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LUCINDA'S STORY
 As a new baby, Lucinda was seldom content. I explained to our family doctor that she threw up a lot and doubled up her knees and screamed, even after we made sure she was fed and changed. We held her, rocked her and walked her, day and night. There was nothing we could do to stop her screaming. The doctor passed it off, saying I was a new, inexperienced mother. He reminded me that all babies spit up and fuss. We started out wanting a large family, but after weeks without sleep, we were thinking that we already had one too many kids.
When Lucinda was four months old, I took her to a pediatrician. It only took him a few minutes for him to determine that she was allergic to a long list of foods, but milk seemed to be the biggest problem. We changed her diet, buying Pro Sobee instead of baby formula. Our family doctor had told us she could eat ANY kind of the strained baby food. Being anxious to make her little life interesting, we included Gerber strained bacon and eggs, dessert, etc. On the advise of her new doctor we now fed her pablum, strained bananas and applesauce. There was almost an immediate change! Lucinda became a MUCH happier baby.
 Lucinda was very independent and started walking at age 91/2 months. Court’s father wondered if she was walking okay because her gate was uneven. I told him, "She is just learning to walk. I'm sure she will be fine with a little more practice." (After all, her PKU test was normal and I interpreted that to mean we didn’t have to worry about any developmental problems. PKU testing was new at the time and I hadn’t heard about it until she was tested.) She had started saying words like “kitty and “Da-Da”.
 Robin was born when Lucinda was 171/2 months old. They were very different right from the start. Lucinda had lots of dark hair and delicate features. Robin was born without hair, but when it did come in, it was strawberry blond (that came from by Norwegian father.)
I have such happy memories of that summer. I rocked a precious new baby while my bright eyed little girl listened to a Winnie The Pooh and the Blustery Day record. That was a tranquil, peaceful time for us. Court had just graduated from Utah State University and we were headed to his first teaching job in Manila, Utah (a very small remote community).
 During the next year, Lucinda became more and more insistent on things being done in an exact order. When we put her shoes on, she might suddenly throw a temper tantrum, yank her shoe off and throw it at us, as she screamed. Preparing her cereal in the morning might result in a similar display. Gradually we learned that she always wanted to have her left shoe put on before her right shoe, and she always wanted the sugar put on her cereal before the milk. If we forgot, we had to start over with a new bowl of cereal, if we expected her to eat it. She was "hooked" on pacifiers and threw a fit if she couldn't find hers, so we kept a secret stash. She would only use one color, so they all had to be the same color, so she wouldn't realize we had slipped her one out of our stash, when we couldn't find the one she had lost.
Lucinda had a hard time adjusting to drinking out of a class and insisted on using her “sipper cup” until she was well beyond the usual age. She hung on to her pacifier longer than most, too.
 One of my new friend's little girl, Michelle, was about the same age as Lucinda. Michelle’s mother and I were happy that they would have someone to play with, but Lucinda was not very receptive to having a friend. She preferred to play by herself, but Robin and Michelle played together. That became stand behavior.
Lucinda was very "inquisitive and busy" and had a hard time sitting still. One evening she broke a bone in her foot when she tried to climb up the front of a bookcase at the high school where Court taught.
 While returning to the Crownpoint after visiting family in Utah, we found ourselves in a terrible snow storm. Around Monticello, Utah the roads became especially dangerous. The situation was very stressful as we inched our way up the icy mountain road. Some cars were sliding or spinning, while others were backing down, once they realized they couldn’t make it to the top. Lucinda kept us calm by quietly singing little children’s songs she had learned in church.
 Lucinda started kindergarten in the fall, 3 months before her 5th birthday. Because of the way the funding was set up, she could go to kindergarten that year or go to first grade the next year, wiht out having attended kindergarten. It was not an easy decision, but we felt that receiving a good foundation was important for her, so we enrolled her. She had invented her own language and we were the only ones who could understand her. That would make school even more difficult for her.
When Court and I attended our first "back to school night", the nurse told us she wasn't sure, but she thought Lucinda had learning disabilities. That was in 1970 and we had never heard of learning disabilities. She couldn't tell us what that meant or direct us to anyone who could. It seemed urgent to find someone who could confirm or disagree with the nurse’s suspicions and tell us how to help Lucinda.
Lucinda lacked the coordination to color in the lines or write the letters of the alphabet or the numbers correctly. Try as she might, she couldn’t get it right. Her teacher was young and perky- fresh out of college. Every assignment Lucinda turned was stamped with a sad face and a hand written note - “messy”, “no effort” or “not trying”. By Easter, Lucinda began handing her papers back to the teacher without a mark on them. It didn't matter how hard she tried, she couldn't please her teacher. Lucinda was a kindergarten drop-out!
In the first grade she had a wonderful, experienced teacher. Mrs. Taylor would be retiring in a few years. She was a gentle widow with the time (and interest) to give Lucinda some extra attention. She assigned her to phone her at home once a week to help Lucinda with her speech and she occasionally invited her to her house. At school, Lucinda concerned and frustrated her teachers when she wandered away from the other children, standing along the chainlink fence, quietly singing to herself. We had Lucinda repeat that grade and she had Mrs. Taylor for another year. We really appreciated her kindness and wisdom.
Lucinda loved to listen to Disney music and story records, hours on end . . . by herself. While she listened she made incredible messes peeling the paper off all of the crayons, cutting construction paper into tiny scraps and digging wax from the side of candles.
 When Robin started school that year she heard other children saying that Lucinda was mentally retarded. She thought it must be true since Lucinda couldn’t read or write and she lacked the coordination to play jacks, jump rope or ride a bicycle. Lucinda was well aware of the fact that the other children were able to do those things, and she couldn’t, so she agreed - she must be mentally retarded. We didn’t know what her problem was, but we knew she was NOT mentally retarded.
In 1972 we spent our first of three summers in flagstaff, Arizona, where Court did some post graduate work.  I had contacted the psychology department at Northern Arizona University, several months before, and arranged for Lucinda to have some testing while we were there. They tested her everyday for about an hour, for six weeks. To begin with, she was very frightened, but when she became more familiar with the staff, she looked forward to it and seemed to enjoyed the special attention. The head of the department diagnosed her with learning disabilities. He flew his private plane to Chinle in the fall to meet with her teacher and the principle to explain why Lucinda was having the problems she was and to tell them how they could help her. We were so grateful to him for going to all that effort to help one little girl.
Lucinda's school put on the play “Old Mother Hubbard”. She was assigned a very small part, but during rehearsals, when any of the children forgot their part, Lucinda would prompt them. Even though she couldn’t read, Lucinda had memorized everyone's part after a few days of rehearsals. When it was decided that a particular child had more lines than they were able to learn, the teacher asked them to trade parts with Lucinda’s. She was changed from one part to another, and when they put the play on for the parents, Lucinda played the part of Old Mother Hubbard, because she was the only one who could memorize all of the lines.
At the begining of a new School year, (third or forth grade?) Lucinda's new teacher called to ask me how we had taught her to read so well during the summer, since her records showed that Lucinda was a non-reader. I told her that Lucinda was still a non-reader. She was a little indignant as she explained that Lucinda could read. I repeated that she didn’t know how to read. She assured me that she was reading well in her reading group. I asked to her have Lucinda take her turn reading first. Later the teacher let me know that I was right. If Lucinda had heard even one other child read ahead of her, she could repeat it back exactly.
Many aspects of school were difficult and frustrating for Lucinda. One day she became so frustrated with an arts and crafts project that she shoved the paste covered crepe paper in her mouth. The school made a bigger deal out of that than it seemed to warrant.
It was nothing unusual for Lucinda to come home from elementary school with her clothes, hair, hands, face or books muddy or torn. Her face and arms were bruised. Either she didn't want to, or she couldn't identify (Lucinda had vision ephsaia)the kids who were responsible. She would say that she slipped in the ditch or make up some other story to cover up the truth.  One day a little Navajo girl came to our house and asked me if I was Lucinda's mother. When I said, "yes", she told me that some kids were beating up on Lucinda. She said, "They do it everyday after school" (we only lived two blocks from the school). Lucinda was very independent and insistent that we not interfere. She assured us that she could take care of it herself.
Lucinda was having some problems at Jr. High School. One of her teachers called us in to let us know that Lucinda was flunking her English class, because she hadn’t turned in any of the homework assignments. We started checking with Lucinda everyday to see what homework she had in that class and made sure that she did her assignments. We were really surprised when the teacher called, asking me to meet with her again. She said Lucinda still had not turned in any assignments. I explained to the teacher that I personally knew that she had completed those assignments. Next we asked Lucinda about her assignments. She said they were in her hall locker. She couldn’t see the value of turning them into the teacher. After all, wasn’t the point to learn the material and have the experience. She had accomplished that, so what was the big deal about turning them in to the teacher. They had been stuffed into her locker and were wrinkled and messy, in total disarray, but the were all accounted for.
As a high school student, Lucinda went on a school bus to an out of town ball game. I fell asleep on the couch waiting for her to get home. I woke up about 2:00am and was concerned because she hadn’t come home. I called the school and I was told that all the buses were accounted for and all the students had gone home. We lived about three or four blocks from the high school. I woke Court up and he drove over there to see if he could find her. After a couple anxious hours, I happened to open her bedroom door, and found her sound asleep in her bed. She had come home and gone to bed with out a word. It didn’t occur to her to let us know she was home.
 Lucinda did well in high school, but it was still very difficult for her to organize and complete a report or research paper. She had friends and she was well liked by her teachers. She did excetionally well in the debate club and competition against other schools. Science and math were her best subjects. She was doing college level math as a high school sophomore.
 Lucinda graduated from high school and went to Ricks Junior College in Rexburg, Idaho. It was
hard to take her up there, knowing we would be coming home without her, but she was very eager to get out on her own. She was still incorrectly diagnosed with learning disabilities. We had worked through Vocational Rehabilitation to arrange a councilor who was aware of her diagnoses and would be an advocate for her and help her receive the services and special accommodations the law provided students with special needs. Lucinda insisted that she didn't want a "free ride," therefore she didn't ever meet with the councilor. We tried, unsuccessfully to persuade her to pay someone to type her reports and papers. It was not a very successful experience for her. She couldn't keep her half of the room clean and keep up on her studies at the same time. When she cleaned her room, she couldn't get her assignments done. We didn't realize that it was totally unrealistic to expect her to move to a place three hours drive away that she had never seen before, more into an apartment with five other girls she had never met before and attend college classes, something she had never done before. Nothing about her life at college resembled anything that she was familiar with.
She had a hard time bouncing back after she came home from college. After About two years of almost hibernating in her room, the director of a play at our community theater asked Lucinda to be stage manager. That seemed to help restore her self confidence. She helped with a couple other plays. Lucinda worked for two years at Deseret Industry (D.I.- a local thrift store) as a cashier. She trained the new cashiers and was given extra responsibility.
Asperger's Syndrome
Autism
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