Getting up to speed

Best medicine for autistic boy is found on the roller rink

Something happens to John Shenko when he laces up his Bont ZX2 Inline skates and steps onto the roller rink. The 10-year-old's pale blue eyes no longer seem vacant, wandering. His bony arms and legs no longer seem jerky and awkward. John is no longer the boy who doesn't belong, who can't get up to speed with the other kids.

When John is skating, his world makes sense. Skating is his medicine.

It's a prescription that works differently than the Adderall John took at age 5, just after he was diagnosed with autism and attention deficit disorder. It's different than the Strattera he takes now.

"The skating is the one really positive thing that we've had in the last five years," said John's mother, Jan. "We are just so overjoyed because everything else has been such a struggle with this kid."

Jan and husband Kevin have watched their son improve in school since he took up the sport early this year. He has friends now and has far fewer aggressive episodes that once characterized his daily life.

"When John is happy, the rest of us are happy because in this house, our lives totally revolve around John," Jan said. "This is the one thing that has really made a difference in our family."

Everything in the St. Charles home is centered on the strict routine John must follow in order to stay on track. If he wakes up at 6:30 a.m. instead of 6:15, his entire day is thrown off. Every move he makes must be monitored, timed, prompted. John needs to know what he'll be doing five minutes from now, 10 minutes from now, 15 minutes from now, or he's lost.

One misstep and out comes what Jan and Kevin refer to as a "melt" — when John will put his hands on his forehead, look down and tell everyone to get away. He'll yell at his mother, call her names.

When he was younger, melts were much worse. John would bite and punch his mother or younger sister Jenna; he'd throw things around his bedroom. In kindergarten, he'd spend half the day in time-out because of aggressive behavior. The young boy never made eye contact with others; couldn't even grasp the concept of playing with other children.

When doctors diagnosed him with autism, his mother knew her son would never be like others. "You go through this whole grieving process of losing the child you thought you had," she said. "You have to accept the child you now have."

Still, Jan and Kevin were determined to push that child to be the best he could be.

When they were teaching him how to catch a ball, "He would stand with his arms at his sides and he'd just stare and it (the ball), and it hit his chest and then hit the ground," Jan said, "We'd say, 'Squeeze the ball, John, give the ball a hug.'" It was a process repeated over and over.

As the boy grew older, Jan's biggest concern remained: She wanted her son to know how to survive in this world, not just the world in his head, that far-off place he seems to be most the time. And she wanted him to have friends.

She enrolled John in summer camp and a bowling league and kept introducing him to new activities. For two years, despite John's defiance, his mother persisted.

"You have to keep bringing the child back to the situation so they build tolerance. Otherwise, they'll never learn to be independent, they'll never learn to be social." she said of autistic children. "The more they're exposed to our world, the more comfortable they are."

But by the end of third grade, John started to notice he was different than the other kids. He broke down, gave up on everything.

"He'd tell me he was dirt. He was nothing," Jan said. "He kept saying, 'I want to die,' I don't have a good life, Mom.'"

Jan found steak knives hidden under his mattress one afternoon when she was changing his sheets. That's when she knew it was time for change.

John was prescribed different medication, and Jan began making plans for the child to be taken out of the mainstream classroom for the next school year. John "started getting better but he still wasn't whole," Jan said. "He had low self-esteem and didn't know what to do with himself."

The once persistent mother was about to give up. "I just felt like I was on this endless journey," Jan said. "I just couldn't figure out, 'When am I going to find something that is really going to work for this kid?'"

Then they discovered skating.

On a whim one afternoon, Jan took her son to Funway in Batavia for a matinee skate. The same old thing happened. John stormed off the rink and cried every time he fell. But Jan would make him get back out on the floor — and the boy slowly figured out how to balance.

There was a man at the rink who captured the crowd's attention for his "jam skating." John was able to emulate the man's every dance move after watching him only once. Soon after, at Aurora Skate, John caught the eye of a youth speed skating coach when he continued skating even after one of his roller wheels fell off. This kid had talent; everyone could see it.

John joined the skating team and gradually became one of the fastest in the group. But that's not what really mattered to his parents. "It's just that he's able to participate and not let the noise or people bother him anymore," Jan said.

John's talent gave him the confidence to talk to other kids and strive to continue succeeding — and that carried over to every aspect of his life. Research shows that physical activity is a powerful treatment for autistic children because it channels much of their agitation and can help them focus.

"He used to play off to the side, but now he's in the group, talking about Nintendo games with the other kids," Jan said. "Before, a friend would put his arm around (John's) shoulder, and he'd shrug him off, but now he's fine."

In his special education classroom, John gets assessed every half-hour on how he follows directions, stays in his seat, shows respect to his peers, and remains on task academically. These days, John's scores are near perfect.

John's "melts" are much less severe than they once were, but by no means have they gone away. One morning last week, John refused to put on his pants and socks for school. Jan reminded him he needed to get dressed before going to the breakfast table. Ten minutes until breakfast. Five minutes until breakfast, she reminded him. Still no pants or socks.

Jan tried to get her son to put them on at the kitchen table. "I'm not a baby, Mom!" he said. "I can do it myself."

He started running around the house: "I hate you, I'm going to kill you!" he yelled at his mother. He tore ornaments off the Christmas tree, hit his little sister, slammed every door in sight.

John's autism will never go away. Jan and Kevin know that.

But they'll never stop pushing their child within his limits. That's why they didn't mind driving six hours to Michigan in a snowstorm on Thanksgiving Day to get John to a skating tournament. That's why they take him to practice three days a week at a rink an hour away from their house.

It is helping, that's all the Shenkos know.

Usually, after a melt in the morning like the one last week, John will wait for the bus outside instead of by the door.

That way, he can skate.