Mom encourages daughter who wants to be librarian

Tina Friesland hangs out at Lee College while her younger daughter attends class.

“Our daughters are different. Our oldest one is very outgoing and determined. The younger one, not as much. We have to push her on some things. She’s slightly autistic, very minor. So we’re just trying to get her out of her shell.

“We didn’t learn about it until she was in high school. Actually, my husband and I were watching a documentary on these two boys when we kind of realized that sounds like her. Her biggest challenge is that she doesn’t know how to read people to communicate. We’re trying to encourage her. I run our junior church, so I’ve put her where she has to interact with the children. On Wednesday nights she helps me out by designing games for them to play. She’s doing well with that. And here at college, they’re trying to get her involved a little more with certain things. She’s also in Baytown Concert Band, which is nice, but she doesn’t really interact unless she knows someone.

“She wants to become a librarian. During the summer she helped out with the Dayton library, and she’s going to do that again next summer. She’s very good at what she does. She has OCD, so everything has to go a certain way. But when you give her a task, she does it fully. It may take her a little more time than others, but I think she’ll eventually be able to get a job. I think she’ll be a good librarian.”

— Tina Friesland