Many readers know that April is Autism Awareness Month. As the annual awareness campaign comes to an end, one local parent of a now-grown autistic son has chosen to share a story she thinks might help other caregivers of autistic children.

Professional artist Crissy Stratford’s son Chad was diagnosed with autism at a young age and is considered non-verbal. Communicating with a non-verbal person can be challenging and frustrating for the autistic person, sometimes even causing unintended harm. “Chad has sensory problems with his ears and he has earplugs in all the time He can’t stand hearing or the sound of people talking to him.”

Research has shown that autistic people frequently demonstrate high visual processing abilities and Stratford says that is true of her son. “That’s where he “hears” us best–by turning everything visual. Being an artist, that’s what I know. I turned things visual for him so he doesn’t have to focus so much on audio where he doesn’t understand it as well.”

To improve communication with him, Stratford began drawing picture books to use. Picking topics she knew were of high interest helped to get his attention. “For example, one of his [favorites] was the boy who walked on the moon because he loved the galaxy. So I did a stick figure of Chad, standing on the moon, and wrote, ‘the boy who loved the moon.’ It was an area of high interest for him and he turned the page and there would be Saturn. He loved it. It was something very simple, but he understood it. And we did this a lot.”

She continued, “I eventually started making blank books for him, and he started to draw–in a very simple way–what was in his brain. I found it fascinating. Like ‘I didn’t know you looked at us that way. I didn’t know you didn’t like this.’ He didn’t like it when we took the remote from him. He didn’t have the words to say that–he drew it out and he drew the angry face on his face. Kids can use art to bring out what’s in their head onto paper.”

As Chad got older and lessons grew more complex, Crissy added a “word bank” of written vocabulary words to the pictures. Chad could answer questions simply by attaching the correct word to the picture. “You can take a picture of the city of Detroit, add a word bank, and ask what happened to the city of Detroit in 1812?”

When Chad reached middle school, Crissy became a paraprofessional at his school and realized others could benefit from the method she used with her son. She often accompanied the special education students to their general education classroom lessons to help adapt the information for the visual learners.

“I would take what the teacher was talking about–the study guides and tests–and I would draw them out and turn them visual. [The students] could totally engage with it and understand it when I drew out every question for them. And that’s how I got through to them,” said Stratford.
Caregivers don’t have to be professional artists to make use of the method, though. “You don’t have to be an artist. You can find pictures online to do the exact same thing that I do. You can use any kind of visuals to accommodate your visual learner whether they’re special needs or even just a regular visual learner.”

Though her son is now an adult, he still uses the low-tech method she developed to help him back in elementary school. He attends a gym class for people with disabilities but he doesn’t like his mom to accompany him. When he wants to share what he’s done for the day, he draws it out for her, the same way she used to draw ideas out for him. “He drew it out. I could see he was doing stretches. And he he drew he was walking and he drew that he was on the rowing machine. And I can understand that.”

The most important lesson, according to Stratford, is to know the autistic person and think creatively. “[Thinking] outside the box is very important and trying different things because not everything works for every student with autism. They are all different.”