By Rocio Hernandez

Evangelina Grimaldo noticed that something different about her second child, Adrian Grimaldo. When he was 14 months old, Evangelina would enter Adrian’s room but he wouldn’t try to look for her even if she made noise.

As he got older, Adrian Grimaldo’s parents started comparing his behaviors to that of his older sister when she was little. Adrian didn’t spin and play the way she had, and he would not make eye contact when he was spoken to.

When he was two years old, the family took him to a clinic for assessment. The doctor confirmed that Adrian had autism.

At age five, Adrian was able to join the University of Nevada, Reno’s Early Childhood Autism Program. Evangelina Grimaldo remembers that the program was very intensive. Adrian would return home from kindergarten and work with the program’s tutors for about 40 hours every week.

When he finally said his first word, “cookie,” Grimaldo had restored hope.

“I thought he would never be able to say ‘mommy’ or follow any directions like, ‘go to the bathroom,’ or, ‘go to your bedroom,’” Evangelina said. “He wasn’t able to understand anything, and they worked with him with the basics, building up until Adrian had to drop the program when he was nine.”

Dr. Pat Ghezzi founded the UNR Early Childhood Autism program in 1995. According to Associate Director Ainsley Lewon, the program works with five to seven kids between ages of two to five for approximately 30 hours per week for a minimum of two years. The program works on early intensive behavioral intervention using the principals of the Lovaas Model of Applied Behavior Analysis, which works on teaching the child how to learn in a natural environment.

A treatment team of five comes into a child’s home weekly. The treatment team starts by assessing what skills the child already possesses in order to build up from that point. Because the team works inside the child’s home, a room is specifically dedicated to the treatment. The room is sometimes cleaned out and left empty with only a table for the child and tutors, depending on the child’s level of development.

“We put the child in environmental circumstances, that are very highly controlled at first and then loosened as the child becomes more sophisticated, but essentially the conditions under which they’ll learn best involves working on basic skills,” Lewon said.

When tutors initially start working with a child, Lewon said that some kids, such as Adrian, are not able to speak a word, and some come out of the program able to tell a joke, be sarcastic, and engage in everyday conversation.

Assistant Director of the UNR Early Childhood Autism program Emily Skorzanka said that one of Lewon’s students started the program unable to know how to respond when Lewon walked into the room, and now the progress in his conversational skills is evident.

“I walked into one of my kid’s sessions this morning and he goes, ‘Oh, hey Ainsley what’s up?’ and then I go ‘Nothing, I’m just here to watch you at school.’ He replies, ‘Oh, okay, cool.’”

Lewon said the UNR program is different than most autism programs because it works from a behavioral analytical perspective. The program looks at autism as a verb and not a noun.

“A lot of times traditional accounts of autism will say, ‘Well, it’s something inside of a child, you can’t change it, they have it, they possess autism,’ and what we say is ‘Well we know this is, while there are some biological bases in it, we can move and change behaviors by changing the environment,’” Lewon said.

According to the Lovaas Institute, a significant portion of children that go through an early intensive behavioral intervention are able to achieve a “normal educational and intellectual functioning” by the time they are seven.

Lewon said that some of the children who graduate from the program are indistinguishable from their peers.

“About half of the kids that we take on start kindergarten with no special education, no individual education plans, no support,” Lewon said.

Lewon said that the other half are potty trained and able to ask for what they want. They have many life skills even though they still need some extra support.

“There’s power in not shoving autism inside of the person and looking at it as an interaction, because then you can actually change behavior and of course behavior not in a robotic way but making this warm, beautiful, social kid,” Lewon said.

Rocio Hernandez can be reached at rhernandez@sagebrush.unr