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to place him in another middle school rather than
the one in our community. Five years later Gavin
attended the middle school in our community and
was successful and happy there.
Keaton’s house is located over the hill from our house
with just enough of a hill that we cannot see each
other’s house. It was good that Keaton, from the
time that he moved here, could walk to our house
by himself. This gave him the opportunity to be
somewhat independent, a small act of progress.
Keaton has always enjoyed Disney films and books
with fairy tales. As a result of this, he called the
neighbor who lives across the street from him, his
“fairy godmother”. She is one of our closest friends;
she thought Keaton’s name for her a compliment, as
well as humorous. Later, asKeatoncame tounderstand
that fairy godmother was a fictional character, he
decided that she must be his godmother. She is as
close to being one as he has. Her name is Evelyn and
that is what I will call her from now on in this book.
It was learned that a social skills development class
for children with autism was being conducted at
Radford University. Keaton was taken weekly to
participate in the group. It consisted of six males.
They played board games, took turns speaking, and
wrote new articles and letters to help improve their
social skills. As instructed, he wrote articles about
the happenings in the group, as if for publication.
This has proven to be a helpful skill for him with
his present enjoyment of writing sports articles. He
has sports related information on his blog and on his
twitter page.