Darius Brown is a 5th grader who has been mainstreamed at Skyline Elementary School since kindergarten. Throughout grade school he received a lot of speech therapy services due to his inability to speak. The services taught DJ sign language to sign the words he couldn’t speak and other methods to communicate while in school and at home. He also received adaptive physical education services that helped with his motor skills. These services included swimming, roller skating and other activities to help develop his low muscle tone. Now he can participate in a lot of physical activities more aggressively because he can use his muscles and be big and strong. Even though loud noises and other sensory issues are still a challenge for Darius, his mom says that they deal with them a little bit at a time and so he can develop coping strategies for each issue.
[Tweet “Autistic 5th grader writes delightful children’s book, Darius Hates Vegetables”]
Darius started writing about a year ago. The stories he’s written are based off of true events that have happened to him at school or at home. His mom put all of his stories in a notebook and someone read his notebook and encouraged the family to get his work published.
Darius uses writing as a way to cope with good and bad things that he’s encountered while in school trying to make new friends or other challenges faced at home especially when it comes to sharing his trains with his little brother. Nonetheless, we feel other children and adults on the spectrum will enjoy his stories all the same and realize we are all the same.
We asked Darius to tell us about his new book, Darius Hates Vegetables.
The book is a story about not liking vegetables. I like to eat cookies a lot rather than vegetables because vegetables are nasty. They don’t smell good and that makes me not want to eat them.
What is the message you want readers to take away after reading the book?
It’s worth a try to taste the vegetables at least once. You might actually like some of them even though they don’t smell that good.
What else do you want people to know about you?
I have a website iamdariusbrown.com, I like Thomas the Train, I like to play pool and I’m an author. I like to be kind to other people and I have a lot of best friends.
Why is your book true?
My dad always told me to at least try vegetables at least once instead of always eating cookies for dinner.
Thank you Darius for being writing such a great story and for sharing your words of wisdom with us!
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Sheri says
February 9, 2016 at 7:01 pmI’m so happy this is great..