Congratulations to high school grad with autism
by Beth
Yesterday’s New York Times featured a terrific story about a high school graduate who has autism. Dan Mulvaney’s story starts like so many others about kids diagnosed with autism:
Dan seemed on a normal developmental track for his first three and a half years until things went haywire. His speech suddenly stopped. He sat in a corner gnawing on his shirt. His parents first thought it would pass, then that it was a hearing issue, and finally the cold, terrifying diagnosis came.
The Mulvaney’s local Long Island school district didn’t know what to do with Dan. They told his parents that Dan would be better off at home or a “special school.” Dan’s parents thought differently. They didn’t want their son in an institution. They wanted him in a local school. They wanted him to live in his own house.
So instead, with the assistance of the district’s head of special education, Mary Tatem, they pushed and prodded, became total pests, made themselves and the district crazy but ended up with the best education Dan could hope for, one where he ate with other kids and became part of their world — good for him, good for them. And along the way, Long Beach transformed itself from a district that barely knew how to deal with special-needs kids into one of the best in the region.
Dan graduated from Long Beach High School last Sunday and will be moving into a group home with three other guys later this summer.
Dan and his parents, like so many this time of year, will start anew with both a new set of possibilities and unalterable ties to the life they’ve somehow suddenly, miraculously outgrown.
Congratulations to Dan, and congratulations to his parents.