Milica

I saw Dejana for the first time when she, as 3 years old together with her parents, visited our school. She was particularly beautiful, with lovely blue eyes and long blond hair, but seemed very withdrawn. I thought they came to see what we taught (additional Yugoslavian education) to have her enrolled later for pre-school."What a nice girl!" I said and tried to make contact with her. She withdrew even further, and I said to her mother:" She is very shy, isn't she?" " No, she is autistic" the mother said. I didn't know how to react, but was very shocked to hear that, as all I knew then about autism was that it was a malfunction in the brain which was incurable and fated children into isolation. I think I must have been so perplexed that the mother could read my mind and said: "There is nowadays an American method called 'Son-rise' which helps these kids to an normal development". I never heard of this, so she briefly explained the method and promised to get me more information. She also said they were looking for volunteers to work with their daughter. After reading the brochures and the book 'Son-rise' I was so impressed that I called up immediately to ask if I could participate in the project. So about two years ago a group of 8 people started to work with Dejana. I found the method very appealing and I had no problem with the three "E's".

Initially it was very difficult to make contact with Dejana. She never looked at us, put her thumbs in her mouth, rocked continuously and had a lot of "isms". She almost never did. What was asked of her was remote, easily tired and cried a lot without apparent reason. We imitated her, sucked our thumbs, lay with her on the floor, rocked along with her, but meanwhile tried to get her attention to teach her something, for example by tossing her a ball. She never managed to throw the ball straight. She at first put all objects in her mouth; especially little books were regularly subjected to this. Despite all advice from Kaufmann c.s. To never feel pity for such a child I have to admit, that I occasionally found it hard to see how difficult and slow all went. Only small 'ant-steps' until I realized that for Deja these steps were giant leaps. After innumerable attempts and countless repetitions of her movements and our requests to imitate us, we succeeded and she started to wave with her arms and legs, to kick the ball and throw it straight, sing along and imitate sounds. More and more it becomes clear she likes to do what is asked of her (obviously not all with equal gusto). She is happy when we lavishly praise and reward her. She always laughs, never cries anymore, hardly has "ism's" left, except the sucking on her thumbs, and laughs a lot and we enjoy more and more together. She looks at us continuously and then so intense, that it seems she looks deeper in your eyes than anybody else. We grow together and become more and more effective. Dejana has achieved a lot, but she is not yet there, where we would like to see her, but her achievement is so high, that for sure she will reach the top. I would like to add that I am extremely glad to have had the chance to follow Dejana in here development and I hope and visualize her as my 'real' pupil on the 'real' school. My experiences with Dejana and 'Son-Rise' help me in my daily life and on the real school, as this method can be easily applied to all children growing up. I think I became a better teacher and human being and would recommend to everybody -whatever their occupation- as it can be easily learned - to also work with autistic or Rett-syndrome children.

Amsterdam, januari 2002