Brightening the World

Christine Hermsdorfer has a vision and is enlisting the community's support to make it a reality. In this case, it is a demon-stration project that com-munities can raise a child, even one with chal-lenges.
Herms-dorfer, who formerly served as the behavioral specialist in the exceptional education cluster class at Port St. Joe Elementary School, is seeking to establish a center to assist and teach children with autism.
Using several methods, which have acronyms and titles that only a true educator would understand, Hermsdorfer is hoping to reach in that window when children who suffer with autism can be reached and turned in a positive direction.
"The important thing is that window and if we miss that window we can still help, but I've seen kids miss that window and I don't want to see it anymore."
By reaching children with autism early, the chances increase that they will become adults in less need of attention and assistance, will be more independent, higher-functioning.
"The adult (who has been missed at a younger age) can't communicate, gets flustered easily," Hermsdorfer said.
Hermsdorfer certainly has the credentials. She earned a master's in psychology and is board certified in behavioral analysis.
She also has a telling statistic - one in every 150 births in the United States will result in a child afflicted with autism.
She set out on her own from the public school system in large part to concentrate her efforts on those children and a disease whose roots and treatment remain a source of some controversy.
"My passion and love is the treatment of autism," Hermsdorfer said of a disease that is characterized by a struggle to communicate, unwillingness to make eye contact with others, basically a brain not wired the same as most.
However, it is treatable and the success stories of those who overcame autism are plentiful.
Those are the kind of stories Hermsdorfer hopes to write.
"We need a place and we need some money," Hermsdorfer said. "We'd like (the instruction) to be center-based."
Her hope is to establish a center where children afflicted with autism will receive one-on-one assistance and education. She is working in partnership with SEED Kids, a non-profit organization dedicated to assisting mentally or physically challenged children.
"It's basically one-on-one learning," Hermsdorfer said, adding that after one to three years the goal would be for the children to exit the program for a mainstream classroom, no longer in need of such intensive instruction.
Working with SEED Kids ensures that any donation to Hermsdorfer's effort will be tax deductible.
The center she envisions, Hermsdorfer said, would serve a relatively small clientele.
"We don't need it to be huge," Hermsdorfer said, adding that she has five parents on board already.
She would also like to bring in college students to assist in the instruction and in turn gain valuable experience working with children with autism.
For more information about Hermsdorfer's program and the effort to establish a local center for the treatment of autism call Hermsdorfer at 227-4392 or David and Tina Whitfield, who operate SEED Kids, at 229-6242.
Folks can also contact Hermsdorfer at christinetfh@aol.com.