In the special ed world, there is a big debate about whether parents and teachers should focus on a child’s weaknesses or his/her strengths. This debate plays out strongly in the autistic community, because there is such a huge gap between strengths and weaknesses.

For years, we focused on the weaknesses. Ian was in a barrage of therapy in school and at home. This fall, I went in the opposite direction. I pulled him out of all the therapy and “special ed” type activities. In school, he’s in a regular “special education” program that does far less coddling than the autistic programs. He can’t earn breaks. He is expected to blend in with the general population. He is expected to cope in the stressful, disorganized, loud, chaotic band room. He’s handling it. There probably could be a bit more coddling, but I’m treating this school like one giant “life skill” experiment.

After school, I’m focusing on his strengths like art and music and technology. In these activities, he is better than average. In two months, he has burned through the beginner music books for keyboard and drums. He attends “Minecraft” hour at the library and engineering classes at the town recreation program. Sometimes, I pay Jonah to go with him to these classes to make sure that he is attending to the directions, but I may not even need to do that anymore. He suddenly loves the theater, so we’re going to every high school play.

He has an insanely complicated after-school life. It’s all mapped out on a calendar posted to my fridge. But it’s all happy things. We’re all so much happier now that we’re accepting the weaknesses and fostering the strengths.

Check out this young autistic artist in England.

Here’s a really interesting new book by Jean-Michael Basquiat’s girl friends. He sounds a little autistic.