Afriend of mine told me the other day about the time she was teaching special needs children in Miyazaki Prefecture. One boy had autism, and threw terrible tantrums the first few times my friend came to teach.
She's a foreigner, and though her black hair, at least, was familiar to the Japanese children, she had scary bright blue eyes. Many children with autism get upset at changes to their routine, and my friend was not only an unfamiliar person in the classroom, she was practically an alien.
She would smile in encouragement to the boy, but she failed to get a response. It was no fault of hers, however. Special needs children are classified as special needs for a good reason, and autistic children are particularly challenging.