AUBURN – Tim Meservier is having a good day at school.

He puts cutout numbers in order from one to seven. He answers questions about his weekend camping trip and gives his occupational therapist a high five.

At lunch, he chooses to have chicken nuggets and iced tea. He helps get his own plastic plate, chicken nuggets, a cup and a straw.

For most 8-year-olds, such accomplishments would be effortless.

But Tim spent his kindergarten days throwing tantrums and not talking. So for him, choosing food, following directions and joining simple conversations are reasons to celebrate.

Tim has autism.

And his mother believes his new school, the Margaret Murphy Center for Children in Auburn, is making all the difference in the world.

Said Penny Meservier, “You realize it takes a lot more work, but he can do it.”

The diagnosis

Tim was 18 months old when he started rocking obsessively. He screamed but didn’t talk.

“We knew something

was up. We knew something wasn’t right,” his mother said.

Doctors diagnosed Tim with autism, a neurological disorder that affects social skills and communication, when he was 2.

His mother and father moved from New Hampshire to Mechanic Falls to be closer to family. But in Maine they had trouble finding help for Tim.

A center in Portland sent teachers to the house every day to work with Tim, but they focused too much on repetition and memorization, Meservier said. When he was 5, the local public school said he had to be enrolled in a traditional kindergarten class.

It was a disaster.

The charming little boy with blond hair and bright blue eyes stopped communicating. He threw tantrums and began hitting people.

Meservier took Tim out of class and home schooled him.

By the following year, the John F. Murphy Homes had started the Margaret Murphy Center for Children.

Open to kids throughout the region, it offered something rare in Maine: an autism program with personalized treatment and a philosophy that kept students out of mainstream classrooms until they were judged skilled enough to handle it.

‘I love you’

Meservier liked the center’s emphasis on language, structure and one-on-one help. Bad behavior was redirected rather than scolded. Students were lavished with praise when they did something well.

She enrolled her son.

Now, more than two years later, Meservier has seen amazing improvement.

“He’ll tell you something’s funny. He’ll tell you how he feels,” Meservier said. “This weekend, it was so cool. He came up to me and gave me a kiss out of the blue and said, ‘I love you.'”

In his early days at the center, Tim obsessively flexed his finger in front of his face, typical autistic behavior. He pointed to pictures but barely spoke. He had balance problems and leaned into walls when he walked around corners.

Now, his obsessive behaviors are all but gone. At the center, which has 33 children ages 2 to 14, Tim carries on conversations with prompting and is starting to read and work in small groups. He has learned to tie his shoes, ride a bike without training wheels and swim the length of a pool.

Tuition costs

“He loves it here. They make it so he looks forward to it,” Meservier said.

Tuition at the school costs about $50,000 for pre-schoolers and is paid by Medicaid, private insurance or Child Development Services, a public early-intervention agency. Tuition costs $60,000 a year for school-age children and is split between Medicaid and each child’s public school system.

The three-year-old center will hold its first fund-raiser – a walk-a-thon and family fun day – on Saturday to raise money to provide a cushion against impending funding cuts.

It also hopes to raise enough to buy adaptive equipment, pay for some parent training and start a sibling association.

“(They are) things that the budget doesn’t allow for,” said Director Michelle Hathaway.

Meservier, her friends and family plan to be right in the middle of it. Walking. Volunteering. Doing whatever needs to be done.

After all, it’s for the place where her son learned to say “I love you.”

“It’s important for me to support the school that has done so much to help Tim,” she said.

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