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The behavioral therapist who assessed Julian in October 2010 spent two hours alone with him, took into account his developmental delays and inappropriate behaviors: the pushing, spitting, lack of engagement, and severe language delay; the crashing, breaking, food sensitivities, and meltdowns. Once I joined them, the therapist and I talked as Julian played with a vibrating train. He held the train by a thin string for twenty minutes, lifted the train up high, near the left side of his face, and moved only his eyes, shifted them hard left so he could stare at the bright red blur in his periphery. Perhaps he loved the leftward pulling sensation behind his eyes, the string vibrating in his small hand. Maybe it was the change in perspective as he held the train so close he was able to blur the separation between him and the shiny inanimate object.

Near the end of our session, the therapist smoothed the paper on her desk with one hand, looked at me, and said, “I believe Julian is moderately autistic.”

Her word choice struck me immediately. She hadn’t said “mildly” or “severely.” He wasn’t a little or a lot autistic. He was, according to Webster’s College Dictionary, “within reasonable limits…of average or medium quality.” Was there a reasonable level of disability?

“You do?” I asked because I’d hoped for anything but that, and in my denial, had become certain Julian only suffered from apraxia of speech. Now I needed a minute to recover enough to mask my devastation. 

“I know this can’t be easy for you,” she said, and I lost my resolve not to cry.

At that moment, the Julian I knew – three years old, flirty, quirky, affectionate, in love with movies, cows, and alphabet letters – was gone. In his place stood a little boy from another planet, a familiar stranger. I’d just handed my former son over to a medical statistic, another 1 in 42 boys.

Almost overnight, a whole new existence formed, a parallel world that looked like earth but wasn’t. It was full of specialists with names like Toshio, Toodie, and Tempa, like Lion, Scarecrow, and Tin Man. It was a sudden ambush of therapies I’d never heard of, long drives, too many forms to fill out, and appointments every week.

I didn’t sleep much. I’d wake in a panic at 2 a.m. and tiptoe into his room to watch my newly foreign child sleep. Grief sometimes took an unusual turn. Though I didn’t notice right away, my husband and I had stopped making videos of Julian and his sister, Victoria. We were still learning what autism was, but we perceived it as a loss, as the erasure of a person we thought we knew well. In essence, this meant one of our children had died, and it felt wrong to record the empty space. 

But Julian was very much present; it was his parents who were lost. Still, there was an amorphous loss. Julian wasn’t blind or missing a limb. There was simply no way to truly name or measure what was lost, to label precisely what we were learning to accept. No one could tell me where we’d be in twenty years, what to expect.

If I asked for his name, he told me his age. If I asked his age, he told me his name or launched into a slurred rendition of the alphabet song. At almost four years old, his longest self-composed sentences were two words; he knew about six of these short sentences. His enunciation was awful; therefore, I was one of only a few people who could understand him. He could ask for juice or a toy, but he couldn’t tell me when he was sick, sad, tired, or hurt. He couldn’t tell me he loved me. He couldn’t answer most questions. He didn’t understand words like What, When, Where, How, and especially, Why.

I read countless articles and books about autism, searching for any window into my child, for a cure if one existed. Where were we going with so many hours of therapy, and when would we get there? I asked doctors, teachers, and therapists ten million questions, and still, no one could explain what was lost and whether we’d find it again.

Autism was a social communication disorder with repetitive behaviors, but beyond this general description was a wait-and-see prognosis for every unique child. There was no way to predict what his future would look like. We would have to learn as we went along, accept the trial and error of various therapies, diets, and doctors. His brain was structured differently, not erased. So not only would we need to teach Julian differently, we had to relearn him. 

Although he couldn’t use a spoon, hold a pencil, drink from a cup, sit still, or play with other children, I saw a spark, a hint of a brighter light that was, for now, obscured.

Would he ever read? Write? Sit still? Potty-train? Would he be able to work? Was independence the ultimate goal?

Julian had many challenges, but language was especially difficult. Even though his speech became clearer and he began to memorize entire movie scripts, he still struggled to compose his own sentences.

Then he began using movie lines to communicate with us effectively, but still, how could he achieve independence with “movie talk”? 

In 2016, I heard about Owen Suskind, a young man with autism who used Disney animated movies to express complex emotions like love and loss. In both the book and documentary film, Life, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and Autism, his father, Ron Suskind, explained his support of Owen’s Disney obsession by describing why he communicated with his son using puppets and silly character voices, encouraged Owen’s drawing of favorite characters, taught coping skills by applying lessons learned from Disney films to everyday life. He summed up his reasoning with a single sentence, “Whatever works to get to Owen.” 

Whatever works to connect…

After learning about Owen, I threw everything I had at Julian’s obsession with movies. I bought the DVDs as soon as they were released, and the small character figurines. I allowed extra time on his iPad, let him watch movies in the car. Soon not only did he tolerate holding a pencil, but he also showed an interest in drawing. So I gave him colorful pencils, crayons, reams and reams of paper. Soon it was evident that he loved drawing, and I noticed that no matter how crudely drawn his characters were, their facial expressions were clearly nuanced. By watching the same movies over and over, he’d taught himself to draw feelings, and all he couldn’t capture in words. 

He drew family members and school friends and always included himself as a central character, a protagonist in every adventure. He clearly expressed feelings, motivations, and even abstract thought in pictures. He drew complicated family dynamics, like the day he was born, and inadvertently “replaced” the former “baby of the family,” how that must have made his older brother feel sad. In this instance, he drew the reactions of each family member to fit their individual personalities, which included his oldest sister rolling her eyes at all the birth order drama. This told me he understood complex issues far better than he could convey with words alone. He had empathy, imagination and paid close attention to how people felt and interacted.

Julian once drew a picture of himself as an adult sitting before a computer, working in animation. That was the future he imagined for himself. As The Westview School taught him to read and spell, Julian began drawing “thought bubbles” and writing dialogue. His hand muscles grew stronger, and he developed greater endurance. The kid whose hands were once too weak to hold a spoon or pencil, the kid who hated reading and writing, was now writing books. He plagiarized in the beginning as he copied the drawing style and stories of his favorite author, Mo Willems. Then he inserted different characters, changed up the stories, and made them his own.

He sometimes drew fifty or more pictures in a single day, stacks of pages all over our house. We encouraged him every step of the way, and as much as I hate clutter, I knew we were on to something. So I saved every picture, even the half-drawn pictures, and what might be considered “failed” efforts. My instincts told me we had to attach meaning and value to these drawings, so Julian saw that we respected him and his “work.” His skill and confidence continued to grow.

Now at age fourteen, he’s making stop-action films using Videoshop and Garage Band to create the accompanying music. He’s using more sophisticated animation techniques, making his own music, telling his own stories with both colorful imagery and words. And that initial spark I saw in his eyes? It was creativity and a wicked sense of humor. The kid knows how to entertain. 

Throughout these many years of learning to tell his own stories with pictures and words, one thing has never changed: Julian wants us to notice. He wants to show us his creations. He wants to connect. I think that’s what we’re all trying to do in everything we do, connect. 

Will he manage to turn these skills into a career? Maybe. But more importantly, he’s proud of himself. He feels a sense of accomplishment. He has confidence and uses art to connect with others. Without his identity as a creative artist, he wouldn’t have as much faith in himself to stand on his own.

A few weeks ago, Julian knocked on my office door, “Can we talk?” He didn’t need anything; he just wanted to sit on the floor in my office and chat. This was new, his wanting to talk about nothing in particular.

I went with it, and suddenly he was asking me what kinds of things I worried about, what life was like for me when I was his age, what kind of kid I was, and was I happy as a grownup? It was evening now, and surely his ADHD medicine had worn off, yet he was so calm, so focused on my responses. He kept asking, and I kept answering, following his lead, our conversation stretching over five, ten, fifteen minutes, uninterrupted. We stayed on track. His thoughts were organized, one after the other, moving along a trajectory that was his alone. 

It wasn’t scripted. I didn’t know where this came from, my son, who’s now taller than me wanting to know his mother better, to venture away from his comfort zone of animation to have a real conversation, to connect in a novel way. I felt like I was tiptoeing into his room again at 2 a.m., only now it was to watch him wake up, all on his own. I didn’t want my excitement to get in the way. Because at that moment I was the subject of interest, he held up close, seeking a new perspective, blurring the separation between us.

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Teresa Cortez has been a Westview parent since January of 2011. She’s a mother of four and resides in Richmond, Texas.

When Grayson Garcia first walked into The Westview School at the age of three, his parents would have described him as grumpy, agitated, easily upset, and angry all the time. He had minimal language, and outside of his parents and brothers, he did not connect well with others. A lengthy evaluation process and an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis led the Garcia family to The Westview School. After a tour of the campus, the Garcias had hope that Westview would be a fit for their son.  
  
Joni Garcia, Grayson's mom, remembers the day she brought Grayson in for a visit in the Early Childhood Development (ECD) class. "Grayson took two steps into the lobby and stopped," Joni recalled. "He looked at me, and then down the long hallway, and then over to the reception desk where Ms. Candi sat. Grayson threw himself on the floor and began to scream and cry."  
  
At Grayson's initial reaction to the visit, Joni felt her hope start to fade, but what happened next is just one reason why Westview is an answer to so many children and families.  
  
"Ms. Candi stepped out from behind her desk, grabbed a wagon parked in the hallway, rolled it over to Grayson, and with ZERO emotion said, 'well, if you wanted to ride in the wagon Grayson, all you had to do is say so.' Grayson immediately stopped crying and just stared at her, and then without a word, hopped in her wagon and was rolled down the hallway." 
  
That interaction began three years of a nurturing and supportive education at the Westview School that prepared Grayson to transition to a special education program in a public school and eventually into a mainstream general education class. 
  
So, what is it about The Westview School that helped Grayson become a mainstream success story? When it comes to early intervention for ASD children, what are the key ingredients for a successful Early Childhood Education Program that families should look for?  
  
1. A strong early childhood program will have teachers and staff with experience and training in connecting with children with ASD. Traditional daycare programs are loving, safe environments that ensure basic needs such as feeding and changing are met, but many times the teachers don't have the training or experience to know how to connect with children with ASD. Joni realized on her first day at The Westview School that it was less about Grayson connecting but more about someone else being able to connect with him and speak his language.  
 
2. A low student to teacher ratio ensures that each child gets the individual attention and support they need.  Limiting class sizes to a maximum of five students with a teacher and assistant ensure fewer distractions and more opportunities for student participation in lessons. Also, smaller groups allow teachers to differentiate instruction, engage with each student, and better facilitate student to student interaction. 
  
3. Effective ECD teaching should be based on research-based methodologies and strategies. Young children with ASD need a program designed to develop self-regulation, attending skills, and joint attention. Strategies for Teaching based on Autism Research (the STAR program) is a research-validated program that includes guided lesson plans, teaching materials, data systems, and a curriculum-based assessment in six curricular areas.  
  
The STAR Program uses curriculum-based assessments to identify performance levels for each student, based on a scope and sequence of developmentally appropriate skills. Assessments are used to track and report student progress and identify instructional skills to be targeted for instruction.  Children are engaged in high-interest, thematic units. As students learn how to self-regulate and attend, they are ready to work on pre-academic skills such as letter and number recognition, one-to-one correspondence, sorting, colors, shapes, and basic math vocabulary. 
  
4. The development of communication skills is a core component of a strong ECD program. Emphasis is placed on expanding and contextualizing language within social interactions. Both expressive language abilities (labeling, describing, and comparing/contrasting) and receptive language abilities (identifying, matching, and sorting) are a focus of effective early childhood programs. Skilled teachers use a variety of structured activities to encourage and elicit spoken language. With a scaffolded approach to language acquisition, children learn to follow directions, complete tasks, and work in small groups within their environment. 
  
5. Teacher facilitated social interaction is essential in ECD classrooms. In the most effective classrooms, teachers devise developmentally appropriate play situations to teach students how to play and interact with others. Peer relationships and appropriate social skills are acquired through guided play and interactive group games and activities. Students engage in various teacher-facilitated activities, such as pretend play, storytelling, role-playing, social routines (birthday parties, Halloween, etc.), and floor play to encourage group participation and interaction. Focus is directed toward exposing children to experiences that lead to a greater understanding of social expectations.  
  
6. A focus on fostering self-help and independence should be a part of any strong ECD program. Self-help skills such as eating/drinking, dressing, and cleaning up play areas are intentionally incorporated into the daily schedule. Toilet training may be part of the daily routine. Children should be given the opportunity to make choices throughout the day and encouraged to become more independent. Using visual schedules helps students become more independent during transitions, restroom time, and other daily skills and activities. 
  
Over two decades of autism research have shown that early diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) combined with the prompt, evidence-based, and effective intervention will result in the best possible prognosis for children with ASD.  
  
Research also indicates that in an appropriate educational setting, early intervention for at least two years before the start of primary school can result in significant improvements in language acquisition, motor development, academic achievement, social skills, daily living skills and also promotes independence in children. 
 
Grayson is now in third grade. According to his parents, he is thriving in a general education classroom with 22 other typical kids. Grayson still has autism, but his diagnosis does not define him because of his success in the Westview School's early education. 
 
Accepting students as early as 24 months, the Westview School proudly offers a high-quality early childhood program using research-based methodologies and strategies. If you would like to learn more about our early childhood program at The Westview School, visit our website or contact Carol Harrison, Ed.D. 

If you think The Westview School could be a fit for your child, join us for our next Informational Session. The event includes discussions with our Admissions Director, Becky Mattis, about the student experience and program deliverables. Current parents will also be present to offer perspective and answer questions.
Register Here

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Dr. Harrison brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to The Westview School following an extensive career as an educator and administrator. She served as an elementary school principal and special education administrator for 25 years in the public school system and later taught as a professor at Stephen F. Austin University. She holds a Doctorate in education. 

Why Art Therapy for Autism Spectrum Disorder?

Art Therapy offers the opportunity to learn and practice many social and emotional awareness skills that are a struggle for children on the Autism Spectrum. Self-expression and maintaining and developing relationships are explored and enhanced through both the therapeutic relationship and art therapy. This is because the relationship established between a client and the therapist can promote healthy and safe attachments. The art-making component builds on that relationship and offers an alternative form of communication, sensory integration, self-expression, and promotes cognitive-emotional development.

8 Reasons to Try Art Therapy for Your Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder:

1. Imagination/Abstract Thinking

 Art therapy can help your child display age-appropriate imagination and abstract thinking skills.

2. Sensory Regulation & Integration

 Art therapy can improve your child's ability to regulate his or her body and integrate sensory experiences.

3. Emotions/self-expression

 Children learn to use art to externalize and process thoughts and feelings, improving communication and connection between children and their caregivers.

4. Developmental Growth

 Art therapy helps children hit important milestones like age-appropriate drawing ability, fine motor skills, overall artistic development, and can be used to improve other relevant deficit areas that can be addressed using art.

5. Visual-Spatial Skills

 Art therapy improves the child's ability to negotiate and render/model in both two and three-dimensional spaces and the ability to rotate objects mentally.

6. Recreation/Leisure Skills

 Art therapy helps children on the spectrum develop productive, enjoyable leisure activities and generalize them to the home and other natural environments.

7. Developing Self-identity/Empowerment

 Using art-making can help children explore, learn, and discuss the different components of an Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis that empowers them to build a positive self-identity.

8. Reduce Anxiety/Stress

 Art therapy also promotes learning coping skills through the creative process, including mindfulness, deep breathing, and guided imagery to improve emotional self-regulation.

How to Tell if Art Therapy is a Good Fit for Your Child:

• Does your child struggle with self-expression, relationship building, emotional regulation, abstract thinking, sensory processing deficits, or communication?

• Is your child interested in creative processes?

• As a parent, are you willing to actively participate in your child's therapeutic treatment while respecting therapeutic boundaries?

If you answered yes to the questions above, your child might benefit from art therapy. 

Individual Art Therapy sessions are tailored to your child's needs. The child will lead the therapist to what materials naturally pique their interest. From there, the art therapist will create a treatment plan that includes goals and objectives. You, as the parents or caregivers, will be included as active participants in the therapeutic process.

Group Art Therapy sessions are based on a common goal. All group members will be screened to ensure they are an appropriate fit, and members will be placed according to similar developmental and emotional needs. There is a significant social and communication component to every group that children on the spectrum can benefit from. Because many individuals diagnosed with ASD are visual thinkers, artwork can facilitate forming connections with peers because it offers a concrete way to see another's perspective.

To learn more about Art Therapy at The Stewart Center, visit our website and connect with Hillery Jones.

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Hillery Jones is a Licensed Professional Counselor and Art Therapist. Her passion is in using the creative process to help children, adolescents, and adults gain a deeper sense of self-awareness. Her approach is client-led, practical, holistic, and adaptable in everyday life. She integrates a kinesthetic learning component of connecting mind and body to her practice. She uses traditional talk therapy and art therapy to meet the unique needs of each individual. Her ultimate goal is to provide clients with the tools needed to be the best version of themselves.

​Hillery received her B.A. in Art Education from Lamar University and her M.A. Art Therapy Counseling from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville. She has worked in school, hospital, residential, and out-patient settings.