Autism Literacy Comprehension – Autism Parenting Magazine

An educator reflects on her son’s difficulty with literacy and shares tips for parents looking to support their children with words and comprehension.

Language, by its very nature, is abstract. Children on the autism spectrum often fail to comprehend words that contain multiple meanings, inferences, or jokes, and may, if confronted with such abstractions, resort to a concrete interpretation. Thus, literacy learning can be challenging.

In 1994, my second son, Nicholas, failed first grade. Every day, I saw signs of stress. His fingernails, bitten to the quick, and the daily smell of urine reinforced a level of unforgettable pain.

“He stares into space all the time,” the teacher confided, “and he struggles to do the most basic of tasks.”

What she didn’t mention was his social isolation in and out of the classroom. This took years for me to figure out. At the end of that year, I requested testing. The results were devastating. Nicholas could read ten words, displayed no strengths, and had a “low IQ.”

My husband, a professor, had the opportunity to take a study leave for six months in Oxford, England. This opportunity allowed me to homeschool Nicholas. We began using a standardized set of books titled Success for All. I, too, failed.

It appeared I was no better than his first-grade teacher as “Nicholas had no memory for words, letters, or sounds.” It was my mother-in-law who offered invaluable advice. “Lois,” she said, “put away what is not working and make learning fun.”

Her words pushed me to change the failing strategies and re-imagine new possibilities. With nothing other than a blank slate and a few resources, I began to focus on the challenge: “What can he do?”

“Nicholas can see patterns and rhyme words,” I thought. From this insignificant beginning, I began writing simple poems. The poetry, talking about their meaning and illustrating them, was transformative.

Each day, I had a new poem ready for Nicholas. We followed the structure in sounds and eventually, the “oo” as in cook, look, and book, came up. I drew inspiration from our Australian heritage as I thought about Captain Cook, the last of the great explorers, and his exploration of the east coast of Australia. Our learning exploded! Seeing a map published in the 1550s, Nicholas questioned innocently:

“Who came before Captain Cook?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” I replied, “that was Christopher Columbus.”
“And who came before Columbus?” Nicholas shot back.

His response stopped me in my tracks. This is not the question of a child with a “low IQ.” The poetry, our discussions, and his questioning altered my opinion of him. We continued to explore the changing maps of the world through this “inquiry” project, thus transforming learning from boring to exciting.

After six months, Nicholas apprehensively returned to school. It wasn’t too long before I met with the school diagnostician who had completed the testing one year earlier. I was delighted to share Nicholas’s growth.

“Well,” she stated, “I’ve spoken with the reading teacher. She tells me he has gone backward, and in fact, he’s the worst child I’ve seen in 20 years of teaching.” Gobsmacked and deflated, I fled from her room.

“How can the diagnostician say such harsh words?” my inner dialogue fumed as I drove home. Then it hit me… change the teaching so he can learn.

Gripping the steering wheel like a race driver, I immediately performed a U-turn. Filled with outrage, I made my way to the diagnostician’s office for the second time that day.

“If he is the worst child ever,” I said, “then don’t expect him to learn like everyone else!” The diagnostician was almost as startled as me. I left her presence with a meeting arranged for the following day.

That afternoon, I could not have anticipated a more fitting preparation. After school, before my key was in the door, Nicholas had his list of sight words in his hand, his backpack discarded. He was reading sentences.

Silently, I observed. I noted this list was now 10 words, not the 20 the reading teacher was trying to stuff into his brain last year. He read the sentences provided. His reading teacher made it clear, two sentences for each word. The same two sentences for every child in her care. No exceptions. It worked until he got to the word “saw”. I watched and listened. “I saw a cat…no,” he read. His blond head shook, his eyes focused only on the slip of paper held tightly in his hand, his body rigid.

Concentrating hard, he would not hear the squabbling of the lorikeets in the trees or feel the slight breeze breaking the heat and humidity of the day.

“I was a cat…No.” He shook his head again, rousing every ounce of his brain to connect the letters to create a coherent picture. “I was…a cat. No. I saw a cat… No.” Nicholas lifted his head and handed me the slip of paper containing his frustrations. I read the sentences mutely: I saw a cat climb up a tree. I saw a man rob a bank.

Shocked into remembering a recent conversation with my literacy-expert aunt, I recalled: “Sight words must be meaningful to the child.” The word saw is complicated, holding multiple meanings. I processed Nicholas’ reading, ruminating. He tried every combination to decode that word.

When he read her sentences, he stopped on each occasion at the word “cat.” I sensed his search for meaning and felt a gap between the teacher’s sentences and Nicholas’s understanding.

“Nicholas,” I said. “Do you remember the places we visited in England?”

“We visited Windsor Castle with Nana and Grandad,” Nicholas replied.

“When we went to Windsor, did we pack a saw in our bag?”

Demonstrating by acting it out, placing a saw into our backpack, I continued:

“At Windsor, did we look around, see the guards, and say, “Quick, no guards are looking! Let’s get the saw out and saw a piece from the wall and take it home as a souvenir?”

“No!” Nicholas giggled.

“How about when we went to see the Gutenberg Bible? Did we take a saw into the British Library to saw that book in half!”

“No! No! No!” Nicholas hooted in horror. “Of course, we didn’t do that.” He faced me, his arms out, “Are you crazy?”

“What’s the other meaning of that word saw, Nicholas?” I questioned.

“It means to look!”

“The word saw has more than one meaning. When we read, we have to find the right meaning and make sense of the sentence.”

“Yes,” he said. “That word saw can mean an object, to cut, or to look!”

Nicholas expected words to only have one concrete meaning. The sentences provided by the teacher illustrated the abstract meaning. Children on the autism spectrum often see the world of language concretely; they fail to see the abstract meaning. It is up to us, the educators, to show students how “the written language works,” in words they comprehend.

Reading and literacy teaching advice for parents

• Content is critical; follow the students’ interests. Visit places of interest. Experience life (within your limitations)
• Read and write about topics together. Engage in building a child’s knowledge
• Change teaching from being “abstract” to experiential & practical
• Show how language works, teach students to search for two meanings with both words and phrases (jokes)

I became a reading specialist. This incident showed me how quickly and easily we can “assign labels” to students and fail to look at how we teach.

Nicholas graduated from high school in the top 20% of his class, winning the Council of Exceptional Children “Yes, I Can” award. In 2012, he graduated with degrees in both Engineering and Mathematics. And finally, continuing on with his multi-continent journey, in 2018, 22 years after those painful words, graduated with a DPhil (PhD) in Applied Mathematics from Oxford University.