"Rhema continues to present with significant vulnerabilities in her capacity to appropriately engage with peers and independently navigate the social milieu...
At present, Rhema has significant difficulty with peer interactions, reciprocal exchanges and eye contact and presents as self-directed in social settings."
Who is Rhema Russell? She is a 13 year old nonverbal autistic girl. Throughout her life, her mother has blogged about her on rhemashope.wordpress.com Rhema was often aggressive and self-injurious. Every time she was tested, she “has the expressive and receptive language of a 12 month old”. When Rhema was 11, she went to Texas to learn RPM, a technique where a person can communicate by pointing to letters. RPM is not the controversial facilitated communication because it does not involve physically guiding the person's hands. Soma Mukhopadhyay prompted Rhema to answer questions in math, history, and science. When asked to think of any words that rhyme, Rhema consistently spelled out rhyming words. During break Rhema wanted to get into a lock door and swipe markers, and scratched her hand in the process.When Soma assumed she scratched Rhema’s hand, Rhema spelled “It was my fault”. Her mom previously assumed she wasn't aware of her actions. Rhema had a math test where she added and subtracted 3 digit numbers. Rhema answered every question correctly.
Finding the Lock – Part 2
Finding the Lock – Part 3
Through letter board, Rhema spelled she wanted to be a scientist, complained about her “motor skills” (which is her body not cooperating with her brain), spelled that people with autism feel more love, wishes she was able to speak, thought Martin Luther King “was a man of God who let the people of the world see Jesus in him” and even gave a speech in a college classroom to prospective special education teachers.
Recently Rhema had a conversation with her friend. Rhema was typing and answering questions on her ipad, such as "Syd, what is your favorite thing to do on weekends" "I love to have playdates with you and sleep in" "I like that you are so kind and loving and you see the real me" "I want to know how I can pray for you". Yet the evaluation said "Rhema continues to present with significant vulnerabilities in her capacity to appropriately engage with peers" and "Rhema has significant difficulty with peer interactions, reciprocal exchanges and eye contact".
This reminds be of a sample IEP written by the New York City Department of Education for a hypothetical student Thomas Green.
"Thomas is following the alternate curriculum." This means he is not being taught the grade level work his peers are being taught. Carly Fleischmann, Ido Kedar, Emma Zucher-Long, Tito Mukhopadhyay and Rhema Russell have all taught us that severely autistic kids should be learning the same things their general education peers are learning.
"Thomas will make eye contact only when he is told “Look at me” or “Look at the .......”. He will sustain it for 2-3 seconds." Who cares? An autistic child, or any child for that matter, should not be forced to make eye contact. There is nothing wrong with Thomas not making eye contact.
"He repeats certain words and phrases numerous times, beyond the point when they are meaningful to activity or situation." It's called echolalia. It's how autistic people process information.
"He is currently learning to add single digit numbers up to 18." When I was in 3rd grade, I learned to write 3 digit numbers, by 3 digit numbers, by 3 digit numbers by 3 digit numbers, subtraction, multiplication and division.
"Thomas can rote count to 100 by 1s, 2s, 5s, and 10s." This is written in the same IEP. Thomas should be learning multiplication.
See how Thomas's differences are written in a way that make it seem like something is wrong with him. Sesame Street created a new autistic muppet Julia. What if we wrote that "Julia has difficulty maintaining appropriate peer interactions" just because she repeats "play, play, play" or "Julia works best in a small group setting" just because we've only seen her interact with Elmo, Abby and Big Bird? Yet Sesame Street managed to present her in a way that makes her seem like nothing is wrong with her.
