Teen with autism turns a page in his 'Ottobiography'

April 07-- Apr. 7--Otto Lana is the youngest of three sandy-haired brothers, an energetic 14-year-old with a lively sense of humor.

He writes poetry and short stories, does open water swimming, and last year he completed a distance swim in Italy with his classmates from Sea Change Preparatory School in Del Mar.

It might be easy to miss those accomplishments though, because Otto doesn't talk.

Otto was diagnosed with autism at age 2, his mother Shelly Lana said, and received intensive speech and language therapy as a toddler.

Once he started school, however, those sessions were curtailed. Otto was classified as intellectually disabled, and placed in life skills classes to learn tasks such as hand-washing and making microwave popcorn, instead of academic subject matter.

"I said, 'No, I think my son's smart,'" Lana said. "I don't understand why you're saying that because he's nonverbal he shouldn't be in a classroom where he's learning things."

Over the following years, she said, Otto and his parents went "down a rabbit hole" of special education bureaucracy as Lana strove to break through her son's silence.

Otto attended Children's Workshop, a specialized school in Mission Valley that serves autistic students with moderate to severe learning and behavior problems.

The campus was bright, clean and beautiful, Lana said, with smiling staff and students. Except Otto, who cried each day when she picked him up.

Lana pleaded with administrators to re-evaluate her son, not realizing that he had the right to get an outside assessment.

"Nobody told me you can ask for an independent exam, evaluation," she said. "If you don't know the magic words, they're not going to offer them."

When Otto was 9 years old, Lana connected with speech and language pathologist Darlene Hanson in Los Angeles, who taught him to spell out words by tapping on a letter board.

They discovered that Otto had taught himself the alphabet, spelling, and multiplication by listening to his older siblings do homework. As Otto made progress typing on a keyboard and using a letter board, Lana pulled out all the stops to make weekly trips to Los Angeles for his therapy.

"We spent our whole savings and took a second out on our home," she said.

Lana said school officials were reluctant to recognize Otto's progress or support his communication services. She suspects cost was a factor.

"Every time I try to get services for my son, it's a huge fight," she said.

"Nobody specifically says it's about money. They can't say that because that's against the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) and IDEA. But I can't believe that it's not about money, because why else would they deny services he so clearly needs?"

In 2017, at age 12, Otto received a new evaluation that accurately measured his intellectual abilities. By then he had enrolled in Arch Academy, a small private school that later became Sea Change.

He types his lessons on a keyboard, and is earning a high school diploma.

Without those developments, Lana said, "He would have just been in a perpetual Groundhog Day of preschool until he was 21."

Otto wants to study science or math, like his older brothers, and plans to climb Mt. Whitney with them this summer. He's working with Hanson on retraining his facial muscles, with the goal of speaking verbally.

He also aims to write a memoir, titled "Ottobiography."

Last month, Otto appeared with three other non-verbal, autistic young people at the Cal-TASH conference on disability rights, held in Mission Valley.

"I have autism and apraxia, this prevents me from speaking words with my mouth," Otto wrote in his presentation. "This inability to verbalize my thoughts obviously does not indicate that I do not possess verbal skills. It simply means I do not have expressive language in the traditional sense."

He divides his experience into two periods: BCE (Before Communicating Effectively,) and his present life.

"It is a dream come true," he tapped on his letter board. "Cooper (my teacher) has designed my curriculum so I can show all my many talents."

Despite years of frustration, he remains hopeful about his future.

"You may never convince someone who does not believe in your abilities," he wrote. "But that does not mean you should give up "Typing the good Type"."

___

(c)2019 The San Diego Union-Tribune

Visit The San Diego Union-Tribune at www.sandiegouniontribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.