A lot of people have met Lisa through the first letter that I put on the web site concerning her.

Lisa is 8 now. She is in a special education class, her IQ is around 45, with self-help being her lowest area - speech is her highest area. She loves "Barney", "Mary Poppins", "Willy Wonka", "Annie", "The Big Comfy Couch", the Ashley Twins, etc. And also, "Cops" for some reason. It really fascinates her.

Her all time favorite obsession right now though is John Daly. Who is John Daly? A man who hosts a show called Real TV. She gives commercials "video clips and one tv quiz." At the RTS conference another parent was video taping Lisa. She was banging on a piano and he was trying to get her to sing. She wouldn't comply, then I suggested Happy Birthday to John Daly. Off she went! On the trip home, my cousin said she was going to watch RealTV to see what fascinated Lisa about John Daly. Lisa, very seriously responded: "No, don't, you will fall in love!"

Lisa is a lot of fun to be around. She has a great memory concerning past events. It shocks me at times when she comes up with something that happened a long time ago. Even somewhat trivial things she remembers.

She has a doll named "Charles", it's a girl. She always asks me to talk "like" Charles. And Charles has come in handy when she is curious about something and she can't quite express herself. With RTS she talked with me, through Charles and now she says that Charles has RTS too.

The picture shown here expresses Lisa perfectly. She is a smiling, happy kid. She gets a lot of attention because she's friendly and outgoing.

Lisa has one older brother, she calls him "my favorite brother", two older sisters, Kayla and Shaynna and a younger sister Reyna. Reyna is 3 years younger than Lisa and to be honest, they've had their struggles over the years. Lisa does compliment Reyna a lot when she does things though, mimics the teachers she has in praising her. At the same time she can be mean to Reyna at times too.

She does have some behavior problems. Nothing really uncontrollable though, she doesn't throw tantrums or anything like that. It's more of saying something mean or arguing over doing something. She also tells me if she did something wrong in school. Lisa goes into time outs if she gets in trouble. Her teacher is great with her and very consistent. During her last IEP meeting the second grade teacher was there and Lisa sat at a table reading a book. She would come up to me around every 15 minutes and give me a hug, then her teacher would ask her to go back and sit down and she was right back at the table.

One day I took her to school and they had a power outage and all the lights were out. We went into the cafeteria and it was pretty chaotic with all the students and the lights being out. Lisa was standing next to me and I was bringing her backpack to her table. I turned around and she had run over by the door. I ran after her and it turned out that she had seen one of the other students in her class standing outside crying because he was afraid of the dark. She went out and put her arm around him and told him it was okay and escorted him inside. The lights came on and she said "see Michael, it's okay now". Michael sat down at the table and she went around the table greeting her other friends and then went back to Michael and put her arm around him and asked him if he was okay. I was really proud of her. I also thought it showed how sensitive she was to her surroundings because no one else noticed Michael outside the door.

Lisa has a lot of friends at school, in her class and in her second grade classroom. When I take her to school she has a lot of people saying hi to her, and she's also great at remembering names... (something I'm lousy at).

Contact: diane@rubinstein-taybi.org