The classes at colleges and universities are designed to be challenging for the students who take them. Usually, students are at least eighteen years old when they start attending college, after having graduated from high school. So, it’s really impressive to hear that a twelve year old boy, who has autism, will be attending college in the Fall.
Alex Beach lives in Georgia. His mother. Melinda Beach, says that he has a “genius IQ”, which I would believe, considering that Alex is fluently trilingual. He speaks both Japanese and Latin, in addition to his native language of English. He has composed his own music, and is extremely good at chess. He also goes to the martial arts classes that his mother teaches.
Alex is going to be attending college in the fall. This isn’t something most twelve year old boys would expect to be doing next school year. After he graduates from Eaton Academy in Roswell, Georgia, this year, Alex will begin attending classes at North Georgia College and State University in Dahlonega, Georgia. His mother will be commuting with him back and forth to class, but Alex will attend the class by himself.
Colleges are required to make accommodations that take into consideration the special needs that an individual student has. Alex is blind in one eye, due to a debilitating disease he contracted when he was a very young child. He also has autism. The college is prepared to give Alex his tests in a room that is separate from the big classroom or lecture hall where the other students will take their tests. They also will have someone to watch him, which is just a good idea, because he is a minor.
There are are a range of symptoms that go along with autism. Some of the core symptoms include difficulties with making eye contact with other people, and to develop nonverbal communication skills. A child with autism can have great difficulty establishing friendships with kids of their same age.
This is frequently because children with autism struggle with social skills. Alex’s mother says that the martial arts classes, and the physical and social contact that go along with the sport are helping Alex to push past autism. From what I can tell from the article, it seems that she has done a lot of work to help her son.
Some kids who have autism are intellectually advanced for their age. This is true in Alex’s case. His mother says he was intellectually ready to start attending college classes when he was just ten years old, but, she held him back until now. She wanted to give him some time for his social skills to catch up a little bit more, so he would be more ready to attend a college class. His mother noted that if you hold back the intellect too long, with a child who has autism, that it can cause problems.
Image by Mathieu Plourde on Flickr