Five-year-old Vance Pugh crouches on the carpet, pushing toy cars around a plastic parking garage. In the next room, a cartoon rooster crows on television. "Chicken," Pugh announces.

The word delights Andrea Keller and Robin Simard. They are instructors at the Virginia Institute of Autism (VIA), where Pugh has been a student for the past two years. When he was diagnosed with autism, doctors told parents he might never learn to talk. When he first arrived at the school, Pugh had trouble sitting for more than a few minutes and often seemed oblivious to the world around him.

By simply uttering two syllables, Pugh demonstrated the progress he's made. Not only did he communicate, but he demonstrated awareness of is surroundings and the ability to associate to the sound "cock-a-doodle-doo," with the bird that makes it. "That's the kind of thing that thrills his parents," Simard says.

Since doctors first described autism in the 1940's, the brain disorder has been confounding parents, doctors, and the people who suffer it. Even now, there is no consensus as to what causes autism or how to treat it. About 1 to 500 children are born with it in some form, and although every case is different, doctors say autistics typically share impaired social, communication and imagination skills.

David Cattell-Gordon first noticed something was wrong with is son, Daniel, when the 18-month-old couldn't make eye contact or wave goodbye. Cattell-Gordon says the pediatrician couldn't identify the problem. "There's just not much information out there," he says. "When the doctors finally diagnosed it, they told me to start saving money to institutionalize Daniel."

Autism is so mysterious that few school districts know how to treat afflicted children. So Cattell-Gordon and other parents in a local support group formed VIA in 1998. At first, parents financed the school, but city and County school districts soon began paying for children to attend. Today, 13 autistic children get one-on-one attention from instructors trained in Applied Behavior Analysis.

"We focus on reinforcing good behavior, or the absence of bad behavior," Simard says. Normal children learn rapidly and make complex connections between unrelated subjects almost without trying, Catell-Gordon says, but autistic children need to be taught almost everything. So at VIA, teachers sit close to students, holding their attention with short, simple exercises. A boy named Josh spends five minutes matching a written numeral "6" with the word "six" earning praise and a reward of pennies for each correct answer. Then, lunch. Since autistic children often fear the unfamiliar, students' time is strictly organized.

When Pugh finishes with the cars, Keller takes his hand and leads him down the hall. "Back to our room," she says. Teachers speak in short, uncluttered sentences, Simard says, to help students understand basic sounds as words and associate words with physical objects. "We do a lot of incidental teaching," Simard says. "Autistic children have trouble communicating, and the isolation can get very frustrating for them. We try to get the kids to engage the world around them."

Executive director Erika Drescher reveals that VIA, which has a waiting list of over 30 students, is planning to expand. As students like Daniel get older, their needs change, Drescher says, "We want to start thinking about gainful employment and independent living skills," she says.