See Sam Drive: Lost in mid-cities
If I ever doubted that no good deed goes unpunished, the lesson was reinforced today.
Michael had a job interview and asked to borrow the truck, since the air conditioning is out in his car.
(This is February, you say. This is Texas, I tell you.)
So out of his routine was he, that when he returned to the truck after the interview, he realized he locked the key inside. He called to ask whether there was a hide-a-key.
(No, son, a hide-a-key is something parents make their kids do with their own car.)
He didn’t want to pay for a locksmith if Sam could come with a spare. There was time. Sam loaded directions in the GPS on his phone and headed out.
Sam is not a fan of I-35. E or W. He took State Highway 114 and headed south on Precinct Line Road to where Michael was, in North Richland Hills. That was probably a mistake. Maybe U.S. Highway 377 would have been better. He got lost somewhere in Keller — so lost that he pulled over and called police to get help. They came and gave him directions.
Sam made it to the parking lot where Michael was waiting and the two of them were supposed to follow each other to I-820, where they would part ways at I-35W.
I thought all was well and then Michael called me again.
“I lost him,” he said.
Every parent of a child with autism knows this terror. And now his brother was learning it, too. Michael recounted as much of the situation as he could, starting with the moment he realized Sam was heading down State Highway 183 the wrong way, and I was at a loss of what to suggest next.
Sam had turned his phone off to save battery life. That worried us both. Not only was he not communicating with us, we knew “Siri” wasn’t giving him directions home.
“Call the police. Make a report,” I told him. “We can’t do this. We need the village.”
A co-worker (one of several that talked me off the ledge today) offered to take me home and Shahla provided a bit of support via text. Meanwhile, Michael was making a report with the police. I so hoped that Sam would be parked in the driveway when I got home, but he wasn’t.
I put an alert on Facebook and started to regroup. I would take Michael’s car and meet him and the police in North Richland Hills where they were making a missing persons report. (Because Sam has autism, it would have gone out immediately.)
And then Sam came down the driveway. I called Michael. The police shredded the missing persons report Michael had just signed.
Sam’s car parked in the barn formerly known as a garage
It took awhile for the emotions to settle and the conversation to begin. Sam knew he had separated from Michael and had been going the wrong way down the highway. But he remembered the directions Michael gave and when he was sure things weren’t looking right, he turned around and went the other way. He stopped at a medical center to get directions, too, and then he headed home.
(So, Tim Ruggiero, not only pizza places, but also medical centers are good places to get directions, we learned today.)
We gave ourselves a list of things to do, like Michael joining AAA, and Sam putting GPS in his car with a “home” button, and me putting a hide-a-key on the truck, so that all our good deeds trying to help each other out don’t get so punishing.
And, a big shout-out to all of the mid-cities’ finest. You got to know autism today and you did well.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #262
Sam: Mom, I’m very relieved to be home.
Peggy: I’m relieved to have you home.
[No hug; END scene]
To work
When Sam graduated high school and got his first job sacking groceries for customers at Albertsons, a dear friend and knowledgeable researcher told me that he would grow up a lot from the experience. He was right. The things you need to grow and be successful on the job, even just organizing your life in a reliable way, are quite demanding.
Sam grew up a lot that first year, thanks to the world of work.
He’s on the cusp of another job search, one that we hope will stick a little better than we’ve been able to do on our own since he graduated from North Central Texas College in December 2012 with his associate’s degree. He’s qualified for the same kind of help that helped him land that first job.
I cannot underscore how important these programs are. Researchers at Vanderbilt and the University of Wisconsin-Madison agree that underemployment is a common among adults with autism like Sam and programs are needed to address the problem. How big? About half of adults with autism — a growing population — spend their days in segregated settings of work, or other activities, with contact with the rest of the community.
Which isn’t good for the community, either, by the way.
What else did those researchers find? Here you go:
More independent work environments may lead to reductions in autism symptoms and improve daily living in adults with the disorder, according to a new study released in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
Researchers at Vanderbilt University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison examined 153 adults with autism and found that greater vocational independence and engagement led to improvements in core features of autism, other problem behaviors and ability to take care of oneself.
“We found that if you put the person with autism in a more independent vocational placement, this led to measurable improvements in their behaviors and daily living skills overall,” said lead author Julie Lounds Taylor, Ph.D., assistant professor of Pediatrics and Special Education and Vanderbilt Kennedy Center investigator. “One core value in the disability community and at the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center is placing people with disabilities in the most inclusive environments possible. In addition, this study gives us evidence that increasing the level of independence in an employment or vocational setting can lead to improvements in autism symptoms and other associated behaviors.”
Participants averaged 30 years of age and were part of a larger longitudinal study on adolescents and adults with autism. Data were collected at two time points separated by 5.5 years.
Taylor, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, looked at such autism symptoms as restricted interests, repetitive behaviors, communication impairments and difficulties with social interactions and found the degree of independence in vocational activities was uniquely related to subsequent changes in autism symptoms, other problem behaviors and activities of daily living.
The results provide preliminary evidence that employment may be therapeutic in the development of adults with autism. Similar to typically developing adults, vocational activities may serve as a mechanism for providing cognitive and social stimulations and enhance well-being and quality of life.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #261
Sam (after working 9 of the last 10 days): 
One book every ten years
I’ve been told more than once that the purpose of your first book is to help get your contract for the second one. (Also, I’m told to not quit your day job until after the third book is published, but I keep doing the math and I think that advice is for fiction writers.)
I’ve noticed that some writers are better than I am about coming up with topics for books. A children’s writer down the road from me, Lynn Sheffield Simmons, gets her inspiration from animals and her little books are now in accelerated reader programs in elementary schools. My good friend, Donna Fielder, follows the headlines with her terrific true crime books. She also works with really funny material from her column writing — it seems like she always has a project in some stage of development.
It has been almost a decade since I developed my last manuscript and managed to have “See Sam Run” published. The next one is coming along, thanks to an extraordinary collaborator, Shahla Ala’i-Rosales.
Shahla has worked with parents and children with autism for years, has helped educate a generation of certified behavior analysts, and produces informed research on the topic. It has taken us several years to put together what we hope will be a timeless guide for parents, young and old, who love and care for a child (or adult) with autism.
It’s basically this idea:
Art by Susan Sullivan, SUMY Designs
This is no easy task, y’all.
But Shahla and I have come to recognize that behavior analysis and mindfulness intersect in a way that can be powerful and life-altering for parents, their personal and professional allies, and the children in their care.
Here’s a sneak peek from our proposal:
Our book starts in territory that others have explored – the emotional landscape above which all the hard work of raising a child takes place – and moves into the extraordinary territory parents of children with disabilities must work in. As no one has written about mindful parenting and parenting children with disabilities for general audience, our book will break new ground.
Parents make decisions for their children every day. Parents of children with disabilities often make more decisions, and sometimes continue to do so for the duration of their child’s entire life. Many of those parents also recognize that their children may lack the resilience to bounce back as quickly, if at all, if a decision turns out to be a mistake. Those decisions can often feel high-stakes to parents.
Through its conversational tone, accessible to busy and overwhelmed parents, this book will both offer parents stories that are insightful and steer them towards tenets unified by time-tested, wisdom-based principles. The work is also grounded in the ethical guidelines used by professionals. In this way, the book echoes not only emerging market in mindfulness and parenting but also emerging research on mindfulness …
Overheard in the Wolfe House #260
Peggy (with the grandparents via Skype): And Michael’s big news this week is that his car passed inspection today.
Sam: And we have no idea how that happened.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #259
Sam (as he scoops a bowl of homemade vanilla ice cream with Thin Mints mixed in): Alright, alright. Girl Scouts in ice cream.
And the trail ride
Sam loaded this video to his own YouTube channel. Michael shot it, and you can hear him at one point chiding the horse, Trevor, who didn’t appear to cooperate at the gate.
Tonight Sam talked about this ride in a way that he hadn’t shared before. I had walked by him sitting in the recliner on my way to my own chair in the living room and gave his knee a pat.
This is something that typically makes him recoil from my touch, so I rarely do it, but I try from time to time. He recoiled, of course.
But after doing so, he told me that he had strong reflexes and that it can be a problem when riding horse. He said that he has to try to control them, otherwise his body sends the horse the wrong signal of what he wants to do.
“Like when we were at the gate,” he said.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #258
Sam (finishing a yawn): Oh my, that was a heavy one.
Excellence on horseback and that 10,000 hours expert thing
Sam competed again in Chisholm Challenge this year, and he earned another belt buckle for his English equitation ride, his sixth in about 10 years.
I started thinking about Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, and this concept of how long it takes to become an expert at a thing.
Sam looks like an expert on horseback to me. See for yourself (brother Michael is the videographer):
Michael says that when Terry Evans interviewed Sam and him for this piece in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Evans was surprised that we didn’t own a horse even though we lived in Argyle. (Dude, it’s Aubrey where the horses outnumber the human population, but I digress.)
But I thought, I should count up the hours he’s been riding. Maybe he comes close to that magic number in Gladwell’s book at one hour per week, and about 40 weeks per year, over 21 years …
840 hours – not even in the ballpark and couldn’t even get close in 40 more years of riding. But I’m sure he’ll have a blast trying.