Lakeport >> Ian Smith isn’t like a lot of other 24-year-olds. He’s a nationally ranked yo-yo player. falling third in one yo-yo style and sixth in another, he has a knack for juggling and his math skills are like something out of “Good Will Hunting.” He also happens to be autistic. And if his dad, Hank Smith, were given a pill to cure autism tomorrow, he wouldn’t hesitate to flush it down the toilet.
“Too much would be lost,” Hank Smith said. “The gifts that have come with this autism are just immense.”
On Monday evening at Clear Lake High School, Hank and Ian Smith will be giving a presentation on living with and teaching kids on the autism spectrum. Titled “This Autistic Life,” the evening will be invaluable for parents, siblings and educators of autistic individuals as well as those interested in learning more about autism.
As a kindergarten teacher at Upper Lake Elementary, Smith has had a good deal of experience working with kids on the autism spectrum. And just like his son, Smith has seen time and time again that each child possesses their own unique gifts to offer the world. “At this point autism has become so prevalent it’s almost become rare that I don’t have a kid on the spectrum in my class,” he said. “They have a unique way of looking at the world. We need those kind of people in our world. They have so much to offer us.”
It was at the suggestion of the school’s Superintendent, Valerie Gardner, that Hank Smith began This Autistic Life. Knowing Smith had an autistic son, she suggested he speak to the school board and parents of autistic children about the topic. Two years ago Hank put on his first presentation. 100 people showed up to listen to him.
That night Smith recited an excerpt from a book he was working on about his experience raising an autistic child. Gardner read his work and encouraged him to publish it. The entire thing snowballed from there. Now, Hank and Ian Smith travel up and down the California coast for This Autistic Life. Without Gardner, Smith said, none of it would have happened.
Autism is becoming increasingly prevalent in society, Smith said, which is why he believes This Austistic Life is so popular. Nearly every person knows someone on the autism spectrum. “Until you’ve lived it people don’t really understand what these families go through, the challenges they go through. I think it opens a lot of people’s lives to that,” he said. “Our message is so positive, without denying the challenges of autism.”
Smith’s book, “Sticks and Stones,” began as what he describes as a kind of therapy. And over the course of penning the nonfiction project, he has gained a greater insight into his son. “He is an amazing person,” Smith said. “He’s given me far more than I could ever hope to give him.”
Smith is constantly in awe of his son’s kindness and his nonjudgmental attitude toward anyone and everyone he meets. Then there’s his skill with numbers. He attends College to Career, a program through Santa Rosa Junior College designed for students like him. There he not only studies calculus himself, but helps to teach his classmates the material. It is for this reason Hank Smith feels his son would make an excellent educator. Unfortunately, he doesn’t see that happening any time in the future. “He would be a fantastic math teacher, but there is no chance with our education system, there’s no way he could get a teachers credential,” Smith said. “That’s a crime.”
Through This Autistic Life, Smith hopes to encourage others to put a microscope to the treatment of high functioning autistic individuals when it comes to schooling and higher education. Though Ian Smith is attending college, he is certainly in the minority. “We as a society, we need to talk about what we’re going to do with these kids. They have so much to offer,” Smith said. “We’re losing out.”
This Autistic Life is at 6:30 p.m. this Monday at the Marge Alakszay Center (MAC) at Clear Lake High School in Lakeport, located at 350 Lange St.
Jennifer Gruenke can be reached at 900-2019.
