• With autistic siblings, 'the job is constant'

  • MOUNTAIN HOUSE - Stephanie Coles kneels next to 4-year-old Rachael, braces her daughter's shoulders and holds eye contact for as long as she can.
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  • CORRECTION: June 17, 2013
    An incorrect school district was named in the print and initial online version of this article. The error has been corrected.
    Rachael squirms.
    In a moment their eyes will meet, at least momentarily, as Coles provides a simple instruction on food etiquette: Don't eat a Fruit-by-the-Foot snack with one end hanging on the ground, she tells her fast-moving daughter.
    "I can't just tell her and let her go on," Coles said. "Every moment right now is a moment of intervention."
    Stephanie Coles and husband Adam Coles are raising two children with autism. Rachael and her 3-year-old brother, Michael, were both diagnosed with the neurodevelopmental disorder that affects a person's social skills, after their parents noticed some classic symptoms: avoiding eye contact, not engaging in pretend play, not learning to socialize the same way as other kids in their play groups.
    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that as many as 1 in 50 school-age children are diagnosed with autism. The chances of two in one family?
    "It's actually very likely," said Tara Sizemore-Hester, an autism specialist at Valley Mountain Regional Center in Stockton, an agency that provides services for fundamentally disabled children from ages 0 to 3. "There's a higher probability that siblings (of an autistic child) will have autism. And the probability goes up with each child the family has."
    Although Rachael and Michael are considered to be high-functioning on the autism spectrum, the Coles family sought early intervention and their ability to find local resources has made their efforts more manageable. Both children have attended the Kendall School Therapeutic Pathways in Tracy, which serves preschoolers with autism.
    The school helps provide 35 to 40 hours of one-on-one instruction time with a staff trained in autism intervention techniques.
    "It's an amazing program," Stephanie Coles said. "I don't know where we'd be without it."
    The intervention has worked well enough that Michael's symptoms have dulled to a point where the be Lammersville Joint Unified School District has requested he be re-evaluated for autism before he enters kindergarten. Coles said the district believes Michael may have been diagnosed too early because he doesn't have as many strong symptoms as he did before he received therapy early in life. The district wants to be sure that an aide or other autism services are necessary before providing them.
    That's frustrating for the Coles family, because they want continued services to ensure Michael doesn't regress.
    Overcoming the symptoms "is great. It's what we want," Coles said. "But we want to keep working."
    Regardless, the Coleses have adopted a lifestyle that revolves around autism intervention. Life in the two-story Mountain House home is an endless but necessary routine of teaching social cues, dealing with hour-long tantrums in a productive way, and being bound to very specific foods that their children will eat.
    Rachael and Michael have different menus.
    "Take the frustrations that a parent might have with one autistic child and multiply it by two," said Adam Coles, 38, who works at a Bay Area bank. "People think you can come home, play with the kids, and then you can relax and watch TV. It's not like that. The job is constant."
    Rachael, who isn't terribly interested in answering questions about her favorite foods, is on her way to kindergarten in the fall. She'll be in a mainstream kindergarten class with a full-time aide.
    "We're starting to see more behaviors with Rachael, but she's doing really good," said Stephanie Coles, admitting that whenever she starts to think she's making progress, her children will remind her that this is a lifelong journey.
    "What I worry about most," Coles said, "is social interaction, how they'll be treated as they get older, and how they form relationships when they get older."
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