Students with Autism Preparing for College

BROWNSVILLE, Texas -- Cameron was standing over in the corner of the concert hall with his mother, Kate. There must have been several hundred people waiting in the lobby to go hear the music. Cameron was talking to his mother in a low voice when the teacher spotted them. The teacher noticed that the boy had grown very tall since she had last seen him. Cameron was over six feet. His mother smiled at the teacher and waved at her to come over.
"Kate, Cameron, is that you. Cameron, you are so tall now. How are you?" Cameron answered with a monotone voice, "Fine." "How is school going Cameron?" Again the boy answered flatly, "Fine." The teacher turned the subject to something of interest to him. "Do you still like animals Cameron?" All of a sudden, Cameron’s face became animated and his eyes perked up. He didn’t have to use the conversations that he had memorized. Instead, the door had opened to what he liked to talk about, animals, specifically primates. He knew everything about them. The problem was Cameron only wanted to talk about primates and nothing else.
Cameron always had been a bright boy in school. He was a high functioning child with autism. When Cameron first started in the preschool program for children with disabilities, the boy could not sit still. He barely spoke and if he did, it was echo laic, repeating whatever was said to him. As Cameron grew older, his pronouns were nonexistent at first. He would answer, "Cameron wants water. Cameron is hungry." It took some time to get the boy to use pronouns such as: I, he and she. Now, Cameron was nearing graduation.