A mom's will overcomes the confines of her son's autism
Monday, June 09, 2003
Interior space. Florence Reichenberg's art.
Her job, her obsession, her life.
A mom's will overcomes the confines of her son's autism
Monday, June 09, 2003
Interior space. Florence Reichenberg's art.
Her job, her obsession, her life.
"To get out what I know is in there. To make it useful. To make him useful."
Now she is not speaking as the interior designer, a managing principal for IA -- Interior Architects, an international firm that specializes in, only designs, interior space.
No, now, Florence Reichenberg is a mother.
To Steven, 11.
Her job, her obsession, her life.
"I've spent years doing whatever I had to do, going wherever I had to go, so that Steven would have whatever he needed."
It cost her. Plenty. Financially. Professionally. Emotionally.
"Ended my marriage," says Reichenberg, who has two older children.
Steven lives in his own interior space. He is autistic.
But he is learning. And he is no longer falling to the floor, thrashing about, making bizarre noises, forcing others to restrain him.
"He is a little boy again," says Reichenberg, whose eyes rarely leave her son. Her son's eyes rarely fix on anyone else's.
"Steven is not a problem. He's not an issue. He's a little boy."
We watch Steven learn in a basement classroom in St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Peapack and Gladstone. His mother. Two teachers. The school director. In a private school called the Somerset Hills Learning Institute that rents space from the church.
All of them, all of it, here -- because, when Reichenberg could not find what she thought was the right school for her son, she created her own.
It became her obsession.
"My parents built a life here after they survived the Holocaust," she says of Theodore and Esther Block, who owned furniture outlets in Newark. Florence was born in a German refugee center 52 years ago.
"If my parents could do that, I could create a school for my son."
Created it first in the basement of her home in Suffern, N.Y. Then moved it here when she moved to Basking Ridge.
First deciding which approach to use -- behavioral analysis, it's called. Based on Skinnerian psychology. Action-response -- repeated constantly until learning occurs.
Then trying to find a school that practiced it -- Princeton Child Development Institute is one. But the waiting list was long. She could not wait. Steven could not wait.
"The approach is most effective with early intervention," she says.
Then, Reichenberg found an educator who did what she wanted to be done. In Kansas, getting his doctorate, running his own school.
"I did whatever I had to do to bring him here so he could start this school," she says of Kevin Brothers, the institute's director. "He was the educator we needed."
She and the parents of five other children each raised $50,000 to start the school. By 1999, she had state approval -- that meant children could attend tuition-free, their home public school districts paying the $60,000 annual per student cost.
Recently, the school had its first graduate. A child who went back to the public schools. The regular classes. No special education. No aides.
"That is what we do," Brothers says. "We want these children to lead a normal life. To be in the regular schools. To live independently."
The instruction: One teacher, one student. The planning, the paperwork, is extraordinary. Each child has a binder thick with graphs measuring virtually everything the youngster does for almost every moment at school -- then at home.
It appears almost ritualistic. A teacher talks to Steven in a script. It's about what he likes, what he wants. He memorizes the script, but then words are left out and he has to supply them. Steven is learning how to generalize. To talk.
"We all do something like it," Brothers says. "It's just taking Steven longer."
Every activity is reduced to its simplest steps. Steven's progress through each step is monitored, recorded -- and repeated, if he fails. Brothers, aware of the controversy attached to Skinnerian psychology, doesn't want to talk about it in those terms. But what is going on in this room is reminiscent of B.F. Skinner's classic book, "Walden Two."
"We blend compassion and science to enable as many children as possible to live as independently as possible" -- is how Brothers describes the approach.
The school, opened in 1999, already has a wait list of 200. It can grow a little -- from 15 to, perhaps, 25. Adding more would destroy the school, Brothers says.
"But I believe in this approach so strongly," says Reichenberg. "I would help any group of parents who want to start their own school. The way I did."
The school day is over. She waits for her son. To take him home. Florence Reichenberg recites all Steven's triumphs, big and small. A visit to the dentist without incident. A part for him in his big brother's bar mitzvah.
"This school was a lot of work, a lot of time. It's worth it. I have my son back."
Bob Braun's columns appear Mondays and Wednesdays. He can be reached at
rjbraun@webspan.net or (973) 392-4281.