everything is OK, he might grow out of allergy problem.

Result: After one year shots, Van-Hai gradually improves in social interest, conversation and comprehension.

AEI shot - Allergy shot for environment allergies

In 1/3/03 doctor gave Van-Hai both of FAME and AEI shots because he showed good progress in the food allergy control, and these two shots are supposed not to interfere with each other.

After these two shots, he felt miserably immediately and his situation had lasted for two days. I was suspicious that it was overdosed situation for him. Hence, I stopped AEI shot until the doctor explained that his strong reaction

was caused by strong allergy.

Since he has so strong reaction for both shots at the same time, I changed to get each shot in different month, and this method worked wonder.  

Conclusion

 When I did diet control, every new element has to be tested for two weeks before a decision can be made whether it is good, bad or no effect. If the element has the good effect, it will be kept; otherwise, it will be dropped.

Thanks for FCSN’s information sharing system, I learn that diet control can help autistic children. Thanks to grandparents’ fully support in the diet

control. They always cook the special dishes to support Van-Hai’s food allergy. With whole family’s support, Van-Hai’s diet therapy is successful. 

 Storms from Bullies (2007) 

<published in FCSN Newsletter>

VH's best skill is in art and Lincoln High School is famous for art. So, September, 2003, his mother requested that he join a Learning Disability Day Class at the school. Most children in the school are Latino. It should be noted that before he enrolled in Lincoln High School VH was a well behaved child at his previous school, Bret-Harte Middle School.

Due to resource constraints, VH did not get a chance to attend art classes in his freshman year. In October, 2003, after he started sessions in the Learning Disability Day Class, classmates began calling him something. VH could not understand what they were saying and what it all meant. At first his mother thought these were merely friendly greetings from his classmates. But it turned out to be much more sinister; it was name calling. In November he told his mother that a lot of his Learning Disability classmates bullied him by calling him names.

At first his mother believed the bullying were minor incidents and would go away if VH simply ignored the bullies. Unfortunately, his mother did not realize that bullying only gets worse if not stopped early on.

Note:

   -   In this dialog I use “his mother” rather than “I” to

       emphasize that parents of children with special needs

       should know about bullying. Ignorance is not  

       an excuse to allow a child to walk through the hell of

        bullies.

    -  The bullies did more than call VH names. They

        physically abused him.

        They used their feet to trip him and they shoved him

        from behind several times.

        He was not seriously hurt because of his resiliency

        learned after five years of practice in the martial arts.

Beginning November, 2003 the bullying went from bad to worse. The issue of bullies was raised during the annual IEP meeting in March, 2004 and the teachers and school promised to take care of it. Unfortunately, the fixes the school put in place only worked a short period of time.

The bullies, again, started snickering and used various methods to harass VH in ways the teachers’ were not aware of. For example:

-          The bullies kicked desks around VH to block

            him from going out of the classroom.

-          They called him names when passing him near him.

-          They would block him in the hallway, calling him

            names and making him late for class.

-          They surrounded him and called him names during

            lunch break.

-          They wrote the names they were calling him, along

            with other rude things, in his notebook.

-          They blocked him and called him names after

            school.

VH became more aware and sensitive to his environment after he entered Brain Enhancement Program (BEP) treatment in July, 2004.

 Note: The Brain Enhancement Program (BEP) improves a child’s learning capabilities by improving the integrated

functions of the brain neuron systems.

As time went on, the bulling got worse. It got to the point that VH would hide in the classroom during lunch break, he couldn’t even go out onto the playground. And he tried very hard to out-run the bullies after school or whenever he had to. The long-term effect of this continuous bullying is sad and dreadful…VH lost his good nature and he became hateful.

His mother determined that Lincoln High School no longer met VH’s needs regardless of how good the school might be at teaching art. It was time for him to go to another and, hopefully, more friendly high school. At the second annual IEP meeting his mother planned to request a transfer for VH to move to a high school near

home.

Unfortunately, the IEP meeting was not held on schedule because of absentee teachers and there was a delay of several months. In the mean time the bullying continued.

When the meeting did finally happen the request to transfer VH from Lincoln to Leland High school was raised.

The reason for the request was, of course, that the Lincoln’s teachers could not seem to take care of the bullying problems. The main reason given by the school was that there was not one single student that stood up and admitted to bullying VH. And, since no one admitted the crime, the teachers could do nothing about it!!!

A further problem was that no one took care of IEP requirements on how to handle bullies because, somehow, the IEP document on matters of bullying disappeared when one of the IEP teachers left school.

One day, after this long-term abuse, VH lost patience and exploded. He retaliated and bit a bully girl on her hand because she continually called him names. VH as suspended from school immediately for the following reasons:

-         There was no witness to support VH’s claim of

           being bullied and VH admitted the biting.

-         The bully girl did not admit she was name-calling

           and she had witnesses to vouch for her.

-         Since VH had no witnesses to stand by him and

           no one admitted bullying him and the bullies had

           many witnesses claiming they were innocent, VH
           was marked a liar!

-         The school’s discipline principal declared that was it

           was disgusting that VH would bite people and

           that he was a bad boy and trouble maker!

The only good thing out of this mess was that VH got immediate permission to transfer to Leland High School. But more than two years of bullying and abuse left the following marks on VH:

-          He was easily upset.

-          He became extremely upset if someone called him

           stupid or related terms.

-          He refused to talk about the nightmare life in

            Lincoln High School.

-          Whenever his mother talked about bullies, he
            would cry and grind his teeth.

-          He rejected any form of being pushed or
           persuaded to study, which meant that his mother
           could not make him study at home. 
 

But things got better.

Enormous thanks to VH’s case manager, Ms. Crystal Su, from the San Andreas Regional Center. She helped VH and his family to fight many bully battles against the unfair treatment he experienced at Lincoln High School. And she explained his situation and the circumstances to teachers and staff at the new school, Leland High School. Without her help, it might not have been possible for VH to be so easily accepted by his new school!

Thank God that the teachers in Leland High School understand that:

-         An autistic child does not lie.

           A child with autism has enough problem expressing

           himself, not to mention knowing how to tell lies.

-         Bullies are dishonest.

           Bullies will not tell the truth because they know they

           will get punished by their behavior.

At Leland the teachers stopped any bullying the instant it happened and VH’s nightmares of bullies finally reached to the end. During a year and a half of the gentle care at Leland High School, VH made a lot of improvement:

-- He is no longer easily upset.

- He does not cry any more whenever his mother talks

  about bullies,

-- He became less sensitive but is still easily hurt when

    people say something about being “stupid”. And he

   does not like his work touched by his peers. He gets

   upset and sometimes even hits other students if they do

   corrections on his papers because he is fearful that his

   classmates might start bullying him if they find out he

   cannot do as well as they.

- He accepted gentle persuasion to study at home.

- His social language improved to that of a 4 year old.

- His comprehension improved to that of a 6 year old.

Even with these improvements it means that VH needs to be watched over and can not be allowed stay home alone.

Enormous thanks to all the teachers, especially to Mr. Dean Schaeppler, and the staff at Leland High School; they gave VH trust, care and dignity. As a result VH once again became a gentle, sweet and happy young man.