“What’s that?” says Jordan Hughgill when asked if she understands autism, something her classmate and friend, Grace Theisen, was diagnosed with at age 2.

Jordan, 6, of Rindge and Grace, 7, of Jaffrey are in the first grade together at Rindge Memorial School. Grace is also in the school district’s autism program.

In honor of World Autism Awareness Day on Friday and Autism awareness month in April, Grace’s mom, Beth Theisen, and Kris Starrett, the special education teacher who leads the autism program, put together an educational board about autism at the school. Teachers and students also wore blue shirts to help raise awareness about the developmental disorder.

“Autism is a complex developmental disability that typically appears during the first three years of life and affects a person’s ability to communicate and interact with others,” according to the Web site of a national support group, Autism Society.

On Thursday, Theisen said she’s on a mission to educate people in her community about autism and to keep learning as much as she can to help speed her daughter’s recovery.

“She’s 7 years old and she’s just starting to talk, so I have to be her voice,” Theisen said. “I think awareness creates understanding.”

The autism program at Rindge Memorial School is midway through its second school year, Theisen said. In that time, she said, she’s seen amazing results in Grace’s development.

“Grace is thriving. She has come so [much farther] in the last year and a half than she’s ever done, especially with speech,” Theisen said.

Thursday evening was the first time, Theisen said, she’d ever seen her daughter play with blocks, something she recently began showing an interest in at school, according to Starrett.

“This is the one thing she’ll let you do with her. She doesn’t always like to share her playtime,” Starrett said of Grace, who played with blocks Friday in the RMS classroom specifically for children with autism.

Starrett has worked with autistic children for 15 years and says the key to success is believing in them.

“You just have to have the faith that you are going to make them stronger and able to succeed in their communities,” she said.

There are plenty of rewards in her job.

“Just look at her,” Starrett said of Grace, who was peacefully playing with the blocks. “For [Grace], it’s hearing her words. For others, it’s seeing them safe. Maybe they came to you not knowing even how to cross the street safely and you taught them that.”

The biggest challenge is that each child has different needs.

“It’s finding what works for them to succeed,” Starrett said. “You have to have a big bag of tricks. And, what works one day, won’t work the next.”

Autistic children often display behaviors, called “stims,” or self-stimulated behavior, such as tapping their hands or rocking their bodies back and forth, Starrett said. Helping her students work through them is part of her job, so students can achieve the social graces society expects.

Starrett said she has seen progress in the six children who are in the program and she thinks it’s because the program is designed around each of their needs.

Theisen, who visited Grace at school Friday, said, “What they’re doing in this room is miraculous.”

During a walk through the hallways of the elementary school following the visit, Theisen recalled the time when she first began noticing something was wrong with Grace.

“She was about 17-months-old; she lost all of her speech. She didn’t look at anybody [anymore],” Theisen said. “She was totally normal up until 17 months old. It’s called regressive autism.”

It was just after Grace had been vaccinated for measles, mumps and rubella, she said. “We actually did tests and found out she had huge elevated levels of mercury in her system.”

The MMR vaccine contains a preservative of ethyl mercury and Grace’s system was unable to flush out the mercury on its own, one doctor explained to Grace’s parents. While the idea that such a preservative in vaccines can lead to or cause autism is controversial, Theisen said she is convinced this is what led to her daughter’s autism.

When Theisen and her husband, Paul, talked with a doctor who diagnosed Grace with autism at age two-and-a-half, it was a grim prognosis. Theisen said she remembers the doctor telling them Grace would never make it past the fourth grade and would never marry. At first, she said, she felt helpless and then angry, but it wasn’t long before she starting looking for answers on the Internet.

“At that moment I was determined to do two things: Number one, I was determined to recover my child and, number two, I was determined to get as much information as I could get on autism,” she said. “We never stop.”

The quest to learn more has led to supplements and special diets that have helped Grace, Theisen said. It’s also led to more information about Grace’s condition. In addition to autism, Grace suffers from apraxia — a motor planning disorder that affects her speech — seizures and colitis, Theisen said.

“A year and a half ago we had to sell our house because the medical bills got to be too much,” Theisen said. “We are totally OK with that. That’s not important. ... Our daughter’s recovery is the most important thing for us — that and being right with God.”

Having the right schooling has been key to helping her daughter overcome the disabilities, she said. Once she was diagnosed with autism, Theisen said, Grace became eligible for early support services through Monadnock Developmental Services.

“The more services they get at a young age, the better the prognosis is,” she said. “It’s not that they can’t do things, it’s just that they do them differently. They may need assistance. It’s not that they are disabled, they are just differently-abled.”

One of the ways Grace communicates, for instance, is by sign language.

“My daughter totally gets sign language. She’s actually better at it than me,” she said.

Grace also enjoys music, singing and reading books. She sometimes uses pictures to communicate too, Theisen said.

Grace is more than the disabilities she’s been diagnosed with and the behaviors that go along with autism. Through education and awareness, Theisen said, she’s hoping people in the community will come to realize this.