That was the greatest challenge I've ever faced as a teacher. When Juliana's mother called me for an interview, she didn't mention her daughter was within the autism spectrum. I went to their apartment and didn't meet the girl right away, the mother explained me the situation, told some stories when the girl had refused professionals, and warned me that I would have 15, 20 minutes to convince Juliana I was nice. Then she came in.
I said hello, she only stared. And she kept staring for the whole class. I had her read a short paragraph, asked for translation, and the response was silence. "Do you understand what you've just read?", "Can you say it in Portuguese?". Nothing. I read it myself, and asked for the translation of each word. Silence. I did the work for her. It was like this for two hours. I started sweating!
I left feeling both frustrated and embarrassed. To my surprise, there was a call for two classes a week, two hours each.
She allowed my approach, but only when it had nothing to do with the class. She refused exercises, her attention span was really short, as well as her memory. I felt like a fraud. Sometimes I managed to "teach" some quick lesson, for a few minutes before she started yawning. Many times she simply left the room to come back half an hour later.
One day she was extremelly excited because she had been allowed to take the bus to school. As every teenager, she was willing to feel independent. I let her tell the adventure and started asking questions about it in English. And she started responding, using perfect simple past structure! Never had I felt so good as a teacher! It was a lesson to me: she had been learning during all the time. Her refusal was to let me know.
We were together for 3 years. I started teaching the mother, the brother, the sister-in-law. I was envited to the wedding.